Can you cure type 2 diabetes?

In the UK, 11.9 million people are at risk of developing type 2 diabetes.

Type 2 diabetes is a chronic, life-long disease that affects the way your body processes glucose in your blood. Symptoms of type 2 diabetes due to high blood sugar include:

• Dry mouth
• Headaches
• Increased hunger
• Increased thirst
• Weight gain or unexplained weight loss
• Blurred vision
• Fatigue
• Itching around the genitals
• Cuts or wounds heal very slowly
• Urinating often

Once you are diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, it is important to manage it constantly, using a combination of medication, diet and exercise. Although diabetes is an illness that has lifelong consequences and has no known cure, it can go into remission, early research results suggest.

What does diabetes remission mean?

Remission does not mean that diabetes is gone forever, it means that blood glucose levels have returned to a normal level. Even for those who have achieved remission, it is vital that they maintain a healthy lifestyle and receive frequent healthcare check-ups so that indicators of type 2 diabetes returning are caught early on.

How can type 2 diabetes go into remission?

For some people suffering from type 2 diabetes, weight-loss, healthy diet and being active can be enough to regain control over their blood sugar levels. However, for many type 2 diabetes patients, it is also necessary for them to take certain anti-diabetic medicines or insulin. 

New research funded by Diabetes UK has findings that currently indicate the possibility of type 2 diabetic patients, reliant on anti-diabetic drugs to achieve remission to a non-diabetic state and off anti-diabetic drugs. The method to which this is being achieved is via intensive weight-loss and management, alongside diet replacement, stepped food reintroduction and physical activity.  

Hence, research findings are indicating that with the right lifestyle changes, type 2 diabetes can be reversible, however, we still need further research to fully understand the longer-term impacts on diabetes complications.

If you are at risk of type 2 diabetes, or suffer from type diabetes and would like to find out more about how to deal with it, you can find a specialist here.