Is Type 2 Diabetes Reversible at Scale?

Based on the length of this article, I was hoping it would actually, you know, describe the method used to reverse T2D, but I didn't see any such description other than vague references to "nutrition." Frustrating.

Also, I'm skeptical of the claim that obesity does not cause T2D. Is this backed up by good studies?

correlation doesn't mean causation, although I myself think insulin resistance happens to obese people because they are obese and not some underlying mysterious reason, but insulin resistance is not typically the only source of T2D, if it was, thin people would never get T2D, so I guess we still have ways to go before we solve this one.

Pretty sure that article was an ad.

I do know at least one person who has Type 2 Diabetes with a regular BMI, but even the article points out the average BMI was 40 - I really hope that's not the average population's BMI. I guess you could argue chicken & egg (diabetes causes obesity... maybe?), but in this case the egg is rather fat.

Regarding point 1: From the site linked in the article, it appears to be basically classic keto + heavy supervision and dietary advice.

> The entire intervention is managed by physicians and the nutritional approach is based on highly individualized carbohydrate restriction and nutritional ketosis (which I’ve written about extensively in the past and throughout this blog).

People like to hate on low-carb approach. They say things like "It causes liver problems" which don't have a basis in reality. Human beings survived for thousands of years on way fewer sugars and starches than we have today.

It's particularly bad in the US due to the availability of high fructose corn syrup, which means America products tend to contain more sugar than their overseas counterparts.

A few years ago I started going strong on a keto die, cutting out soda, pasta, bread, etc. and eating a lot more vegetables, meats, cheeses, etc. There an initial shock about two weeks in which some people can't get past, because your body has to get use to using fat as a primary fuel source instead of sugars/starches. Once I got past that though, I could cycling farther, my weight training sessions lasted longer with less fatigue, and I dropped from 72kg down to 63kg over the course of several months.

My lowest was 60kg for nearly two years! Moving back to America has been difficult. It's hard to find the same quality of ingredients and I just got burnt out on cooking my own food all the time. There is very little healthy stuff off the shelf here. In the past two years I've slowly rose back up to 67kg and it's upsetting.

I wish there were more low carb options when eating out. Salads at pubs are often loaded with croutons and fruits, there are lots of hidden carbs in salad dressing and there's just a lack of healthier options here.

The food industry pushed hard against the Adkins movement in the early 2000s. Imagine if we had kept going down the route. Would obesity have dropped significantly in the US? We'll never know. But this article goes with a lot of the current research: fat doesn't make you fat. Sugars and starch do. They have a much higher energy density and sugar is huge contributor to heart disease.