Life with diabetes
Will I ever cure my diabetes?
Long-term answer to this question is positive. Currently, there are studies in various stages of completion that allows me to estimate that in 5-10 years you may be taking insulin through other means (inhaled – like patients with asthma do or through an implanted artificial pancreas in the body…). It is possible that in 10-15 years the cure for this disease will appear and diabetes doctors will become unemployed (I’m just kidding, we can give this remedy, provide nutrition recommendation s, deal with metabolic disease and endocrinology).
In the short term the only form of diabetes that can be cured is gestational diabetes. After birth, a woman diagnosed with diabetes during pregnancy can (and often does) return to normal glucose levels. She can stay completely outside of any treatment for diabetes for years. Often, these values are maintained within normal levels be means of diabetes nutrition plan. Gestational diabetes is likely to reoccur at a latter pregnancy. Also, the patient should be periodically checked because there is a high risk of developing diabetes (type 1 or 2).
Following the diagnosis of type 1 diabetes (after 1-5 weeks) a transient remission (disappearance) of diabetes may occur. It can be a either a total remission, with normal glucose values without any diabetes treatment, or a partial remission, with a significant decrease in insulin requirements, which sometimes remain only in symbolic amounts. It is better to maintain a small insulin dose in order to prevent high blood glucose (or even ketoacidosis) which eventually will appear at the end of this “honey month” or transient remission. Transient remission usually lasts 1 to 6 months. There are currently no (non)pharmaceutically means to extend this period, but intense research is under way. At the end of this transient remission, insulin requirements increase, reaching a “normal” dose during 1-2 months.
Unfortunately, in type 2 diabetes the evolution of diabetes usually started 5-10 years before the diagnosis and almost nothing can be done now. Evolution is generally in one direction: from diet, exercise, pills to insulin (10-15 years). Attention! Incantations and empirical remedies (which are sometimes sold as diabetes cure!) do not help, and may be deleterious if it increases the time before the patient decides to see a doctor.
