I’ve blogged on many occasions about my frustration with our national response to type 2 diabetes. While type 2 diabetes can be dramatically improved, and often outright cured, with lifestyle interventions such as diet and exercise, our system instead treats it as an intractable chronic illness that can merely be managed, not banished. Millions of patients are immediately put on medication at the first sign of poor blood sugar control, and while they are typically given some lip service about eating more healthfully, exercising, and losing weight, the focus of their treatment over the ensuing years involves an ever expanding pharmacopeia of medications. There is certainly evidence that many of these medications do help when compared to doing nothing, but it’s clear that even well treated diabetics don’t live as long and full lives as non-diabetics. So to me, this medication-centered approach is a tragedy of epic proportions.
The control group was placed on medication, and given some basic education to avoid overeating sweets, not eat too close to bedtime, and try to at least take a walk each day. In other words, this group got a fairly standard approach to diabetic care.
The intervention group by contrast was given a structured exercise program of 150 minutes per week of “cardio” type exercise plus 2-3 weekly 20 minute sessions of resistance training, combined with a high protein diet calculated to create a 500 calorie per day deficit.
The results were startling: at the end of one year, 87% of participants in the intervention group no longer had diabetes. As in, they had completely normal blood sugar off of all medications.
Let that sink in for a moment: typically we put diabetics on medication after medication and congratulate ourselves for keeping their blood sugar in a mediocre range. For background, the marker we most follow in diabetics is called a hemoglobin a1c. A hemoglobin a1c in a normal, healthy, person is typically 5.5% or less. By contrast, modern medicine considers good control for a diabetic to be 7% or less.
But in this study, almost 9 out of 10 people got to a place where their blood sugar was normal off all medications. That isn’t just better than standard diabetes care – it’s in an entirely different league.
Are there limitations and caveats to this study? Of course. There are limitations and caveats to every study.
Would it be easy to implement the program used in this study nationwide? No, it would require a lot of money and effort.
Would this program work for everybody? No, of course not. Nothing in medicine works 100% of the time.
Are there a lot of diabetics who would not be willing or able to put in the work to adhere to a program like this? Yes, of course. Plenty of people will have a difficult time changing their diet and exercising regularly, or will have no interest in doing so.
But this is not the first study to show that lifestyle changes can have a MASSIVE impact on type 2 diabetes. Patients deserve to know about studies like these, and to be offered at least the option to “play for the win,” rather than just striving for mediocrity.
If you’d like a more in-depth video breakdown of this study by a health “influencer” who I think is fairly credible, check out this video here:
