How To Heal Diabetes

Diabetes affects millions of Americans and creates a huge burden on the healthcare system. People with diabetes are prone to developing a variety of other medical conditions such as kidney failure, neuropathy, heart attack, stroke, infections, and blindness, and they are often on a number of medications which can be very expensive. So if there was a way to heal diabetes, this could mean millions of dollars and lives saved.

There Is Evidence Type 2 Diabetes Can Be Healed

How to heal diabetes is a topic of great interest in the medical community and the good news is that for people who have type 2 diabetes, and especially for those who are newly diagnosed or pre-diabetic, there is scientific evidence that the condition can actually be reversed.

Unfortunately, there is no way to heal type 1 diabetes because it is an autoimmune disease which destroys the beta cells of the pancreas. Once the beta cells are damaged, insulin can no longer be produced by the body and must be given exogenously, meaning from outside the body. If science can discover how to restore the beta cells of the pancreas, this might be how to heal diabetes for people who have type 1.

But in type 2 diabetics, there is hope for an actual cure for diabetes. Although most physicians focus on managing diabetes blood sugar levels, there are ways to reverse the condition instead.

A Very Low Calorie Diet and A Ketogenic Diet May Reverse Diabetes

Much diabetes research has been conducted and it has been found that if a type 2 diabetic is put on a very low calorie diet, consuming approximately 600 calories per day, after 8 weeks, the condition may be healed. How to heal diabetes has to do with losing weight, and decreasing the fat surrounding the liver and pancreas. The fat surrounding these vital organs stresses them but with the rapid weight loss possible on very low calorie diets, this adipose shrinks and the organs are able to function properly, leading to appropriate insulin synthesis in the pancreas, and glucose production in the liver.

There has also been some research indicating that a special type of diet called a ketogenic diet may also work to heal diabetes. The ketogenic diet was developed in the 1920's as a way to manage epilepsy prior to the advent of anti-convulsant medications.

The ketogenic diet is the basis for the Atkin's diet which was recently very popular. On ketogenic diet up to 60% of a person's calories come from fat and the majority of the rest come from proteins. Carbohydrates are very limited in this diet. Eating this way forces the body to go into a ketosis, using fat as an energy source since carbohydrates are not available. The brain can only function on two things: glucose or ketone bodies. When glucose becomes unavailable as happens with the ketogenic diet, the body must generate ketone bodies. It does this by metabolizing fat. Of course carbohydrates are what cause spikes in blood sugar and so this diet not only helps diabetics to lose weight, but it also helps to prevent excess sugar in the blood, all of which has lead to the reversal of type 2 diabetes in a few cases.

The resources necessary for diabetes management such as glucometers, test strips, lancets, oral medications, injectable medications, syringes, office visits, laboratory testing, and preventative care are enormous. But science has found at least preliminary evidence of how to heal diabetes. A very low calorie diet or ketogenic diet may lead to a reversal of the disease in people who are in its beginning stages.