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Dr Mosley and the diet that reverses type 2 diabetes.

Absolutely! And all such attempts and experiments with one's self gets you up close and personal with your own body and your own diabetes. (And then one hopes - to getting better with diabetes/remission/reversal whatever.) All cuddly with your relationship to food, and your own blasted waist circumference. (I'm getting a bit sick of the tape measure. I must stop for a while!)

I really enjoyed the aesthetic aspect to the PFT though I must say - great pic! .
 
But there's a very big difference between being told that "Your diabetes will be reversed on this diet! and that "There's a 70% chance that your diabetes will reversed on this diet".

My GP did actually tell me that losing enough weight may allow my body to function normally again, but he certainly didn't promise that it would. So I'm losing weight with no unrealistic hopes of the outcome. I absolutely believe that my diabetes can be controlled, but I do doubt that it will be cured.

Robbity
 
Yes, it is a shame about the marketing 'ra ra'. Every time there is a time factor in the title - you know - 21 days, 8 weeks, or whatever, I get a little warning flag come up 'marketing language - danger danger!'

I like Michael Mosley and his work, but I must say - I was a tad disappointed when a marketing warning flag presented itself so prominently in the book title!
 
We have had a few people posting here who have been told, absolutely, that if they lose enough weight, they can be D free.

I remember one poster here who lost in excess of 4 stone, at the advice of her consultant.
The last time she posted, she had just returned from another appointment. Having starved herself for months, and been described as looking like a concentration camp victim. Her consultant shrugged, explained that sometimes weight loss doesn't work, and prescribed her some meds.

Usually the blanket promises come from hopeful dieters, not the professionals.
But it is worse when it is the professionals.
 
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Trust me, the current NHS isn't fit for purpose, in my view, but nor is making absolute statements about cure/reversal/remission. I think it would be useful for patients to understand the treatment options available to them, thereby allowing them informed choice.

A couple of months ago, I was speaking to a Consultant Endocrinologist, specialising in Diabetes and asked him if he had ever considered running an almost mirror programme to Professor Taylor's, thus offering willing participants the option to explore how far they could retrace their steps to diagnosis. His response was that people wouldn't want to do that. Lovely man, but I still wanted to throttle him.
 

I had such an experience with an endocrinologist in Sweden also. He sat in front of a roomful of diabetics and told us treating with diet was just too difficult. And HE was a lovely man. (And rather good looking to boot! Just saying.) Then he gave an hour long talk all about the progressive nature of T2 and we got to look at insulin syringes so we could become familiar with them. Delightful! (I was mighty irritated as it was very close to my lunch time!) To give him credit he did let me make an appointment with him (they don't all do they!) - which is good as that self-management course was very pricey. And he did let me say my piece to him. (They don't all!) In the class I said, merely, "Taking medications for the rest of your life can be difficult too."

The other diabetics in the lecture agreed with him though! Getting 'shushed' by the non-diabetic partner of someone - during the discussion part of the lecture - when I talked about carbs and trans fats was the last straw. I gave the url of this forum to the 30-something newly diagnosed guy in the group, and left.
 
@Brunneria my diabetic nurse told me she had a few patients that had gastric ops and had been led to believe they would lose their diabetes and were very disappointed when they didn't.
They had a major operation with high risk but only lost weight (for a medium length of time) no diabetic cure.
 
No matter what route is taken, it is for life, something a lot of these books dont mention. Im all for anything that can help but like Aloe Im suspicious when the word reverse comes up in the title.
 
Arab Horse said:
I would seem to fit into that category; hadn't heard of it before; very interesting, thank you.
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I think it is fascinating too.
And it means that this blanket suggestion to lose weight and sort yourself out is not applicable to all.

In my family, on my father's side, there are 4 ppl who fit this, all diagnosed D in their 60s-80s. All slim. All fit. All active.

Although I am guessing that it would be possible to be T2 AND 'T4' if there were obesity or personal fat threshold issues as well (as there are for me).
 
Duncan57 said:
I've just brought the kindle version of Dr Mosley's book. You can get the kindle version for under £4.
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I bought it yesterday.... The fact that it tells you what to eat for 4 weeks.... Wow fantastic, i donT have to think about whT to have..... On holiday next week, so starting the week i get back.

G x
 
My GP did actually tell me that losing enough weight may allow my body to function normally again, but he certainly didn't promise that it would. So I'm losing weight with no unrealistic hopes of the outcome. I absolutely believe that my diabetes can be controlled, but I do doubt that it will be cured.

Robbity[/QUOTE]

There is no certainty in life including reversal of T2 by diet. However if you never try then you will never know. My levels were off the charts when I was first diagnosed which was effecting many areas of my body including my eye sight. It took 6 months of strict low carb dieting (1000 calories per day) to reach normal levels then the hard part came. The hard part is to keep my weight balanced to the level I obtained when my levels normalised. I know I cannot ever return to my life style of gluttony but the alternative does not bear thinking about.

It is down to the individual on how they live their life or shorten it.
 
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As a pre-diabetic who then lost over 10% of bodyweight I don't believe the PFT can be applied to everyone at all. For many it may well work and is certainly preferable to a lifetime of drugs and the LCHF way of eating seems a fairly painless way of achieving that whilst bariatric surgery is a dangerous and painful and permanent alternative.
It is true that my HbA1c is now firmly in the non-diabetic range but I still react badly to carbs in all their forms so weight loss has not had the effect of 'cure' for me although I am happy to have lost it.
I was also interested in the Type 4 age related diabetes idea as it might explain why my slim mother developed Type 2 in her 70's and why i was on my way to it in my 50's despite not being overweight.
I am glad the Mosley book is out there as I am sure it will help many but I also believe that teaching the low carb high good fats way of eating as a permanent lifestyle would have a greater effect than an 8 week diet which leads people to expect to be 'cured'. They will then revert to their previous way of eating and whether it is the added carbs or the weight gain they are likely to end up back at square one.
 

But there is also this issue, if you took somebody who did not have diabetes, do not have the right genes for diabetes, and this person would never get it, regardless of a bmi of 19,20 or 44, and regardless of bodyfat, and if you made them eat an extremely lowcarb diet for weeks and month, their body downregulates how it metabolizes carbohydrates, so if I ate a very lowcarb diet for 2 months, and suddenly decided I would like to eat nothing but plain rice, boiled potatoes, and wheat bread for the next week, my bloodsugars would probably seem diabetic the first 1,2, 3 days, but in the course of a week, my bloodsugars would be normal again, as my body had upregulated its carbohydrate metabolism functions. This fact makes many people that diet down to a normal weight, convinced that they do have diabetes, when it is probably not the case.
 
Oh if only that were the case and i could go back to eating a normal diet after 3 days and find no effects on blood sugar that would be great. Sadly it isn't. I'm not piling back in to eating carbs (an unhealthy lifestyle in itself anyway - I feel so much better all around on low carb diet and many minor ailments and irritations have simply vanished including an annoying cough I used to get after eating every meal. Never get it on a low carb meal!) but find that any carbs i do eat (I didn't give them up completely - I have a little bit of chocolate daily) still spike my blood sugars. I could experiment with a high carb diet for 3 days and see if my body got used to it but am not prepared to do that to myself anyway. The low carb high fat lifestyle helps to keep my weight steady and I feel great on it. if I do eat carbs I know I can get rid of excess blood sugar by a 15 minute walk anyway so am happy to keep them as foods to eat occasionally.
 
AloeSvea said:
Oh yes - and a blanket promise - like reversal. Was the Mosley book promising that?
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Yes, it said so that in most cases it would be possible, but the book also features lost of examples that show it cannot be done for everyone. One features a healthy man in his 40 with lows levels of visceral fat after scanning and normal bmi, first misdagnosed as a two, then rediagnosed as a type 1.5.

One of the big studies of the book is a gastric bypass follow up study 14 years later, of 600 patients that underwent it. 150 of them were pred

Yeah, I agree, lowcarb is a healthy way of eating if one wants that, I am firmly in that camp and walking is an excellent way to get rid of excess sugar.

These two threads are interesting, it tells the tale of somebody diabetic starting to 300 grams a day of carbs going from a lowcarb diet, it is pretty interesting, he basically chronicles what happens to his bloodsugars and he records postprandials and fasting with pictures.

http://community.diabetes.org/t5/Ea...ting-carbs-the-right-way-is-great/td-p/631605

http://community.diabetes.org/t5/Ad...w-fat-diet-to-control-blood-sugar/td-p/631079
 

He is on a low calorie diet, not just a high carb/low fat diet. I'd be interested to see what happens when he goes to proper amount of calories.
 
I invented my own diet, then got some help from here. I seem to be cured. All test say I am not diabetic any more
I'm not sure though, but HbA1cis 36
 
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