It sounds incredible that type 2 diabetes can be reversed with exercise and a healthy diet.
While certain lifestyle changes are key to managing diabetes, reversing a patient’s disease to a cured state is another issue, depending on how long the patient has had the disease, the severity of the disease, and genetics.
Making changes
Ann Albright, MD, PhD, a dietitian and director of translational medicine for diabetes at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said, “When patients stop taking medications and then follow a specific way of living to manage their disease, it’s called ‘reversal.'”
Losing excess weight and maintaining a normal weight can help patients better control their blood sugar.
For some patients, maintaining a healthier weight can mean taking less medication or, in rare cases, stopping it.
Losing 5 to 10 percent of body weight and exercising 150 minutes a week can help slow or stop the progression of type 2 diabetes in patients. “If the patient needs to stay seated (inactive) most of the time, then 5 to 10 minutes of exercise is good,” Ann said, “walking to get the mail. Do something that requires walking and keep in mind that you’re going to do 30 minutes of exercise most days of the week.”
Validation
In one study, people with type 2 diabetes exercised 175 minutes a week, limited their caloric intake to 1200 to 1800 kilocalories a day, and provided weekly counseling and education services about lifestyle changes.
Within a year, about 10% of patients stopped taking their diabetes medications or had blood glucose levels below the diabetic range and were classified as prediabetic.
The above treatment options work well for those who have successfully lost weight, have milder disease, or are newly diagnosed with diabetes. Fifteen to 20 percent of them were able to stop taking their diabetes medications.
Please don’t beat yourself up
Anne says it’s not your fault if you change your diet and exercise regularly and your diabetes doesn’t improve.
Ann said, “When lifestyle changes are just made, patients are more likely to be influenced by personal preferences and not follow the changed regimen, resulting in no improvement.”
Patients’ weight and lifestyle are not the only factors that affect their condition; their genes also have an impact on type 2 diabetes, so thin people can develop type 2 diabetes.
However, a person’s weight and lifestyle can be changed through their own efforts, and both are important components of good health.
Goal setting
What are your goals in life: To be physically healthy first. For some patients, diabetes can be controlled by diet and exercise changes alone. For others, a combination of medication and healthy living will keep them in top shape.
“If lifestyle changes alone can reverse (or change) diabetes, then ask the patient to stick with it. If medication needs to be continued, ask patients to treat their condition accordingly,” Ann said, “and patients need to make the most of treatments that can control their blood sugar, blood pressure and cholesterol.”