Metabolic Health
Here’s Why and How Type II Diabetes Is Preventable and Reversible
The new generation of scientists and clinicians brings hope to chronic disorders once believed non-curable.
Science and technology offer us hope, as once non-curable diseases can now be reversed or cured with healthy lifestyles and professional support. The innovative work of a new generation of scientists and clinicians, who approach their research with an open mind and a compassionate heart, is removing the stigma that once surrounded these conditions.
However, realistically we still have challenges with some chronic diseases. For example, despite significant research efforts, some neurological disorders like ALS and Alzheimer’s still cannot be cured. I am optimistic that we will find solutions to these conditions in the next few decades.
Reversing chronic disorders like diabetes is not easy and simple. The mechanisms underlying the reversibility of type II diabetes are complex and multifactorial and require significant investment.
It requires substantial effort from patients, professionals, and caregivers. Rejuvenating cells, tissues, organs, and systems also takes time.
Metaphorically, diabetes is in my DNA as I was diagnosed as carb-intolerant. Knowing this opened a window to my health. Besides my mother, several relatives suffer from it.
I faced pre-diabetes in my 20s, making me metabolically disadvantaged. But I successfully reversed my condition and had a healthier body and mind after my half-century.
“Although in past diabetes has been called chronic and irreversible, the paradigm is changing.” MDPI
Type II diabetes is a chronic condition affecting millions of people worldwide. Diabetes is one of the leading causes of death in the 21st century. Currently, 442 million people live with diabetes.
Diabetes is a serious matter for society. CDC informs that over 34 million Americans have diabetes. 88 million US citizens have prediabetes. 116 million people in China have diabetes. And 77 million people live with diabetes in India.
90% of 88 million people with prediabetes in a developed country don’t even know they have it. Moreover, CDC highlights that “A person with prediabetes is at high risk of type II diabetes, heart disease, and stroke.”
Type II diabetes is a chronic metabolic disorder characterized by high blood sugar levels, insulin resistance, and impaired insulin secretion.
It occurs when the body becomes resistant to insulin, a hormone regulating blood sugar levels, or when it cannot produce enough insulin to meet its needs. Over time, high blood sugar levels can cause damage to organs and tissues throughout the body, leading to nerve damage, vision problems, and kidney issues.
The picture in the literature is crystal clear. Type II diabetes is associated with obesity, physical inactivity, poor diet, substance abuse, excessive stress, and chronic inflammation. It reflects the elephant in the room. Some professionals still advocate high-carb diets for diabetic or metabolically broken people.
One of the striking health issues of the 21st century is metabolic syndrome. This fire is fuelled by insulin resistance and amplified by leptin resistance, making the body crave more food despite its abundant energy in stores.
Despite the seriousness of the condition, studies indicate that type II diabetes is reversible in some cases, with lifestyle changes, medications, and other medical interventions such as surgery.
Reversing type II diabetes is possible because the underlying cause of the disease is related to lifestyle factors which can be modified to improve overall health and reduce the risk of complications.
You may check the details in this outstanding paper on MDPI titled Reversing Type II Diabetes: A Narrative Review of the Evidence.
“Type 2 diabetes has long been identified as an incurable chronic disease. The best outcome that has been expected is the amelioration of diabetes symptoms or the slowing of its inevitable progression. Approximately 50% of T2D patients will need insulin therapy within ten years of diagnosis. Although in past diabetes has been called chronic and irreversible, the paradigm is changing.” [Source]
The key to reversing type II diabetes is to address the disease's root causes, including insulin resistance, chronic inflammation, and oxidative stress.
To reverse type II diabetes, adopting healthy lifestyle habits that can address these underlying factors is vital. Besides lifestyle changes, some patients may require medication or other interventions.
I summarize my reviews and experiences under seven headings without going into scientific and technical details and highlighting practical points.
1 — Make the body insulin sensitive and fat-adapted.
The main driver of type II diabetes is insulin resistance. This condition is the reduced ability of cells to respond to insulin. It can lead to a buildup of glucose in the bloodstream and damage tissues and organs.
Beta cells in the pancreas produce insulin. Their dysfunction can contribute to developing type II diabetes. Studies indicate that lifestyle changes and medications like metformin can improve beta-cell function.
I reversed my insulin resistance with healthy lifestyle habits. After 30 years, my body became remarkably insulin sensitive with dietary changes, regular exercise, restorative sleep, and effective stress management.
Changing the fuel source for my body significantly impacted eliminating insulin resistance, improving energy utilization, and making my body insulin sensitive. This protocol initiated ketosis and enabled my body to get fat adapted. A fat-adapted body becomes insulin sensitive.
Fixing (insulin and leptin) resistance can rectify metabolic issues and significantly lower the rate of obesity, type II diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, some cancers, and neurodegenerative disorders.
As I provided practical tips on fixing insulin resistance and improving leptin sensitivity. I will not repeat those details in this story. You may check 6 Critical Aspects of Healthy Weight Management.
Please review these seven proactive tests for blood sugar and insulin ailments at any age. These proactive tests might apply to everyone. I provided details of hormones affecting our metabolism.
2 — Improve cellular, mitochondrial, and gut health.
A proactive prevention and treatment approach is to clear the metabolic garbage sustainably. Cellular cleansing is vital to losing visceral fat, retaining muscles, and staying healthy. Most toxins are held in our fat cells.
Besides the toxic waste created by metabolic activities during energy production, we also get toxic materials from air, water, and food. Ongoing chemical reactions create harmful materials.
The defense system can lower toxins and pathogens to some extent. However, the immune system is compromised and weakened when they pass the threshold. Or the immune system gets overactive.
A viable solution is to activate the body’s self-healing system naturally. The two critical points for a self-healing system are autophagy and mitophagy, naturally clearing the waste from cells and mitochondria.
Time-restricted eating and long-term fasting are effective ways to initiate autophagy and mitophagy. Due to some risks, starting these regimes with support from qualified healthcare professionals is necessary.
Some studies indicate that the gut microbiome may play a role in developing and progressing type II diabetes. Alterations in the gut microbiome might lead to inflammation and metabolic dysfunction.
Fixing leaky gut, dietary modifications, probiotics, and fecal microbiota transplantation might improve the gut microbiome and contribute to reversing type II diabetes.
3 — Optimize hormones and neurotransmitters.
Fat metabolism and muscle retention depend on hormonal effects. They relate to hormones like insulin, glucagon, adiponectin, leptin, cortisol, growth hormones, and sex hormones.
Unstable hormones can prevent fat loss and lead to muscle loss. Therefore optimizing our hormones with healthy lifestyle choices and professional support is vital.
The essential item to losing visceral fat while keeping lean muscles is maintaining healthy blood glucose levels as it makes hormonal impacts. The critical hormones for type II diabetes are insulin and glucagon.
Optimizing neurotransmitters, like dopamine and serotonin, sets our motivation for fat loss and muscle retention as prevention and treatment methods indirectly contributing to reversing type II diabetes.
4 — Move the body regularly and joyfully.
Regular exercise can consume excess calories, especially from sugar, and makes the body more insulin sensitive by activating muscle cells.
In reversing type II diabetes, exercise is an effective way. I documented a story of a mature couple who reversed their type II diabetes and trimmed their bodies by walking over 20,000 steps daily.
Exercise is a lifestyle factor helping lose visceral fat and maintains lean muscles. Workouts after meals can burn excess calories and make the body insulin sensitive. Combining several types of workouts can produce optimal results for fat mobilization.
Exercise is beneficial for lowering the risks of other conditions by burning fat, detoxifying the body, and improving mood. 150 minutes of weekly exercise might lower cancer risks.
5 — Manage oxidative stress and prevent chronic inflammation.
Although exercise is essential, it can stress and inflame the body. Stress and inflammation are significant lifestyle factors that impact metabolic health and overall well-being.
Therefore rest and recovery are essential after workouts for managing acute stress. We should not perform more workouts before recovering.
Oxidative and emotional stress can disrupt metabolic homeostasis by impairing glucose and lipid metabolism, causing mitochondrial dysfunction, and activating inflammatory pathways.
Chronic inflammation can break metabolic homeostasis by impairing insulin signaling, dysregulating fat metabolism, causing adipose tissue dysfunction, inducing mitochondrial dysfunction, and overactivation of the immune system.
The body copes with oxidative stress by creating stress hormones. Too much stress can elevate stress hormones. More stress requires more cortisol hormone.
Elevated cortisol, which depends on glucose metabolism, can lead to muscle loss and prevent visceral fat burning even if we increase exercise. The cortisol hormone prevents fat-burning and leads to insulin resistance.
Stress affects our genes, changes our DNA and RNA, and makes epigenetic effects as micro stressors accumulate. Oxidative stress can lead to chronic inflammation, adversely affecting health.
Adequate sleep, rest, and timely recovery are essential for metabolic homeostasis, as stress and inflammation can break hormonal regulation and increase appetite causing excess calorie consumption.
Sleep deprivation can lead to fatigue and lack of energy by elevating stress hormones like cortisol, epinephrine, and norepinephrine.
Emotional stress can also disrupt the metabolic balance. During excess emotional stress and traumas, hormones can become imbalanced, and the immune system becomes weak and compromised.
Some practical stress management techniques from my experience are working in a flow state, regulating emotions, meditating regularly, self-conversations, emotional self-defense, emotional boundaries, cognitive flexibility, and better relationships.
Despite good habits, some people might need anti-inflammatory medication, so getting our inflammation markers checked and obtaining a corrective plan from qualified healthcare professionals is essential.
6— Balance amino acids, glucose, and fat to prevent visceral fat accumulation and muscle loss.
To maintain our metabolic balance, we must get essential amino acids from bioavailable protein sources (whole foods) and sufficient calories from healthy fats and complex carbs.
This reasonable approach might prevent visceral fat gain unless underlying health conditions, hormonal imbalances, or genetic issues exist.
Unfortunately, some people consume too many proteins, fats, and carbohydrates. Those calories become visceral fat, usually stored in the abdominal area and buttocks.
As soon as the body digests foods from macronutrients such as carbohydrates, fats, and proteins, triglycerides from the calories of these foods circulate in the bloodstream. Then they are used as energy by cells.
Although the body can immediately use them when energy is needed by cells, especially muscles, they are also stored as fat molecules when we have excessive calories.
Therefore, we must first burn calories and stored fats by mobilizing them. Mobilizing fat is breaking down stored fat into free fatty acids and transporting them into the bloodstream as an energy source.
The practical mechanisms are creating a caloric deficit by reducing food intake, increasing energy expenditure by moving the body, and creating thermic effects by exposing the body to cold temperatures.
We can mobilize and burn stored fat by lowering calories by eating less, exercising, consuming our food in a specific window, and exposing the body to cold. I provide five tips to melt visceral fat effectively.
As these activities lower the blood glucose and empty glycogen stores, the body starts burning fat, entering ketosis, an alternative energy source using stored fat.
This process also makes the body insulin sensitive and more fat-adapted. An insulin-sensitive body might prevent the formation of metabolic disorders by keeping a good ratio of muscles and fat.
Muscle loss can lead to sarcopenia if the caloric expenditure is lower than the body’s requirement for a prolonged time. As mentioned before, the body creates more cortisol to cope with the stress of caloric deficit.
Elevated cortisol consumes the glucose from muscles and cannot use visceral fat. People struggle with muscle loss without being able to lose the desired level of visceral fat.
Accumulated visceral fat at any age is a known risk factor for metabolic disorders. Likewise, declining muscle mass and bone density cause age-related diseases like sarcopenia and osteoporosis.
7 — Consider special treatments by experts and accredited clinics, like therapeutic fasting and bariatric surgery.
There are some natural and medical treatments for type II diabetes. One of them is supervised short-term or long-term fasting in accredited clinics.
Long-term supervised fasting (therapeutic fasting) is a method of treating diabetes that involves controlled periods of abstaining from food for several days.
Some practitioners also use supervised intermittent fasting for diabetes treatment. A popular approach is the 16/8 method, consuming food within an eight-hour window, followed by 16 hours of fasting.
Some clinics also use a customized version of the fast-mimicking diet initially developed by Dr. Valter Longo.
The purpose of fasting is to regulate blood sugar levels, reduce insulin resistance, and improve metabolic function. Fasting can reduce inflammation, improve insulin sensitivity, and boost the regeneration of pancreatic beta cells responsible for producing insulin.
Bariatric surgery is a weight loss surgery that improves glucose control and reverses type II diabetes in some patients. The mechanisms involve hormonal changes, insulin sensitivity, and improved beta-cell function.
Studies suggest that bariatric surgery is effective for efficacy and prolonged remission. Some concerns include surgical complications (microvascular and macrovascular), treatment costs, and lifestyle modification after surgery.
Summary and Conclusions
The new generation of scientists and clinicians is making significant progress in chronic disorders. They bring hope to diabetic patients.
With advancements in medical technology and the development of new therapies, we can better understand the underlying mechanisms of chronic disorders and create targeted treatments.
While type II diabetes is a chronic disease, it is reversible with lifestyle changes, medications, therapy, and surgery. The mechanisms underlying the reversibility of type II diabetes are complex and multifactorial.
I recently documented the beneficial effects of magnesium supplementation for type II diabetes to lower stress and inflammation, making the body more insulin sensitive.
Emotional regulation, improved relationships, and meaningful social connections are also important in reversing type II diabetes.
Metabolic issues like weight gain and muscle loss might happen at any age. But, as we age, our bodily systems become less efficient, and telomeres shorten. Aging might lead to more visceral fat and muscle loss.
Hormonal profiles significantly change as we age. The body produces fewer sex hormones like testosterone for men and estrogen for women.
Due to the effects of master hormones, other hormones also get imbalanced, putting us in a metabolically disadvantaged position.
Therefore, we must adjust our goals, tweak our lifestyles, and create new protocols to support them.
Takeaways
The following points might give valuable perspectives on improving your conditions and increasing your health span and lifespan.
1 — Accept your condition and seek timely help.
2 — Make the body insulin sensitive and fat-adapted with nutritious food, regular exercise, restorative sleep, fun, recovery, and rest.
3 — Manage your stress and inflammation with lifestyle choices and professional support.
4 — Optimize hormones and neurotransmitters by improving cellular, mitochondrial, immune, and gut health.
5 — Leverage thermogenesis and strenghen the immune system and activate the self-healing to detoxify the body naturally.
6 — Stay optimistic, consistent, and persistent by going out of your comfort zone and gain healthy habits to support healthy weight management.
7 — Measure your progress, get checked, and address underlying health conditions timely with support from qualified healthcare professionals.
8 — Be curious and learn from the experiences of others with an open mind focusing on principles and novel approaches that work for them.
9— Expore possibilities for special treatments by experts and accredited clinics such as therepuetic/supervised fasting or bariatric surgery.
Thank you for reading my perspectives. I wish you a healthy and happy life.
As a new reader, please check my holistic health and well-being stories reflecting my reviews, observations, and decades of experiments optimizing my hormones and neurotransmitters.
ALS, Metabolic Syndrome, Type II Diabetes, Fatty Liver Disease, Heart Disease, Strokes, Obesity, Liver Cancer, Autoimmune Disorders, Homocysteine, Lungs Health, Pancreas Health, Kidneys Health, NCDs, Infectious Diseases, Brain Health, Dementia, Depression, Brain Atrophy, Neonatal Disorders, Skin Health, Dental Health, Bone Health, Leaky Gut, Leaky Brain, Brain Fog, Chronic Inflammation, Insulin Resistance, Elevated Cortisol, Leptin Resistance, Anabolic Resistance, Cholesterol, High Triglycerides, Metabolic Disorders, Gastrointestinal Disorders, Thyroid Disorders, Anemia, Dysautonomia, cardiac output, and urinary track disorders.
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Lutein/Zeaxanthin, Phosphatidylserine, Boron, Urolithin, taurine, citrulline malate, biotin, lithium orotate, alpha-lipoic acid, n-acetyl-cysteine, acetyl-l-carnitine, CoQ10, PQQ, NADH, TMG, creatine, choline, digestive enzymes, magnesium, zinc, hydrolyzed collagen, nootropics, pure nicotine, activated charcoal, Vitamin B12, Vitamin B1, Vitamin D, Vitamin K2, Omega-3 Fatty Acids, N-Acetyl L-Tyrosine, and other nutrients.
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Sample Humorous Stories
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