The prevention or management of type 2 diabetes by following a calorie-restricted diet is not a new idea. There are now dozens of doctors' Youtube presentations on how to reverse T2D by simply cutting the carbs.
Now, research from China shows it could be possible for people with type 2 diabetes to stop treatment and achieve remission by following an intermittent fasting diet, according to a new report insideprecisionmedicine.com...
Report excerpts:
The researchers placed 72 individuals with type 2 diabetes on an intermittent fasting diet or control diet for three months in a 1:1 randomization. Some of the participants were taking diabetes medication or insulin at the start of the study. After a further three months follow-up, 17 of 36 participants in the intervention diet group had remission of their diabetes—defined as a stable glycated hemoglobin A1c (HbA1c) level of less than 48 mmol/mol (<6.5%) and no medication use—versus only one person in the control group. Others in the fasting group also achieved beneficial effects such as weight loss, medication lowering and blood glucose reduction.
To assess whether this effect was maintained, the participants were also tested at 12 months and 16 of the 17 participants who were in remission at three months had maintained a healthy HbA1c level.
Notably, this study challenges the view that dietary interventions can only have a positive effect early on in the progression of type 2 diabetes, as 65% of those who achieved remission had a diabetes duration of more than six years.
Intermittent fasting is not for everyone with type 2 diabetes, counsels a doctor in this article time.com/6188405/type-2-dia...“If you are taking medications that are aimed at reducing the amount of glucose in your blood, together with fasting these can cause potentially fatal hypoglycemia,” Horne says. “It’s not a minor safety risk.”
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I'm pleased to read that intermittent fasting has worked for you. Did you do this in conjunction with your GP or on your own initiative? Were you on any kind of medication beforehand? How long had you been diagnosed with T2D when you started your fasting regime?
A lot has been written on The China Study and I don't have time to digest Dr Campbell's book or videos. The wikipedia entry tells me that the early 1990s study is something entirely different from the research that is the subject of this post. Notably, Dr Campbell criticises the low carb diet, which many doctors now see as an essential route to drug-free reversal of type 2 diabetes, for example youtu.be/EG-dg07-t44 The current study is not that either.
The China Study - wikipedia synopsis:
"The China Study examines the link between the consumption of animal products (including dairy) and chronic illnesses such as coronary heart disease, diabetes, breast cancer, prostate cancer, and bowel cancer.[4] The book is "loosely based"[5] on the China–Cornell–Oxford Project, a 20-year study which looked at mortality rates from cancer and other chronic diseases from 1973 to 1975 in 65 counties in China, and correlated this data with 1983–84 dietary surveys and blood work from 100 people in each county.
The authors conclude that people who eat a predominantly whole-food, vegan diet—avoiding animal products as a source of nutrition, including beef, pork, poultry, fish, eggs, cheese, and milk, and reducing their intake of processed foods and refined carbohydrates—will escape, reduce, or reverse the development of numerous diseases. They write that "eating foods that contain any cholesterol above 0 mg is unhealthy."[6] The book recommends sunshine exposure or dietary supplements to maintain adequate levels of vitamin D, and supplements of vitamin B12 in case of complete avoidance of animal products.[7] It criticizes low-carb diets, such as the Atkins diet, which include restrictions on the percentage of calories derived from carbohydrates[8] The authors are critical of reductionist approaches to the study of nutrition, whereby certain nutrients are blamed for disease, as opposed to studying patterns of nutrition and the interactions between nutrients.[9]
Intermittent fasting coupled with a ketogenic diet is guaranteed to put type 2 diabetes into remission. It is not easy to maintain such a diet though. Therefore I think that the success rate depends from the participants will power and ability to follow the dietary guidelines very strictly.
I don't think that intermittent fasting is even required. A Keto or Carnivore diet alone will reverse T2 diabetes. Carbs and seed oils caused it. Only removing those things will cure it. I know several people who got off their meds within 3 months of going carnivore. It takes that long just to move the A1C needle.
I personally found it very easy to give up veggies and eat nothing but fatty, delicious red meat and eggs.
Thanks for sharing your experience, though you didn't say if you yourself had T2D and reversed it with your meat and egg diet. Were there no ill effects at all from switching to such a restricted, protein-rich diet? How long did you sustain it?
I would say just the opposite. I have felt amazing since I began eating this way. My allergies completely disappeared. Dogs used to cause an asthma reaction. Now I don't even sneeze when I'm around them. I used to suffer from Acid Reflux/GERD. That completely went away within weeks of changing my diet. All of my joint aches and pains completely disappeared. I gained strength and muscle. Lost fat.
I have much more energy. And most importantly, my lymphocyte counts have been fairly level for the last 15 months. They had climbed rather quickly from my initial diagnosis in Feb, 21 to July, 21 when I started eating a Keto diet. I switched from Keto to Carnivore 3 months after that.
I don't view it as restrictive at all. Eating steak every day seems gluttonous to me. I don't particularly like veggies. I ate them because "everybody knows they're good for you". I can't even imagine going back to a Standard American Diet (SAD, it truly is.).
Red meat has everything you need and in a bio-available form. I'd be dead from scurvy if meat didn't have Vitamin C, for example.
From what you say your diet obviously suits you. Long may you prosper on it.
Where you lose me is in implying that this formula must suit everyone, as in "Red meat has everything you need..." I think a lot of diet gurus make the same mistake. We evolved to be omnivores but we're all different. One man's meat...
What is your intermittent fasting routine? It used to be (way back when) that people didn’t eat all day long (it wasn’t called anything, or perhaps three squares a day) but is now considered intermittent fasting.
I don't actually fast myself. My wife eats only breakfast and lunch, then skips dinner, so she eats nothing for 16 hours plus each day. This is one kind of intermittent fasting. She will break that rule if we have dinner guests, typically at the weekend. For her it's about weight control and feeling better. Sometimes I will skip dinner, but for me it's not a routine.
Another kind of intermittent fasting is the so-called 5/2 regime. You eat normally on 5 days of the week and eat nothing on the other 2 days. In the UK this has been popularised by the broadcaster Dr Michael Mosley thefastdiet.co.uk/
CORRECTION: Mosley's diet plan permits, on the two fasting days, calorie intake up to 500 calories for women and 600 calories for men.
You may be thinking of more traditional fastings, sometimes done in groups in residential settings, lasting a week or more. I like to imagine participants smuggling in a survival bag containing Mars bars etc.
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