While it’s nothing new to hear that a healthy diet and exercise could help an individual manage type 2 diabetes, now, researchers are finding that it can reverse the condition without needing to use medication, just by having a healthy lifestyle. A recent clinical trial evaluated the efficiency of a good diet and exercise as a type 2 diabetes treatment. It found that after only 12 months, nearly two-thirds of patients achieved complete disease remission.
The new study, published in the journal The Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology, offers some of the most robust evidence to date confirming the efficacy of diet and exercise in reversing diabetes. The trial included around 150 participants, all around 42-years-old and within three years of their original type 2 diabetes diagnosis.
The volunteers were randomly split between an intervention group following an intensive diet and exercise program and a control group receiving standard care.
The intervention program involved:
- An initial 12-week low-calorie diet called the Cambridge Weight Plan.
- Then, another twelve weeks transitioning to a general healthy diet, but with caloric control.
- To complete a minimum of 150 minutes of physical exercise every week, alongside at least 10,000 steps each day.
At the 12-month mark the results showed:
- Participants in the intervention group lost around 26 lb (12 kg), compared to an average of 9 lb (4 kg) in the standard care group.
- Up to 61% of the intervention group were no longer considered diabetic, compared with just 12% in the standard-care control group.
Prof. Shahrad Taheri, the lead author of the study, said:
I think it’s a real game-changer for the management of type 2 diabetes. It shows that if you lose weight early enough in the disease process, you can actually reverse the disease, and thus avoid all the other health issues and quality of life reductions that come with it. We’re hoping that studies such as these can bring about a big change in the clinical approach to type 2 diabetes across the world – so that we will combine early screening with lifestyle interventions essentially to get rid of this condition straight away, instead of putting people on multiple medications for life.
A similar study conducted between July 25, 2014, and Aug 5, 2017, in the UK, found 46% of subjects achieved complete diabetes remission in 12 months as a result of strict weight management. However, Taheri claims that this new clinical trial has even more reliable results because its participants were more recently diagnosed and, on average, ten years younger than the UK’s group. This means that while diet and exercise are beneficial for all ages of type 2 diabetics, the sooner those practices are put into motion, the more effective they will be.
