Weight Loss Can Reverse Diabetes – Study

Diabetes is one of the leading lifestyle diseases that is affecting millions of people worldwide. The number seems to be further increasing and is becoming a cause of concern.

Sedentary lifestyle, poor food habits and lack of exercises are a few of the major causes for diabetes, especially type-2 diabetes. Type 2 diabetes is generally caused when the body fails to break down sugars from the diet.

One of the worst part about diabetes is that it does not have a total cure. The only way out is to treat the symptoms which will prevent the condition from getting worse.

So, has diabetes got to do something with your body weight? Well, it seems yes. A new study has found that losing weight can reverse your diabetes.

During the study, which was conducted by researchers in the UK found that nearly half of people who were given a six-month diet plan had lost an average of 30 pounds went into remission and no longer had diabetes. None of the participants took any medications during the course of the study and they relied only on weight loss.

The study was recently published in the journal, Lancet.

About the study and result:

For the study, Dr. Roy Taylor, professor of medicine and metabolism at Newcastle University, and his colleagues had taken up 300 people with type -2 diabetes and assigned a part of them to weight management program and another group to their normal diabetes medications.

The people assigned to the diet group stopped any diabetes drugs they were taking on the same day they began the diet.

Those in the diet group followed three to five months of a strict low-calorie liquid formula diet averaging no more than 850 calories a day, followed by two to eight weeks of reintroducing food, along with nutritional education and cognitive behavioral therapy to help people stick with the new eating plan.

After a year, most of the people in the diet group lost about 22 pounds, compared to two pounds in the control group. Nearly a quarter of the people who managed their weight were able to lose 33 pounds or more, while none in the control group were able to lose that much. Most importantly, 46% of the people in the diet group went into remission with their diabetes, compared to just 4% in the control group.

Meanwhile, there are several other studies which asserts that diet and exercise alone can prevent people from progressing from pre-diabetes to diabetes, and in some cases it has been better than medications designed to control blood sugar.

The lead author of the study, Taylor stresses that the study only addressed people diagnosed relatively recently, within the past six years and that the effect may not apply to more long-term patients. That's because as the disease continues, he says, insulin-producing cells start to die off.

Taylor says he intends to follow up on the people in the study for another four years to see if they are able to maintain their weight, and, if they are, whether they continue to remain in remission.

(With Agency Inputs)