Hmmm... never thought of it quite this way.

http://nephropal.blogspot.com/2010/...th-is-flat.html


More at the link.

There's a greater flaw in thinking, than the way a traditional Doctor sees the word; "cure"...

Most people want to diet, supplement, etc... to either lose weight or gain some degree of health with an erroneous thinking of getting "restored"

and then from that point of "restoration", they derive they can go back to doing whatever it was they were doing before.

I ate the wrong way, now I eat the right way. I don't look at "cured" or "restored". I'm healthy and I'm doing healthy things to stay healthy. What more logic do I need to put into it?

"cured" is just a word.
IMHO curing a disease involves removing the conditions that cause the disease.I doubt if very many "cured" T2 diabetics would pass a GTT.Avoiding the many bad effects of type 2 diabetes and having a decent quality of life appears to be the best most T2's can hope for.
Cheers,low BG's
Eddie

Diabetes can never be cured, it can only be managed. It's a permanent disease. When you go back to your old unhealthy WOE, the diabetes will be back! You can count on that!

I think of it as being cured, myself. The disease is carbohydrate poisoning. Yes some organs might take a long time to recover, if ever.

I like the sunburn analogy by Dr. Vernon. If you're a fair person and you have too much sun, is it a disease to get sunburned? Same with diabetics and carb metabolism. If you have too much for YOU you will get sick. Every time.

I don't think you read the article I linked. It's just the semantics of using the term cure and treat. I don't think you'll find any discrepancy in what he says with what you said.

I'll steal his analogy:

Lets imagine that you were eating arsenic and got very ill. When you went to the hospital they treated you for arsenic poisoning and cured you. Cure sounds right in that context doesn't it? It isn't a treatment for arsenic poisoning, it's a cure. Obviously if you go back to eating the arsenic you're going to have the old issue return. It sounds silly to say that after you've stopped eating arsenic and all your symptoms disappear that you're being treated for arsenic poisoning. Doesn't it?

By the same reasoning if your old WOE was poisoning you then eliminating it provides a cure.

Except to the extent that you have done any permanent damage to your pancreas.

If eating arsenic meant you had to be on dialysis for life because you thrashed your kidneys you would have a complication from the poisoning. It doesn't mean you still have arsenic poisoning.

I guess I'd say if you're symptom free, you're cured, as in the arsenic scenario. Otherwise I'd probably say you have a permanent condition caused by the poisoning.

Well but - if you had a broken arm and had a scar from that, would you say you were not cured as long as the scar was there?

That's how I see some liver and pancreas damage. Some comes back and then, no symptoms; but some have permanent damage more like a scar.

Not all that important a distinction really, I just liked the guys logic.

"when a feeling was there, they felt as if it would never go; when it was gone, they felt as if it had never been; when it returned, they felt as if it had never gone." - George MacDonald

whoa nice quote, I love George McD

Several of my cousins who eat a medium carb diet and get
lots of exercise(they are farmers) wound up with T2 diabetes.
Arsenic?Sunlight?I don't think so.
T2 inherited by genetics?Probably.
And the world turns...
Eddie

I doubt it was the sunshine, but perhaps it might have been the moonshine!

Type 2 is not a disease, so much as a symptom of blood sugar problems with a fairly large collection of different causes. Further, the degree of the "disease" is dependent on both insulin resistance and the amount of damage to the beta cells and the pancreas in general.

A quick telling of my own life, and ignorance, will shed some light on whether there is a "cure."

I was diagnosed with Type 2 at the age of 56 and reacted quickly by losing weight from 356 pounds to 242 pounds, and lowering my carbs quite a bit, and adding some BS reducing herbs to the mix. I cycled the herbs every few weeks so the body couldn't adapt. I never even got my own BS meter, but when my sister came over the next year and a half she would test my post-meal spikes, They were never over 107 an hour after meals.

But I had to go into the hospital for something unrelated at age 58, and because of my previous diagnoses they would test me. My post-meal spikes were still good. One day the doc stated with a smug look, "You've somehow done a good job of controlling your BS, but the problems always come back." And, that is the experience of most doctors when they use the term control rather then cure. Since that time my BS problems have slowly gotten a little worse.

So my take on whether or not there is a "cure" or something close to a cure:
Most people when they get their BS under fairly good control, are naive if they think diet and exercise with herbs or something like Metformin goes as far as a cure, unless they can take it further than most can even consider.

But...but perhaps something like a cure could be called if through diet, exercise, and perhaps Metformin or some herbs you could reduce your A1C to the level of a totally healthy person with no BS problems whatsoever, for say a year. That A1C would have to be 4.8 or lower each time, and there would have to be signs of regression of previous damage from BS spikes. That would come close to a cure without saying the person could go back to some silly high-carb diet. IMHO anyway,