One in nine people with diabetes saw their blood sugar levels dip back to a normal or "pre-diabetes" level after a year on an intensive diet and exercise programME, in a new study.
Complete remission of type 2 diabetes is still very rare, researchers said. But they added that the new study can give people with the disease hope that through lifestyle changes, they could end up getting off medication and likely lowering their risk of diabetes-related complications.
"Kind of a long-term assumption really is that once you have diabetes there's no turning back on it, and there's no remission or cure," said Edward Gregg, the lead author on the report from the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention.
The research, he told Reuters Health, "is a reminder that adopting a healthy diet, physically-active lifestyle and reducing and maintaining a healthy weight is going to help manage people's diabetes better." His team's study can't prove the experimental program - which included weekly group and individual counselling for six months, followed by less frequent visits - was directly responsible for blood sugar improvements.
The original goal of the research was to look at whether that intervention lowered participants' risk of heart disease (so far, it hasn't).
But the diabetes improvements are in line with better weight loss and fitness among people in the program versus those in a comparison group who only went to a few annual counselling sessions, Gregg's team reported on December 18 in the Journal of the American Medical Association.