Health
Low calorie diet may help reverse type 2 diabetes
A US study released Thursday revealed how a very low-calorie diet can rapidly reverse type 2 diabetes in rats. (Photo by Mark Bonica/Flickr, CC BY 2.0)
WASHINGTON — A US study released Thursday revealed how a very low-calorie diet can rapidly reverse type 2 diabetes in rats.
If confirmed in people, the insight provides potential new drug targets for treating this common chronic disease, said the researchers, according to the study published in the journal Cell Metabolism.
In the study, a team led by the Yale University researchers showed three days of a very-low-calorie diet (VLCD), consisting of one-quarter the normal intake, lowered blood glucose and insulin concentrations in a rat model of type 2 diabetes without altering body weight.
A track of the liver metabolic processes showed that it is due to a reduction in the conversion of lactate and amino acids into glucose and a reduction in the rate of liver glycogen conversion to glucose.
Decreasing fat content, which in turn improves the liver’s response to insulin, also contributed to the VLCD’s positive effects.
“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,” senior author Gerald Shulman, professor of the Yale University and an investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.
The next step is to confirm whether the findings can be replicated in type 2 diabetic patients undergoing either bariatric surgery or consuming very low-calorie diets, the researchers said.
Previous reports indicated that type 2 diabetes goes into remission in many patients who undergo bariatric weight-loss surgery, which significantly restricts caloric intake prior to clinically significant weight loss.
Colleen
November 11, 2017 at 6:57 AM
Good low diet. I was diagnosed with type 2 Diabetes and put on Metformin on June 26th, 2016. I started the ADA diet and followed it 100% for a few weeks and could not get my blood sugar to go below 140. Finally i began to panic and called my doctor, he told me to get used to it. He said I would be on metformin my whole life and eventually insulin. At that point i knew something wasn’t right and began to do a lot of research. Then I found Lisa’s diabetes story (google ” Lisa amazing diabetes ” ) I read that article from end to end because everything the writer was saying made absolute sense. I started the diet that day and the next morning my blood sugar was down to 100 and now i have a fasting blood sugar between Mid 70’s and the 80’s. My doctor took me off the metformin after just three week of being on this lifestyle change. I have lost over 30 pounds and 6+ inches around my waist in a month. The truth is we can get off the drugs and help myself by trying natural methods