HOW I REVERSED MY TYPE 2 DIABETES THROUGH LIFESTYLE CHANGES – AND WHAT I WISH I’D KNOWN EARLIER

When Debra Scott, 60, was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes five years ago, she feared she’d suffer for the rest of her life in the same way her mother had. “I was absolutely devastated when the nurse told me,” she tells i from her home in Blackpool. “I saw my mum deteriorate because of diabetes. She lost her eyesight, couldn’t feel her hands, had all sorts of complications with the kidneys and liver, had high blood pressure and a stroke. She died at 75.”

Scott says her mother “didn’t really know how diabetes works and that lifestyle changes might have helped”. “She’d think – as do so many people – ‘Oh, I can have an apple turnover from the cake shop, as long as I take an extra few units of insulin. But her body was still having to struggle with all the sugar that it couldn’t handle.”

Following her diagnosis, the doctor told Scott that she needed to lose weight, and go on Metformin – the medication that helps the insulin the body produces to work better – as well as statins and blood pressure medication. Scott, plagued by memories of her mother’s reliance on pills, asked the doctor if she could go away for a couple of months and see whether a change in lifestyle might help lower her blood sugar levels first.

“I didn’t know anything about nutrition,” she says, “but I ended up on helpful forums, and what stood out to me was lots of people saying that it was changing what they ate that helped”. Scott wasn’t offered a blood glucose monitor by the doctor, so she bought one online, to see which food caused her blood sugar to spike dramatically.

“Encouraging testing would save the NHS millions but sadly monitors are only offered to people with type 1 diabetes, those with gestational diabetes and type 2s on certain medication. Without the monitor, it’s like driving a car without a speedometer.  If we have high blood pressure we are told to monitor, so it should be the same for type 2 diabetes. So I got my own, and I’m so glad I did.

“A jacket potato was spiking my blood sugar levels almost as high as a Krispy Kreme donught! I cut down carbs and started only eating twice a day as opposed to eating three meals and snacking in between.”

Scott also learnt about ultra-processed foods (UPFs) and began to avoid those where possible. She stopped buying supermarket items marketed as ‘low-fat’, knowing many of those were full of sugar. She swapped a burger in a bun for steak, pasta for cauliflower rice, and moussakas instead of lasagnas.

A few months later, Scott went back to the nurse. “She told me I’d come down to pre-diabetic blood sugar levels, and that she’d never seen this happen just through diet change and no medication. If I went to a doctor now they wouldn’t know I was diabetic because I’ve got normal blood sugar, normal cholesterol, normal weight.”

Last week, a landmark British trial confirmed that type 2 Diabetes is indeed reversible. Previously there had been anecdotal evidence, for example former Labour politician Tom Watson revealed in 2018 that – after losing seven stone in weight – he had reversed his diagnosis of type 2 diabetes and stopped taking medication (he cut out all junk food, processed food and refined sugar). But the new trial has shown this link conclusively.

It saw 298 patients stick to an 800-calorie-a-day ‘soups and shakes’ diet for three months. Those who kept the weight were free from symptoms five years later and no longer needed medication. The participants who were in diabetic remission had an average weight loss of about 9kg (1st 6lb) at the five-year point. The findings could help improve life expectancy and avoid potentially deadly complications for people across the UK. And hope is much needed: since 1996, the number of people diagnosed with the condition in the UK has risen from 1.4 million to 3.9 million, according to research from Diabetes.co.uk. The figure is estimated to rise to 5.3 million by 2025.

Type 2 Diabetes is different to type 1, which makes up about eight per cent of diabetics – type 1 is when the body’s immune system attacks cells that produce insulin. There is no way to avoid this type of diabetes and no lifestyle changes you can make to reverse it. But 90 per cent of diabetes is type 2, a condition where the insulin created by the pancreas can’t work properly, or there isn’t enough insulin in the first place, meaning that the blood sugar level in the body keeps rising.

Without intervention, type 2 diabetes can cause serious damage; life-shortening complications, notably blindness, infections, amputations, kidney failure and heart failure. It can be terrible for those living with it, and is disastrous for the NHS, costing the health service an estimated £10 billion a year, around 10 per cent of its entire budget. Almost one in 20 prescriptions written by GPs is for treatment relating to diabetes.

As a result of the new trial, the NHS is rolling out the “soup and shake” diet to tens of thousands of people. “This low-calorie formula diet approach is not designed to be followed in the long term,” says Dr Lucy Chambers, head of research communications at Diabetes UK, the charity which funded the recent study. “It’s for between 12 and 20 weeks, designed for fairly rapid weight loss. It’s designed to be nutritionally complete so to have all the vitamins and minerals people need for good health and that’s really important because people trying to lose weight really quickly on their own and just eating celery and carrots, may not going to get all the nutrients they need.

“This low calorie formula diet approach has the strongest evidence base for putting people with type 2 into remission. That’s not to say there aren’t other ways of losing weight.  Some people are proponents of the low carb approach, and Mediterranean diets can work too. We’re funding more research now to look at different dietary approaches to type 2 remission so that people are able to find the one that is right for them, one they can stick to, because losing weight and keeping the weight off is crucial for staying in remission, and we know it’s hard to do.” 

Dr Chambers tells i; “Until recently we didn’t know that weight loss through a change in diet can in some cases help some people with type 2 diabetes go into remission for a long time. When people lose body weight, they’re also shedding the harmful fat from their organs, including the organs that are involved in blood sugar control – the pancreas and the liver. For many people, losing that fat allows those organs to function normally again.”

For Liz Bennetts, 62, being diagnosed with type 2 diabetes in 2007 felt like a personal failure. “I used to drink pints of lager and drink shots,” she tells i from Penzance, Cornwall. “I ate fried food, and when my mum used to do the cooking, she’d use dripping.” After the nurse at her local GP advised that she lose weight to see if that could help the diabetes, she joined a Slimming World group. “It was the best thing I ever did,” she says, now weighing 69kg (10 stone) instead of 101kg (16 stone). I completely changed the way I ate. Now, if I occasionally have meat I’ll roast it instead of frying it, I’ve cut out rubbish, ultra-processed foods, and I’ve given up alcohol. I eat a lot more salad, too. I was a size 24 in trousers when I started and now at a size 14, my diabetic nurse says they could use me as a prime example of how to reverse through diet.”

The reality is, however, that losing weight and eating a different diet won’t work for everyone who has type 2 diabetes. Some people can do all the right things and still not go into remission. “Diet and food play a massive role in type two,” says Chambers, “and having a higher body weight is a significant risk factor for developing it, but also genetics plays a really strong role as well, as does age, and poverty, and many other factors. It’s not as simple as being overweight causes diabetes, it’s more complex than that.” In fact, about 15 percent of people with type 2 diabetes aren’t overweight, according to the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

Yet, while weight loss won’t be a solution for everyone, for the vast majority of people with diabetes, it’s beneficial, whether it gets them into remission or not. “Even if you don’t get your blood sugar levels into the non-diabetes remission range,” says Chambers, “we know that losing even a little excess weight can help with blood sugar control, blood pressure and lowering cholesterol.”

Dave Ormston, a 59-year-old working at a software robotics company, in Dudley, West Midlands, was diagnosed with type 2 last year after having a stroke in 2019. “My GP and nurse explained that I might be able to reverse my diabetes with a profound lifestyle change,” he says. “I was prescribed Metformin, but I also became pescatarian, avoided alcohol, refined carbs and sugar. I’ve lost 20 pounds (9kg) and I feel healthy.”

But, Ormston says, habits acquired over many years can be dreadfully hard to reverse. “I’d rather have a Balti and a naan than broccoli and I only manage this because if I get fat and lazy again I may die of another stroke.” Ormston’s soon due a medical review to see if he still needs diabetes medication.

In Blackpool, Scott feels so passionately about reversing diabetes through diet that she began writing a blog to share her experience. “I just want to tell the world, so that people don’t feel resigned to a lifelong condition where things get progressively worse. I just wish my mum had known what we know now- that life can get better.”

Diet after diagnosis: What do you do now?

The strongest evidence we now have suggests that diabetes is mainly put into remission by weight loss. If you live with obesity or are overweight, you are more likely to put your diabetes into remission if you lose a substantial amount of weight – around 15kg (or 2 stone 5lbs) – safely and as quickly as possible following your diagnosis.

“Any dietary changes need to be done in collaboration with your healthcare professionals” advises Dr Chambers, “because it could affect the medicine you’re on, or the dosage you need. Talk to your diabetes team to see what services are available, if not a type 2 remission service, then there may be other weight loss services available on the NHS.

Things are changing, the medical profession is getting on board with this. It’s also about people with type two advocating for themselves as well because for a long time type two was seen as a lifelong condition which gets worse, and there’s nothing to be done about it at all. We now know different”.

If you are interested in taking part in the NHS soups and shakes programme, speak to your GP. You must be aged 18 to 65 years and have been diagnosed with type 2 diabetes within the last six years. You can find more information about remission ondiabetes.org.uk or their helpline (0345 123 2399).

2023-05-01T07:04:30Z dg43tfdfdgfd