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Full reversal?

J

Jj.j

Member
I have a question, let's say that you have insulin resistance marked by high fasting insulin and higher then normal fasting glucose and you manage to lower your numbers (but you are not diabetic) and your fasting insulin and glucose go down to normal levels. Is this change permanent? I'm just wondering if I'll have to stay on this diet forever. Seems so many people are enjoying bread and rice ( im not talking about candy and sweets I don't like these anyway) but never seem to get insulin resistant, so is someone who had once insulin resistance prone to getting it again quickly or once you lower it it takes the same amount of "effort" to make it high again? Or once you lower it you can only rely on complex carbs? Which drives me to another question, how bad is eating complex carbs such as dark breads and wholegrain rice? If you want to up your caloric intake using such would it be counter productive?
 
Lot of questions there... and you will find a lot of different answers, depending on individual perspectives.
So here are MY answers, based on several decades of living in MY body with MY personal reactions to carbs, insulin resistance and impaired glucose tolerance:


Seems to be for me.

Jj.j said:
I'm just wondering if I'll have to stay on this diet forever.
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I do. And over the decades, my diet has had to get stricter, to maintain the same level of blood glucose control. Age, and less efficient bodily functions, and so on.

Jj.j said:
so is someone who had once insulin resistance prone to getting it again quickly or once you lower it it takes the same amount of "effort" to make it high again?
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Seems to depend a bit on the person, but for me, no effort is required to make it high, all the effort is involved in keeping it low.

Jj.j said:
Or once you lower it you can only rely on complex carbs?
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I don't rely on carbs for anything. I view them as an unnecessary and (for me) damaging macronutrient, and avoid them where possible.

Jj.j said:
Which drives me to another question, how bad is eating complex carbs such as dark breads and wholegrain rice?
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Depends on you and your body. For me, low GI complex carbs are just as 'bad' for me as white high GI versions.

Jj.j said:
If you want to up your caloric intake using such would it be counter productive?
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I tend not to think in terms of calories, but if I want to increase my food intake then I do so using protein and fat.
Adding carbs would not help my insulin resistance, my blood glucose, or my overall health.
 
I'm still trying to figure out many of your questions. I'll answer your questions with more:

If you are overweight, then lose a significant amount of weight and see your numbers normalize does that mean that you have regained significant beta cell function? (See Roy Taylor's theory on liver and pancreas fat).

If the above is true, and insulin resistance improves with the weight loss, diet change, etc, does this mean you are fine as long as you maintain the healthy weight or does it have more to do with carb intake?

One more for everyone. If you reverse T2 and return to normal levels, are you then in the same position as someone who has reversed prediabetes or is your body more "broken"?
 
Unfortunately everyone is different. I am T2 currently on steroids so my hba1c is 44, a little high. I fully expect to regain normal levels as I reduce the steroids. I will stay within normal levels using diet. I have no doubts that if I go back to my old way of eating, my numbers will sore. So I won't.
 

I agree on diet. I am confident if I went back to my old eating habits, and gained back 30 pounds I would be back in the same boat. I do wonder, however, to what extent the body can repair itself with sustained time back in normal ranges......especially if one has only been diabetic for a short amount of time (less than three years).
 
There is an active study being carried out at the moment called DIRECT which is looking at an extendded period following the Newcastle Diet to see how long remission lasts, and if losing it is due to weight gain. This may answer your query posted here. At present we have hunches, but no firm data to evaluate, and so this study will help solve some of the riddles. Certainly we have had cases reported on the forum of remission fading after time so it is not a permanent change. So not quite a Cure.
 
All my adult life I have been pushed away from eating low carb foods - told that they are so so bad - but going back to eating that way, yet again, has got rid of my diabetes.
Now I am a lot lighter, a lot happier, more active, feel healthier and younger I really can't see any reason to stop feeling like this by adding back carbs - which I have never wanted to eat anyway.
Dark breads and wholegrain rice are still high in carbs - you might as well eat the white ones if you are going to consume carbs - though I really don't understand why anyone would crave them.
I do eat low carb breads - in small quantities, but rice - when I want a curry, for instance, I chop up steamed cauliflower as a base for it.
 
For my two bits.

Full reversal... No.

As for the effect re length of illness before DX.....Mmhh.

Does seem to have a major impact from what I have read

My simplistic take on it, is rather like a simmering pot.
Filled with carbs.. It boils over.
Take away the carbs the level lowers.

The shorter you been undiagnosed as a T2, the lower that level gets.

But regardless of that time, add back the carbs, sooner or later the pot boils over again.

Perhaps with the damage to our beta cells that 'Pot' temperature is permanently raised.
So perhaps while it took many years to get us to T2 levels, the return to them might be a heck of a lot quicker, based on our individual damage.

Simplistic, but not too far off how I do actually see it.

Of course, never have carbs again, and you're possibly 'Cured'...
 
I absolutely agree with everything written here. I have a very 'broken ' body as it is highly likely that I had undiagnosed diabetes for over 20 years and had an hba1c of 125 when diagnosed.

My body has healed to a huge extent with low carb and I have been off the Novorapid and Lantus insulins for nearly two years and hb1ac is now 36 - but that is only because I keep to 20g carbs a a day and even have to watch that I don't overdo the protein.

So technically I am in remission but any increase in carbs sends my BS skyrocketing immediately. I think things are still improving and that hb1ac will be lower in March - but improvements are now moving even slower than at a snail's pace.
 
Everyone is different, but hopefully you will be able to enjoy bread and rice every now and then. We found a very nice Livlife bread - doesn’t seem to make sugar go high and it’s very tasty. Rice - we buy brown, it’s healthier. We recently discussed restrictions with our 11 year old and she believes that diabetes just tells you to follow a healthy lifestyle, which is a bonus, not exactly a restriction... good luck anyway!
 

I know to a degree we are somewhat guessing, but how "broken" is the body of a recently diagnosed T2 who is able to reverse the condition quickly with low carb vs someone who is prediabetic?
 
Caprock94 said:
I know to a degree we are somewhat guessing, but how "broken" is the body of a recently diagnosed T2 who is able to reverse the condition quickly with low carb vs someone who is prediabetic?
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Sorry to quote the other lot but this may be relevant. The damage caused by high blood sugars is often permanent.
https://www.diabetes.org.uk/Guide-t...J06mOxWBnkESXlmypqyu61UnCfhem3mRoCJW0QAvD_BwE

There has been research which links sdLDL damage being caused by collisions between glucose molecules and lipids in the blood stream and that further to this the damaged remnants are not cleard as normal used LDL (which is normally cleared by the HDL), and so forms plaque in the arteries. The Triglyceride value in a lipid panel is an indication of the amount of damage risk but is not per se a measure of plaque damage. It is an indication of the remnant particles floating around the blood, and which may attach to plaque deposits in time. It is these remnants that msdr the NHS blsme LDL as the bad guy when in fact it seems to be damaged LDL that is to blame.
So the longer we allow high glucose levels to happen, then the worse the damage becomes, and the body does not hve a simple mechanism for removing these damaged remnants, The kidneys do their best, but by this time the remnants are in effect alien to our bodies, and so get dealt wth by the endocrine system treating them as inflammation like a virus, which is why diabetes is related strongly with the immune system.
 

Interesting. My triglycerides were in the 250 range at diagnosis. Now at 113.
 
Caprock94 said:
I know to a degree we are somewhat guessing, but how "broken" is the body of a recently diagnosed T2 who is able to reverse the condition quickly with low carb vs someone who is prediabetic?
Click to expand...
My feeling is that someone who is pre-diabetic will not be too broken. The problem with being recently diagnosed with T2D is knowing how long someone has had undiagnosed T2D.

In my case in the late 1980s the nurse at work sent me to my doctor because a urine sample showed very high glucose. She said I needed to be urgently checked for diabetes. My doctor said that she didn't know what she was talking about and that a high level of glucose in urine was not a problem. Which I unfortunately believed.

Then in 2000 I was in severe pain which was diagnosed as gastritis and an ultrasound scan showed a very fatty liver - but again no further investigations or treatment until 2016 when I was admitted to hospital seriously ill with diabetes.

My problem was that apart from weight loss I had no symptoms and I only visited the doctor because I realised I had a resting heart rate of 122 beats per minute. At the time a hospital doctor said that I shouldn't even have been upright and walking - let alone working 6 days a week.

My Diabetes nurse said that with an hba1c of 125 it was likely that I was T2D for more than 20 years. So, what I am trying to say in a really roundabout way is that every case is different and someone who is newly diagnosed but hasn't had it very long won't be too broken. But someone like me is likely to be quite broken. But it might be quite difficult to tell just how long anyone has had undiagnosed T2D.
 

Like for the info.
hug for the appalling treatment.
 

Wow! That's a wild story. Yes, I agree that many don't know how long they have been diabetic. For me, I can pretty much pinpoint mine at just about one year based on previous annual blood tests. I hope that wasn't too long.
 

My instinct is that I am in a similar position to you. I was HbA1c = 12.1 (109); Trig=291 at diagnosis at the end of 2017. I believe I had been T2D for between 1 and 4 years before diagnosis. I was definitely T2D 6 months before diagnosis when I went to the doctor with symptoms, not certain what they were, expecting to get a blood test but didn't (and stupidly didn't ask for one). After diagnosis I was send to hospital but they didn't put me on any medication, nor did my doctor. Nevertheless I got my numbers down quite quickly by avoiding carbs like the plague. At the last test 7 months ago I was HbA1c = 5.2 (33); Trig=68. In spite of these numbers being in the normal range, I still spike very easily. What my numbers tell me is that I have controlled my symptoms well. What they don't tell me is how damaged my metabolic system is irrespective of how well I control it. For that reason I'm wondering whether it's worth asking for an oral glucose test. I'm not sure however whether test is used for anything other than simply diagnosing diabetes, rather than ranking it on a scale of deficiency.
 
Anything referring to complex carbs is usually from someone still using the obsolete idea that starches can only be digested by removing simple sugar units from the ends of the starch chains.

More recent research shows that most of the digestive enzymes can break the chains at any point, and the types of links between the simple sugar units are much more important in determining which enzymes they will respond to.

Cellulose has a type of links for which no animals with a backbone, and no people, produce an enzyme that can break these links.

A few animals, such as termites, rabbits, and cattle, maintain colonies of bacteria that produce such an enzyme, and therefore they can get nutrition from cellulose after the bacteria break the links.

Some foods have types of links for which the enzymes are slow to break the links. These include sweet potatoes, cooked dried beans, and pizza.
 
I think that the oral glucose test won't tell you anymore than your home testing is telling you - that your body isn't coping with carbs. A fasting insulin test would be more helpful but am not sure how you get one. You have done really well - and by going low carb straight away have made sure you are doing no further damage.
 
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