Can you cure Type 2 Diabetes?

I can imagine when I speak about "Curing Diabetes" you might raise your eyebrows.

You might even believe the idea "impossible."

Realistically, for most Pre-diabetics and Type 2 Diabetics (T2DM), this can actually occur!

I rarely use the term "Cure" but prefer to use the term Remission.

I like the term remission because it implies one has taken action to change the course of T2DM by eliminating the features that define it. (Like high insulin, high blood sugar, high triglycerides, obesity, etc.) 

That said, remission also suggests the need to monitor for recurrence. Additionally, remission promotes the idea one must maintain action or changes that led to the improved condition.

The Killing Diabetes program provides steps necessary to either prevent the development of T2DM or reverse the condition altogether. My clinical experience makes me believe this possibility exists for the vast majority of those in this boat.

Why Your Doctor May Disagree?

As a medical doctor, my training taught me to believe T2DM manifests because of genetic factors that afflict patients. This mindset implies that our genetics dictate our destiny and we must manage the condition, rather than reverse or cure it. Early in my career, I tested this hypothesis by using the tools taught to me by my traditional training.

In the first few years of practice, I treated Diabetics with low-fat diets and complicated medication regimens. I followed guidelines for cholesterol and blood sugar monitoring. I also carefully instructed patients to exercise and avoid fats in their diet. Because of the high prevalence in the population I served, I naively hoped these methods could stem the tide and avoid the ravages of this inevitable condition.

Guess what happened?

Nothing!

4-5 years into my career working in a heavy population of T2DM, I found my tools didn't work. 

Often I speculated my patients were non-compliant or lazy. 

After all, when presented with the proper treatment, why didn't they get better?

Through the years I ran across various patients displaying a burning desire to follow my instructions. Their diligence made me doubt my own bias about laziness or non-compliance. These patients in fact followed my instructions, took the medications, and still developed the slow progressive findings characteristics of unchecked T2DM.

About this time I began exploring other treatment possibilities. My friend and colleague Dr. John Sullivan introduced me to nutritional concepts I had not previously considered. Dr. Sullivan invited me to lectures by inspiring healers like Dr. Stuart White, here I was introduced to exciting nutritional concepts and alternative theories to my previous understanding of diseases like Type 2 Diabetes and autoimmune disorders.

My eyes opened to a world of possibilities for nutritional cures. I began to see gaps, biases, and fallacies of the assumptions my paradigm of medical education promoted regarding T2DM. As time passed I swam in these new concepts and studied ways to integrate them into my traditional practice.

Slowly.. slowly... I began practicing and utilizing some of the new concepts learned from Dr. Sullivan, Dr. White, and organizations like The Weston Price Foundation. I also began to understand how our current food pyramid and food supplies do not promote health but instead trigger many of the conditions we call diseases.

My diligent patients began using this knowledge and the magic happened. I began to see startling reductions in blood sugars. Previously obese patents, armed with different dietary recommendations began shedding weight with ease. Now my biggest challenge centered on decreasing medications and avoiding side effects from the medications they no longer needed.

At the time, this felt like heresy.

Given the 2015-2020 Health.gov recommendations from the United States government's Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, many of the recommendations I have seen work with T2DM still do not fit with these guidelines.

Plight of Physicians

You must understand, traditional doctors (MD/DO) train in a very regimented environment. Culturally we are a conservative lot and tend to follow the guidelines we learned. Change comes slowly in medicine. I think this underlies the reason it has taken decades to begin shaking loose some of the fast held beliefs about diabetes, the fat-heart disease hypothesis and other traditional concepts surrounding the metabolic disease.

Additionally, the business of medicine pushes us to press more and more people through the system to keep pace with rising costs, lower reimbursements and dictated insurance guidelines.

In addition, we now have a heavily structured, corporate, bureaucracy dictating how doctors practice medicine. Insurance companies and government payers now decide how your doctor delivers care and what constitutes quality information. 

Yes, they practice medicine!  

Many of these organizations grade physician's based on their compliance with specific guidelines like whether or not the patient takes an aspirin or cholesterol drug. In essence, doctors receive bad grades, lower pay, or exclusion from insurance contracts if they do not meet insurance guidelines for this prescribed care.

As a physician, regardless of whether you disagree with outdated medical research, venture from the herd and your practice may die of starvation.

But that isn't the only reason for conflicting ideas about T2DM.

Big Pharma Influence

The next layer of resistance to proper advice for T2DM stems from the pharmaceutical industry. We now have massive piles of research bought and paid for by companies selling you their latest medication. Pharmaceutical companies directly fund their own research. Subsequently, many scientists and medical researchers produce biased research, favorable to their employers. There is ample evidence this is a large problem within the industry. Doctors and patients alike struggle to make sense of what to believe.

I challenge you to Google "Pharmaceutical Fraud" and see where that rabbit hole takes you.

All that said, in some instances, medications provide a helpful bridge or crutch to avoid toxic situations that many individuals suffer prior to changing their lifestyle, diet and activity levels.

As far as long term outcomes treating and managing diabetes with medications remember...

Health doesn't come from a bottle