[ErikAugust]

Can’t Type 2 diabetes be reversed with a change in diet? That’s at least possible. I’d also think someone who avoids sugar as an adult would be at a far lower risk. It might be good to start avoiding sugar at any time regardless of past habits.

[guerby]

Yes change in diet and going to a lower carbohydrate diet does work on some type 2 people according to:

https://nutrition.bmj.com/content/early/2023/01/02/bmjnph-20...

"What predicts drug-free type 2 diabetes remission? Insights from an 8-year general practice service evaluation of a lower carbohydrate diet with weight loss "

"Methods Advice on a lower carbohydrate diet and weight loss was offered routinely to people with T2D between 2013 and 2021, in a suburban practice with 9800 patients. (...)"

"Results (...) Remission of diabetes was achieved in 77% with T2D duration less than 1 year, falling to 20% for duration greater than 15 years. Overall, remission was achieved in 51% of the cohort. (...)"

Note: most read paper in BMJ history according to https://bmj.altmetric.com/details/140757393

[tzs]

Anyone know what they mean by a lower carbohydrate diet? Maybe I just missed it but I couldn't find any details on that in the paper.

Americans tend to take things to extreme, so if you tell an American diabetic that a low carb diet might put them in remission there is a good chance they will take that to mean no carbs or very low carbs that is a lot of work to follow. Most won't be able to stick to it.

My personal anecdote is that my T2D went into remission when I changed my diet so that less than 40% of my calories came from carbs. I didn't actually try to lower the amount of carbs, just what percent of calories came from carbs.

If calories stayed the same that would also lower the amount, but I didn't actually try to keep calories the same. For example if I wanted a sandwich that would have been 50% calories from carbs they way I would have ordered it before, I would order it with double meat or with regular mayo instead of light mayo. Those changes would increase the calories without changing the amount of carbs, which would lower the percentage of calories from carbs.

It turned out with the percentage of carbs lowered the food seemed to satisfy me more, and so I ended up naturally snacking less or eating smaller portions. The result of that was that I did end up reducing calories and so my carb amount, not just my carb percentage, did go down.

That was 9 years and I've had no trouble keeping to the 40% of calories from carbs goal ever since.

BTW, the reason I picked 40% is that it is trivial to calculate from the information on the nutrition label. Take the calories on the nutrition label and multiply by 1/10 g carb/calorie and that is the number of grams of carbs that would result in 40% of the calories coming from carbs.

For example a couple days ago I had a sausage/egg/cheese/english muffin breakfast sandwich that was 380 calories, 24 g carbs, and a bowl of cereal that (with milk) was 350 calories, 51 g of carb.

So for that breakfast sandwich the 40% point would be 38 g of carbs. It only had 24 g so was under by 14 g. The milk and cereal at 51 g was over its 35 g 40% point by 16 g. That means overall my breakfast was over the 40% point by 2 g. It's easy to keep a running total throughout the day of how many grams of carbs I'm over or under and make adjustments on later meals if I need to bring it down a bit.

20% calories from carbs would be almost as easy if it turns out 40% is too high to work for someone. Just divide calories by 20 instead of 10, or divide by 10 and then divide by 2.

[mfer]

If there is no permanent damage to your body, then Type 2 can be reversed. I've known Type 2 diabetics who no longer have it because of diet change.