The Diabetes Prevention Program Research Group has just published one of the best studies ever on the prevention and reversal of type 2 diabetes.
They discovered that one simple, natural method, beats even the most advanced drugs to treat type 2 diabetes by far – without any complications.
In September 2015, the Diabetes Prevention Program Research Group published an extraordinary study in the British journal, the Lancet. The study was extraordinary because it followed its participants for 15 years and even managed to modify some of their lifestyles for that long.
The group wanted to find out which treatment worked best to prevent diabetes. To do this, they recruited people who were at serious risk of diabetes. They split them into three groups: one group that received no treatment, one group that received metformin, the most common drug prescribed for diabetics, and a third group that received lifestyle modification training and semiannual lifestyle reinforcement.
As you can guess, the lifestyle modification involved dietary changes and an exercise program of two and a half hours of walking per week. The dietary changes essentially included recommendations to eliminate sugar, refined oils, and refined carbohydrates, and advice to eat in a way that resembles the Mediterranean diet.
These were the main findings:
1. Compared with the no-treatment group, 27% fewer people in the lifestyle modification group developed type 2 diabetes.
2. Compared with the no-treatment group, 18% fewer people in the metformin group developed type 2 diabetes.
3. With the exception of women in the lifestyle modification group, both treatments and the no-treatment failed to prevent microvascular complications in those who developed type 2 diabetes.
4. Those who did not develop type diabetes experienced 28% fewer microvascular complications than those who did develop it.
This is interesting for two reasons. It shows that a healthy lifestyle is more likely to prevent type 2 diabetes than the most popular drug is, and it shows that the prevention of diabetes is the only thing that can really save you from a whole host of cardiovascular events. Once you have it, it can already be too late.
Over time, the lifestyle modification became less and less effective. By year 15, 55% in the lifestyle group, 56% in the metformin group, and 62% in the placebo group developed type 2 diabetes.
The reason the lifestyle group started to fail at the end of the study is that people just stopped following the program. Their level of exercise went down and the bad diet took over.
The bottom line is that lifestyle changes are the most effective method to beat type 2 diabetes. Even the most powerful drugs (with all their side effects) don’t come close. But you must stick to the plan.
The scary thing about these last statistics is that approximately 60% of seriously at-risk people do end up developing full-blown type 2 diabetes.
You must therefore pull yourself out of not only the “diagnosed type 2 diabetes” group but out of the “risk zone” altogether. That’s the only way to free yourself for life.