Can Diabetes Just Disappear Even Though You Don’t Follow Diet And Haven’t Lost Any Weight?
My sister weighs 350 pounds, has been diagnosed with diabetes for last 4 years. She refuses to follow any kind of a diet and has been taking up to 5 injections a day of both long term and short acting insulin to keep her blood sugars in line. She will eat an entire cheesecake and then give herself a bunch of insulin. Recently she has not had to use insulin, maybe once or twice a week as her blood sugars have stayed in the normal range even though she hasn’t changed anything. She thinks she has cured her diabetes or that it has just “gone away”. Is this true? Is she a medical miracle by defying everything we have ever been told about diabetes? She also says she feels better than ever and the only thing she has done different is by adding Activia yogurt to her daily 4000 calorie diet.
Diabetes cannot disappear if she has type 1. It sounds like she has type 2 due to her weight. If she would follow a healthy diet and exercise she could eventually over time could control it by diet. Of course that is for her doctor to decide. Even though she may have her sugar in line, she is still killing herself. Just because she takes more insulin to substitute for what she has eaten does not mean she can eat that much. She must eat in portions. With her being over weight she is damaging her kidneys, her blood circulation is extremely bad and diabetes can cause blindness really early in life. With poor circulation and her not exercising to lose weight can lead to worse things such as amputation of limbs. Her doctor needs her to meet with a nutrionist asap to get her weight down. I do not mean to scare you but the truth is, if she does not control it now you will be attending her funeral in the near future.
Once you have diabetes type 1 or 2, you can NEVER get rid of it. It’s with you for life. Even if you lose weight, go on a diet and exercise, or even get a transplant. She will start feeling better once she loses weight and controls her blood sugar better but she will never be cured.
Could Activia be a cure for diabetes? I doubt it. Your sister still has diabetes. Perhaps she was on some medication such as beta blockers that added to the problem. If she was on any meds that raise your blood sugar and stopped taking them, it might cause an improvement.
If nothing else has changed, I would question the accuracy of her blood sugar meter and/or the test strips. It might be giving false readings.
There is also a honeymoon phase, where sometimes the blood sugar gets better for a little while, but it does get worse again. It could be that she is experiencing this phenomenone. If so, she really needs to keep a tight watch on her blood sugar, becuase one day, a week or a month or a year or two down the road, it will come back, with a vengence. At that point, she could end up with extremely high blood sugar and possibly a heart attack or stroke.
Her practice of dosing with insulin to cover huge amounts of carbs is an extremely unhealthy practice for diabetics. She really needs to grow up and face her disease. She’s going to become even more overweight and more insulin resistant and she won’t be able to get the weight off. Insulin makes you gain fat, especially when you dose to gorge yourself like this. Losing weight with type 2 diabetes, at that weight is very very hard to do and she is going to pack it on.
Please try to get her to see her doctor and be honest with him about what she is doing (gorging on food and dosing herself to cover it). If she doesn’t, she’ll end up in serious trouble one of these days.
One thing that will help her doctor find out what’s really going on is to take an HbA1c test. This test tells what your blood sugar averages over the last 3 months. It should be under 7 for a diabetic with good control. Under 6 is considered even better. For a non-diabetic, it shoud be under 5. If hers is over 6.9 she does not have good blood sugar control at all.
Read here for info about how to test properly. Its possible that your sister is not doing it correctly.http://www.diabetic-talk.org/jennifer.ht…
Also, read the links on this page for lots of info about diabeteshttp://www.phlaunt.com/diabetes/
and this page toohttp://www.phlaunt.com/diabetes/sp2index…
The better you understand this disease, the better you can help, encourage and support your sister.
i doubt it
Diabetes does not just go away. she should take her medicine as her docotor has her set on. Theres no known cure for diabetes yet hopefully there will be. Activia is to help keep sugars and bowel movements under control, that may have helped her but certainly did not cure her
Diabetes will never just “go away”. Im guessing she has type 2 diabetes judging on her weight and possible age. Im trying to be very polite when I say this but people DIE when they treat their diabetes like that. Ive had type 1 for 12 years so I would know. She needs to stick to a strict diet. And its okay to have an ice cream for desert once or twice a week. But an entire cheescake will make her blood sugars sky rocket
Your sister is looking for an early burial. Diabetes does not go away. She will die of organ failure, heart disease or a combination of painful ways.