Is the damage irriversible?

tim2000s

Expert
Retired Moderator
Messages
8,934
Type of diabetes
Type 1
Treatment type
Other
I'm not an expert but believe this belief is more Type-1 (hereditary) than Type-2 (environmental) - but as we age everything gets worse ;-)

As I understand it with conventional therapy is to maintain an elevated blood glucose to minimize the chance of coma from hypos. Current RAAs are pretty good at this because they linger so long in the body. However the 'elephant in the room' is elevated BSugar increases insulin resistance and leads to neuropathy. Kind of a pay now or later catch-22.

GLP-1s are, IMHO, a very bad idea in they they stimulate the already compromised pancreas and data continues to arise pointing to pancreatitis.

In a nutshell mimicking the body's normal insulin response is perhaps our best chance at slowing, or even reversing the progression.
Sadly your initial assumption isn't quite right. The evidence is that if there is T2 in the parents there is around a 90% chance of it appearing as a hereditary condition in the children. For T1 it is somewhere between 40% and 70%.

The difference is that we can identify around 50% of the genetic markers for T1 and only 10% or so for T2.