Reversing T2 Diabetes Using Really Low Calorie Diets | World Diabetes Day 2017

14.11.2017 World Diabetes Day 2017

November (2017) is World Diabetes Month and the theme is Women & Diabetes.
I was invited to join this great campaign by Krishana Sankar, who has been doing awesome work all over her social media (IG and Twitter) throughout this month. Over social media you will be seeing a blue circle which is a symbol of the IDF WDD campaign - so look out for it and don't forget to share! Also be sure to check out my Instagram where I will be sharing diabetes facts from the IDF and Twitter where I will be sharing everyone's updates on WDD.

On top of a healthy diet, it's recommended that on average, an adult should fit in 150 minutes of exercise a week. The reason behind #150mins is based on studies that have shown to maintain healthy lifestyles, adults should be physically active for at least 150 mins per week. This is related to diabetes since people with pre-diabetes and early-onset type 2 diabetes can possibly reverse the disease through a healthy diet and exercise.

A new piece of research by scientists at Yale University have found yet, even more, research which proves diet is the key to reversing type 2 diabetes because a "very low-calorie diet can rapidly reverse type 2 diabetes in animal models". IF the animal model can be translated to humans this research will be able to provide potential new drug targets for treating this common chronic disease, said the researchers.

The researchers restricted the diet of type-2-diabetic-mice, in the lab, to just one-quarter of their normal intake and they measured the effects on the liver using PINTA. PINTA is a novel stable (naturally occurring) isotope approach, that the researchers made which helped them track and calculate a number of metabolic processes that contribute to the increased glucose production and insulin resistance by the liver. Both factors that can control blood-sugar concentrations. 

They found that a very-low-calorific-diet works to lower blood-glucose-concentrations in 3 ways:
1) decreasing the conversion of lactate and amino acids into glucose; 
2) decreasing the rate of liver glycogen conversion to glucose; and 
3) decreasing fat content, which in turn improves the liver's response to insulin.
In just 3 days, the researchers started to see these effects take place. 

"Using this approach to comprehensively interrogate liver carbohydrate and fat metabolism, we showed that it is a combination of three mechanisms that is responsible for the rapid reversal of hyperglycemia following a very low-calorie diet," said senior author Gerald I. Shulman, M.D., the George R. Cowgill Professor of Medicine and Cellular and Molecular Physiology and an investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

"These results, if confirmed in humans, will provide us with novel drug targets to more effectively treat patients with type 2 diabetes," Shulman said.

This is solidifying the fact that a healthy diet is needed to prevent type 2 diabetes and even reverse it if needs be. Not everyone can fit in #150mins of exercise or lead a healthy lifestyle, restricted by the conditions that they live in and their level of education, this is why "The World Diabetes Day 2017 campaign will promote the importance of affordable and equitable access for all women at risk for or living with diabetes to the essential diabetes medicines and technologies, self-management education and information they require to achieve optimal diabetes outcomes and strengthen their capacity to prevent type 2 diabetes."