• Guest - w'd love to know what you think about the forum! Take the 2025 Survey »

Type 2 Reversing type 2

Recently I was declared to be in clinical remission by a Consultant, I had had two annual HbA1c results that were below 48 and for a while I was off all my Diabetic medication. with non diabetic readings.

While in this glorious state I found I was able to have forbidden goodies, and my bgl remained less than 7 mmol/l. I had double choc birthday cake to celebrate, and followed it with pecan croissants, and two jam donuts and my bgl did not skyrocket. I was waking with my fbg in the 5's everyday. I was surprised at being able to eat full meals with mashed potato or with pasta with apparent impunity.

Unfortunately I had to go into hospital to have major heart surgery, and this resulted in me having to rub out the 'In Remission' statement in my profile, and go back to being a simple T2D on orals again. So I have now reversed my reversal.

I liken it to driving a car out of a parking space. We can reverse back into the parking space, and that does not stop us from moving forward again, so reversal is not permanent in my opinion. A change of lifestyle is necessary to maintain a reversal status, but it is up to us to decide if we call that lifestyle a diet or a restriction, or simply a way of living. I happen to use an LC diet for my new lifestyle - it works for me, and provides a healthy nutrition base for me to live my life without feeling controlled. I am in control, yes, but it does not Control me.
 
Essentially all of us T2D had suffered varying degree of damage to our pancreas and insulin sensitivity, on top of normal aging. Some of us may not be able to recover to the point of normal glucose/insulin response, much less maintain it with a "normal" high carb lifestyle.

So have a realistic expectation of that remission/reversal outcome that is offered by the journey of a carb lite, insulin lite lifestyle gives us a much better chance of extending the medication and complication free outcome.
 
Although I have type 1, not type 2, I am considered amongst friends and family to be a "diabetes expert" so I find this an interesting conversation.
From reading these posts, it seems that "in remission" is the current description. I like the analogy with alcoholism - you are still an alcoholic even if you don't drink any alcohol.

With that in mind, I notice there are people with "I reversed my Type 2" in their profile although there is also an option for "Type 2 (in remission)" and wondered what your motivation is for this?

(Feel free not to answer, I am only asking to satisfy my own curiosity.)
 
I'm not sure about the alcoholism analogy. It is generally known that alcohol is a toxin and that high levels for long periods carries risks. This, I feel, cannot be said generally about Type 2 Diabetes as people can arrive at diagnosis through differing causes which though they may include diet are not soley caused by it. The definitive cause/s are not fully understood and a case in particular wrt this is women who develope GD that then go on to develope T2 later in life as opposed to those who have GD but do not develope T2. We can learn to manage Pre Diabetes and T2 through dietary changes but this cannot be said about never becoming Diabetic again.
 
My own reference to alcoholism was in the context of carbohydrate addiction, but it was probably a bad analogy. If I ate carbs now, I wouldn’t be immediately hooked again, I’d be sick. I do not believe that diabetes itself is like alcoholism in the sense that it’s always there.
 

I think that with all things Diabetes there are nuances. It's not a bad analogy just one that I feel does not go a long way to explain things. I feel the same way about using the analogy of a nut allergy to explain T2, it doesn't really fit for me. It's purely personal.
 

The Doctors call it remission, the press calls it Reversal. Results trickling in from the Newcastle Diet where a successful reversal can be claimed has shown that an incorrect maintenance lifestyle will lead to reversal of the reversal, and there have been reports on this forum of some experiencing this. I think the closest we have to a true reversal is bariatric surgery which is now being rolled out in the NHS as a cure. Then again it is only one form of bariatric surgery that is a cure, the others have not been so successful. The successful candidate has a name, but I do not remember it as I am myself not interested in it as being my solution or goal. I think it is the one that shortens the duodenum, and not the banding or bypass ones.
 
So was it your heart surgery that’s made you diabetic again?
 
Maybe our expectations around what we consider "normal" food is the problem. We name our ways of eating when on diets (low carb, high carb, vegetatian, keto, atkins..) and we name our "normal" cultural diets as well (Mediterranean, Asian, SAD...) but if we look truthfully at what actual nourishing food is for a human being Vs what processed, convenient or pleasurable "foods" we like to think are a normal part of what our diets should be, then we might realise that it's a mistake to want to "reverse" our illnesses so we can go back to eating as we did before. What we ate before made us all ill. Therefore by finding the right foods to nourish us, we bring our health back. If we want to go back to eating what made us ill, well, it's pretty obvious what the outcome is likely to be.
 

This is also my viewpoint. Most people believe that what everyone else eats is normal, when in fact history is already telling the story that it is very far from normal. Hence why we are here having this discussion in the first place.
 
Using the word reverse is damaging,the proper term should be remission.

I am the perfect example.I THOUGHT I had reversed my T2,and went back to old ways.Surprise,surprise,I wound up with even worse numbers than before.Being in remission I now 'get it'.

So,no,it doesnt get reversed,it only gets controlled and that is a lifetime commitment.Thats my experience with it.
 
Jessielouiseb said:
So was it your heart surgery that’s made you diabetic again?
Click to expand...
Indirectly, I believe. A side effect of the anaesthetic was my body went into meltdown and I had multiple organ failures, including the pancreas. I had to have insulin infusions for a few days before the effects of the anaesthetic wore off. I think this indicates some damage to my pancreas, and this has pushed me into metabolic disorder again.

On the positive side, my LC diet has resumed and is bringing my bgl down, so that with added Glic tabs I am currently running a daily average just below 7 mmol/l. but I am prone to liver dumps and spikes, so it is a work in progress still.
 
Last edited:
I consider it remission because cancer runs in the family: Some people are in remission, but you never know when it pops up again, so they're always vigilant. Same term applies for other illnesses that can go dormant, so to speak. I'm a-symptomatic now, but I always have to be vigilant too, so I do think "remission" is more apt than "reversed".
 
Very interesting thread. My medical notes say 'in remission ' and I am very happy with that as years and years of a so called 'normal diet ' has left my body quite badly damaged. So much so that there is no way I can go very much higher than 20g carbs and maintain 'in remission '.

It was a revelation to me when I discovered low carb and keto - I hadn't realised that food could be that good. So much nicer than yukky tasteless carby stuff. Luckily I noticed that my tablet had auto corrected yukky to yummy before I posted this.(naughty tablet).

So for me - I know that I can't go back to eating the sugary carby 'normal ' stuff and stay in remission - but that doesn't matter to me because I love my food now and just feel so well and full of energy.
 
@Cocosilk your comment about "normal" diet and using the Mediterranean diet as the common example, made me Google "diabetes by country". I found this interesting list ( https://www.indexmundi.com/facts/indicators/SH.STA.DIAB.ZS/rankings).

This part of the list interested me

If you were to ask me which countries I thought of having a Mediterranean diet, I would include France, Italy and Greece. They are all ranked in the same zone as the United Kingdom. Spain, Lebanon and Israel (I did not look at all countries around the Med) have a higher percentage of people with diabetes than these countries.
I realise this is only one statistic, it includes type 1 and type 2 diabetes and no other health conditions, it does not consider any other socio-economic situations and I have made the huge assumption that people living in a country on the Med eat a Mediterranean diet but it suggests this could be looked at in a bit more depth.
 
I always prefer the term ‘well controlled’ or ‘very well controlled’ as my GP describes me! Though here it isn’t an option for my avatar, so I chose Remission over Reversed. Remission as defined in the Oxford English Dictionary (sitting in my signature to remind me!) is a temporary state whereas to me Reversed sounds permanent. I know I will only stay in remission if I eat a way that results in my body staying healthy.
 
I was just reading this article which says in Australia people get "more than a third of their energy from discretionary foods" ie ultra processed (junk) foods.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.abc.net.au/article/11153774

I wonder what percentage of those from countries eating a Mediterranean diet really also consume ultra-processed type foods. I'm sure there are plenty available in all of those countries too, aren't there?
 
Another thought is who within those countries tends to get diabetes? In Australia it is more often the Aboriginal and Torres Straight Islanders, and also our immigrant populations from India, China and Pacific Islands.
So whatever they have evolved to eat was even further away from the processed rubbish we've all become accustomed to.

In France they have a large number of Arab immigrants who I bet are more prone to getting diabetes too. I think the Middle East has a pretty high number of diabetics.
 
Jim Lahey said:
However, I’m one of those who believes that if a clinical diagnosis of diabetes cannot be made, and you are not medicated, then you don’t currently have diabetes
Click to expand...
How do you personally define type 2 diabetes? I think that is probably the crux of the difference between your view and the more common one of controlled not gone.

I’ve been of the view once you have it you have it, but can control it to non clinical levels so long as you actively manage it. Ie you show symptoms or not depending on treatment (diet) but it’s always there. So I guess I choose the remission rather than reversed option.


Jim Lahey said:
there is no way any doctor who does not have access to my medical history could diagnose me with diabetes.
Click to expand...
sadly people aren’t always diagnosed with lots of stuff til they have overt symptoms, doesn’t mean there isn’t a problem silently lurking.

Sorry not picking on you Jim (well not meanly anyway) but yours seems to be the minority view and I’m interested how you arrived there.
 
HSSS said:
yours seems to be the minority view
Click to expand...
I'm in a similar position to Jim.. all the tests that I have had done would mark me as "normal" except for a slightly elevated insulin resistance test and in fact the doc who wrote up that test stated that in the absence of any other markers of T2 I shouldn't be worried about it. Does that mean I'll go back to eating badly.. hell no..!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Menu
Log in
Register
Cookies are required to use this site. You must accept them to continue using the site. Learn More.…