Can diabetes be reserved or controlled?

Yes, there is a lot of data on that. But the problem is that you can make this diagnosis only in hindsight... Like you can never call it menopause on the day it happens; you make a diagnosis much later when no menses occurs for a year.

Similarly, you can never be sure whether it is an actual reversal or if the patient is just controlled by lifestyle modification for years and decades.

It doesn't matter for us physicians because the patient is benefiting anyway. For a patient, the first narrative matters, and the second doesn't look that attractive.

Chronic diseases can never be cured, but they can be controlled. You know, there are acute diseases and chronic diseases. Acute conditions have a cure; they may be treated with medication or surgery or cured on their own. Diseases that are not curable but controllable only are called chronic.

If a patient with diabetes is off medication, he thinks his problem is solved but can we call he is cured? Unfortunately, that is not the case. For people with diabetes, being controlled on a regimented diet is like being on medicine; it is called Medical Nutrition Therapy (MNT) - a key component of diabetes education and management. Diet control is a lifestyle medicine treatment which has to be followed with precision like medicine. There is a lot of data, and we, as practitioners, have anecdotal evidence also to support the same. A regimented, disciplined lifestyle can keep you away from medicine, so you don't go to a doctor for a tablet; you go to the doctor for lifestyle medicine.

Many patients come to me for medication; I counsel them to change their lifestyles. After that, they see positive changes in themselves, which includes reduced medication, or sometimes they go off the pills. I take them off refined carbs and sugars, start an exercise regime, and their diabetes gets controlled.