Posts Tagged ‘diabetes’
Reversing Type 2 Diabetes: From FIFO to LIFO paths
Mechanisms that are First-In/First-Out (FIFO) (path independent) do not like variability and volatility (i.e., Jensen’s Inequality/Antifragility) as much as ones that are Last-In/First-Out (LIFO) (hence path dependent).
Take diabetes.
We are discovering that diabetes is not (as we thought) the result of being overweight, rather the effect of absence of variation, not losing weight, not having periods of starvation (that among other things, clean up the fat deposit in the pan…creas that is LIFO).
So someone overweight who loses weight can be much better-off than the same person a bit thinner at stable weight.
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There is plenty of research in diabetes hinting at this from many sides but nobody tried to put a systematic mathematical apparatus on it.
Though the math is not trivial (because of path dependence), I was able to play with it with Monte Carlo analyses.
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Note that the Russians have known that for over a century.
Reversing Type 2 Diabetes
Our work has shown that type 2 diabetes is not inevitably progressive and life-long.
We have demonstrated that in people who have had type 2 diabetes for 4 years or less, major weight loss returns insulin secretion to normal.
It has been possible to work out the basic mechanisms which lead to type 2 diabetes.
Too much fat within liver and pancreas prevents normal insulin action and prevents normal insulin secretion. Both defects are reversible by substantial weight loss.
A crucial point is that individuals have different levels of tolerance of fat within liver and pancreas.
Only when a person has more fat than they can cope with does type 2 diabetes develop.
In other words, once a person crosses their personal fat threshold, type 2 diabetes develops. Once they successfully lose weight and go below their personal fat threshold, diabetes will disappear.
Some people can tolerate a BMI of 40 or more without getting diabetes.
Others cannot tolerate a BMI of 22 without diabetes appearing, as their bodies are set to function normally at a BMI of, say 19.
This is especially so in people of South Asian ethnicity.
Information for people with diabetes
- Download the information leaflet: Reversing Type 2 Diabetes (PDF: 286KB)
- Get sample vegetable recipes and meal plans from the Reversing Diabetes Low Calorie Diet Programme (PDF: 375KB) devised by Miss Karen Heron, Dietician, Newcastle Diabetes Centre. More information on low calorie diets is available from the Diabetes UK website.
- The British Heart Foundation provide advice on weight loss.
- Read Richard Doughty’s personal story Type 2 diabetes and the diet that cured me on the Guardian website, including a video interview of another personal story and an update from Richard, I reversed my diabetes in just 11 days, on the Mail Online.
Information for your doctor
It is important that people with diabetes discuss their management with their own doctor. It will take years for this new knowledge to become incorporated into textbooks and guidelines, so your doctor may be wary of information from the internet.
Newcastle University researchers have written some notes for you to take to your doctor. Download our information sheet for doctors on the practical management of type 2 diabetes in respect of reversal (PDF: 220KB).
Adonis Diaries 