What if someone had diabetes but reversed it without knowing they even had diabetes?

Jim Lahey said:

If ketogenic/paleo eating continues to gain traction among the masses, then I can very much imagine a situation arising where many with diabetes have fixed their malfunction without ever knowing they had it. As it stands right now though, nearly everyone who is attempting to lose weight is probably fuelling their exercise with pasta and making everything worse.

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Made that mistake myself, wondered why my weight never went down

Caeseji said:

Made that mistake myself, wondered why my weight never went down

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There are plenty of us on this forum who have followed that trail....

Mollyc1995 said:

this is something I’ve been really thinking about...even if it may sound stupid to some....I didn’t have symptoms of diabetes until my blood test stated my blood sugars was high.....

So let’s say for example there’s a person out there who is diabetic but they don’t know it, let’s say they are overweight and decide to lose weight and achieve a successful weightloss and are in healthy range.....let’s say it’s taken this person 9 months to achieve this and they then go to the doctor for a check up and have a blood test...most likely this persons blood is in a healthy range due to all the weightloss and exercise....doctors give the person all clear bill of health.....the doctor Wouldn’t have know his patient was diabetic....so what happens to the person with diabetes who reversed it with out even knowing he/she was diabetic to begin with?

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@Molly1995,unfortunately many medical conditions do go unnoticed, but I like your field of thought on the subject, really interesting

I think that quite a few people, influenced by Banting and Atkins, had undiscovered type two diabetes - possibly for long periods. I am sure that my difficulties with glucose began way back.
Over the decades I have been eating a low carb diet I have been unable to find any other way to lose weight.
I started in my early 20s - I even was involved on the fringes of the Cambridge diet and tried it out when the firm I worked for was asked to do trial mixes and packaging samples for Dr Howard in the early 1970s.
Over the years I have been told by doctors nurses and dieticians that low carb is bad.
I had a perfect first pregnancy eating low carb foods - though the baby was large and was 9lb 3 oz when born - but urine tests showed no sugar - I have never had a urine test which was not negative for glucose.
The second pregnancy was dreadful as I was harassed and threatened due to my wish to eat low carb - I knew that was what I needed - I got pre eclampsia, and decided to eat low carb and lie to the doctor. On the Thursday I was being threatened with being put in hospital and 'fed properly', but there was no place available - on low carb I was better by the following Monday and the doctor was smirking about me being sensible at last and following instructions.
I think that - thirty years later, the constant nattering to eat grains finally got me diagnosed with diabetes due to my thyroxine test being miss requested and I must have been eating high carb foods for well over a year by then.

Mollyc1995 said:

this is something I’ve been really thinking about...even if it may sound stupid to some....I didn’t have symptoms of diabetes until my blood test stated my blood sugars was high.....

So let’s say for example there’s a person out there who is diabetic but they don’t know it, let’s say they are overweight and decide to lose weight and achieve a successful weightloss and are in healthy range.....let’s say it’s taken this person 9 months to achieve this and they then go to the doctor for a check up and have a blood test...most likely this persons blood is in a healthy range due to all the weightloss and exercise....doctors give the person all clear bill of health.....the doctor Wouldn’t have know his patient was diabetic....so what happens to the person with diabetes who reversed it with out even knowing he/she was diabetic to begin with?

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well we´ll never know I guess then...

but it might happen if a person for instance looses half of their weight when being obese and changes lifestyle to keep weight off .. that would be possible wouldn´t it ?

Jim Lahey said:

In reality, I think that although I’m sure this does happen, it is most likely vanishingly rare. There aren’t currently a great many people who would think that cutting out the bird seed and replacing it with demonic saturated fat is a good plan for improving their health.

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think jim, has this one, nailed.

could it happen, well i suppose anything CAN happen.

but from what ive seen and read on here, many before DX engaged in exercises n diets,
and nearly all, stopped for some reason..that reason is probably tied up in they WERE a diet..with a short-ish term goal.

For me, and pretty sure for many on here, this isn't a diet, as such.. but a way of eating, essentially a way of life,
with dangers if we stray too far, that keep us focused on a daily and long term basis.

That's not to say some may have come to the conclusion (thinking yoga types rather then gym types)
that the body is a temple type thing and gone on to eat better.

Just think many would have THOUGHT eating better foods, WAS what we all thought was healthy before the Big D Bombshell landed in our laps.:***:

but some may of had due diligence and trod a different path similar to ours, ..just not too many, i suspect.
as Jim points out..the brain washing was pretty thorough

That does make the assumption that being fat causes diabetes - I don't think that has ever been proven - it is certainly the case that a person can be overweight and not diabetic.
When I first started to have problems with weight gain and lack of energy etc. I had a 24 inch waist and was an exceedingly muscular and athletic 147lb. I could swing across the suspended ladder in the local park Tarzan style - which is not something many people can do once past their teenage years, certainly not when of the female persuasion. I'd had tracheitis and had either six or seven lots of antibiotics in a two month period - the doctor was calling twice a day for much of that time - I was seriously ill and only the prevalence of a vomiting bug at the local hospital, which would probably have made an end of me kept him from calling an ambulance. I was never really right after that.

Jim Lahey said:

Then in theory they would go undiagnosed. Neither the patient or the doctor would ever know that diabetes had been in place. All else being equal, they may never find out. If a tree falls in a forest but there’s no one there to hear it fall, does it make a sound?

In reality, I think that although I’m sure this does happen, it is most likely vanishingly rare. There aren’t currently a great many people who would think that cutting out the bird seed and replacing it with demonic saturated fat is a good plan for improving their health.

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I’m not so sure it’s so rare. I’m on a few low carb/keto groups and the majority are doing it for weight loss rather than diabetes. In reality I bet a fair few are diabetic but haven’t been checked for it. They go low carb for other reasons and “accidentally” and unknown to them put their diabetes into remission in the process of achieving their primary goal of weight loss. In here we achieve remission and “accidentally “ lose the weight. Different goals but same process and outcomes.

Mollyc1995 said:

this is something I’ve been really thinking about...even if it may sound stupid to some....I didn’t have symptoms of diabetes until my blood test stated my blood sugars was high.....

So let’s say for example there’s a person out there who is diabetic but they don’t know it, let’s say they are overweight and decide to lose weight and achieve a successful weightloss and are in healthy range.....let’s say it’s taken this person 9 months to achieve this and they then go to the doctor for a check up and have a blood test...most likely this persons blood is in a healthy range due to all the weightloss and exercise....doctors give the person all clear bill of health.....the doctor Wouldn’t have know his patient was diabetic....so what happens to the person with diabetes who reversed it with out even knowing he/she was diabetic to begin with?

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Irrespective of the replies thus far, that was a VERY VERY good question

In answer to the question what happens to them - Those undiagnosed, currently in remission, persons are at the disadvantage of not having their regular checks -feet, eyes, kidneys etc as well as probably being at a higher risked of returning to an active diabetic state. they don’t know to keep limiting the carbs even if they manage to maintain the weight loss, which is unlikely as if they reintroduce the carbs then the weight will come back with the diabetes giving them a second ‘chance’ to get diagnosed in all likelihood

So let’s say for example there’s a person out there who is diabetic but they don’t know it, let’s say they are overweight and decide to lose weight and achieve a successful weightloss and are in healthy range.....let’s say it’s taken this person 9 months to achieve this and they then go to the doctor for a check up and have a blood test...most likely this persons blood is in a healthy range due to all the weightloss and exercise....doctors give the person all clear bill of health.....the doctor Wouldn’t have know his patient was diabetic....so what happens to the person with diabetes who reversed it with out even knowing he/she was diabetic to begin with?

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@Mollyc1995

I have never been diagnosed as diabetic. But had an HbA1c reading in 2014 of 49. Clearly in the diabetic range. The day before and also the 3 months before that “score”, I am fairly certain, the chances are high, that I would have a similar reading. If that had been the case I would have been diagnosed as diabetic. But that wasn’t the case and therefore had diabetes without being diagnosed as such. I then went on an Eatwell diet and reduced my next reading and subsequent readings to a figure inside the prediabetic range. So I “dodged” the diabetic diagnosis once again.

Did I have it? I surely did. Was I diagnosed as such. No. Did I know I had it? Not at the time. But I do now.

The thing is that we are diagnosed with HbA1c results. Prolonged higher bg levels are one of the last symptoms to manifest. Much, much earlier than that are hyperinsulinaemia and Insulin Resistance and here in the UK we are just not tested for those on the NHS. There are times when a lower measure of IR is quite normal e.g pregnancy and it has been shown (in data collected by Joseph Kraft which Catherine Croft is working with) that some people can show a measure of IR but do not go on to develope Pre Diabetes/Type 2 Diabetes. This begs the question of genetic predisposition or epigenetic factors. My take on this is that even if one has reversed their IR Diabetes one remains to a certain degree Insulin Resistant.