Can improved diet, stress reduction, and/or exercise heal beta cells? If “resting” them is important, eating fewer carbohydrates should give them a chance to recover.
Another way to take pressure off beta cells is by lowering insulin resistance. According to Charles Burant, MD,
All you have to do is [increase] your insulin sensitivity just a small amount…and you can remarkably decrease the amount of insulin secretion that you need to maintain normal blood glucose levels. So what we need to do is get…[people’s] insulin sensitivity improved so that their beta cells don’t have to work so hard.
The herbal medicine site Green Med Info lists black cumin seeds, vitamin D, berberine, bitter melon, curcumin, chard extract, and more as helping beta cells grow and heal, although mostly in rodent studies.
To me, it seems keeping glucose down is the key to regenerating beta cells. But the longer they’ve been damaged, the longer they’ll take to come back. “Longer” could stretch into “never” in the worst cases.
But most people can do it eventually. The pancreas is only one organ involved in diabetes, though.