Can you reverse diabetes?

Saying diabetes is reversible is a controversial claim. Some medical experts say that once you have diabetes, you have it for life and can only control it. But others argue that you can reverse the condition—they might even use the word “cure.”

Take Vance, for instance. He is 31 years old and has diabetes. He switched to a low-fat vegan diet, lost 60lbs and a year later, with his doctor's approval, stopped taking diabetes medication.

Vance was just one success story from a study led by Neal Barnard, President of the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM) and an adjunct associate professor in the School of Medicine and Health Science at George Washington University.

Barnard says that “reversing” isn’t a medical term. But he says that people with type 2 diabetes can learn to manage their condition so well that they have no signs or symptoms and don’t require medication.

Whatever you call it, that's a goal worth striving for.

Eat your vegetables - Several people have made claims about reversing diabetes, and there are many books on the subject, such as Reversing Diabetes by alternative medicine practitioner Julian Whitaker, and Barnard's own book outlining the diet used in his study.

One of the most prominent advocates for the possibility of reversing diabetes is inventor and futurist Ray Kurzweil, who was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes in his mid-30s.

Kurzweil has been able to successfully manage his diabetes through diet and a regimen that includes more than 250 supplements a day, and close monitoring of more than 50 different measures of health.

Now in his late 50s, Kurzweil claims that his diet and regimen have essentially reversed his condition.

Barnard's approach is a bit more practical. In the study he conducted, people with type 2 diabetes were put on a low-fat vegan diet and were compared to a group on a traditional diabetes diet.

Those on the low-fat vegan diet had greater health improvements, including lower A1C levels—a key measure of blood sugar control—and lower cholesterol.

“On a low-fat vegan diet, narrowed arteries will reopen,” he says.

“There is no fixing kidney damage but it can make neuropathy go away.”

(Neuropathy is the damage that diabetes can cause to sensory nerves. It often affects hands and feet.)

Experts at the Mayo Clinic agree that a diet full of veggies can have some additional health benefits over a non-vegetarian diet.

Since vegetarian diets include generous amounts of fruits, vegetables, whole grains and legumes, they are high in fibre and lower in calories, which can lead to weight loss—a factor that can greatly improve type 2 diabetes in someone who is overweight or obese.

So is veggie the way to go? Barnard doesn’t want to call it a cure but says, “I’m not aware of that happening with any other diet.”

Exercise your options - Michael Riddell, an associate professor in the school of Kinesiology and Health Sciences at York University in Toronto, believes that diabetes can be controlled and even delayed with proper nutrition and exercise—and he’s done experiments to prove it.

Riddell and his colleagues monitored rats that were genetically programmed to develop diabetes by the time they were 10 weeks old. Some rats in the experiment swam for 20 minutes a day, five days a week.

“They didn’t develop diabetes,” he says. “That’s a pretty major finding.”

The exercise caused the rats to have stronger pancreases and muscles that maintained insulin sensitivity.

So while the jury is still out on whether or not type 2 diabetes can be reversed, it's clear that certain food choices and exercise can keep the condition from progressing or even send it into remission.

You don't have to call it a cure, but if you have diabetes, you probably want to call it an option worth discussing with your doctor.