It can seem with any chronic illness that the road is one way. You can slow the progression using drugs, but there is no way to go back. This feels particularly true with patients who have diabetes. Yet a new study shows that isn’t the case.
The researchers in this study used a novel new approach called diet, foregoing the usual drugs. They found that diabetes patients, many of whom had been diabetic for years, were able to reverse their diabetes by using a low-calorie diet and dropping about thirty pounds.
The numbers the researchers saw in these patients were similar to those seen in weight-loss surgery patients. Surgical practices advertise that they can reverse diabetes, but it usually involves a major surgery and the subsequent loss of over a hundred pounds.
What happened in the low-calorie diet was that diabetic patients were able to reset their insulin levels and increase their body’s ability to process sugar. The question is why this study needed to be done at all. Shouldn’t diet be the first treatment for diabetes? But doctors reach first for drugs now, even in the U.K. You didn’t honestly think this kind of study would ever be done in the U.S., did you? Here’s more for the geeks among us, and here’s the original study abstract for your doctor.
A new study, brought to my attention by another patient, shows wonderful news for both children and adults with NF1. We finally have evidence that this genetic disease can be seriously improved through dietary intervention. It also gives evidence that supplements added to a bad diet won’t help much.
The study followed NF1 patients for six months, on either the Mediterranean or Western diets. Neither diet impacted the rate of neurofibromas. Then the researchers added 1200 mg (three capsules worth) of turmeric to the diets. Adding turmeric to the western diet did nothing. But adding it to the Mediterranean diet caused a slowing in the buildup of neurofibromas.
Having a diet and a single supplement slow the progression of a genetic disease is wonderful. It means that the disease is not genetic in its symptoms, but epigenetic. Epigenetics is the study of how the body turns off and on genes. The diet and the supplement were able to turn off the progression of neurofibromas.
But what is truly startling is that several of the patients experienced a reversal of existing neurofibromas! That’s not just epigenetic, that’s a switching on of other genes that are significantly repairing previous damage. It opens the door to moving NF1 away from the genetic category, into a metabolic disorder that should be addressed from birth.
In my book, Helping Your NF1 Child: A Parent’s Guide To Neurofibromatosis, I argue for this outlook on the illness. But I did not expect to have this kind of evidence that dietary and lifestyle interventions could reverse the disease.
Here’s the full study available for online reading. It is small and preliminary, but very exciting! We need more studies.