I once had a professor in medical school who, during a basic lecture on diabetes, said that the discovery of insulin by Banting and Best in 1920 actually prevented scientific progress on the disease. His rationale was that there was no immediate need then to do research to find a cure since there was treatment to keep people alive.

Sound odd? Not really, when you remember that untreated diabetes can be, in fact, a fatal disease. And back then, most of the patients who were being diagnosed with it, were also either quite ill or dying from it. So, even though the daily injection(s) of insulin – the only way it could be made available to the body then – was uncomfortable and sometimes life-changing, it did indeed keep people with diabetes alive.

Contrast that scenario with other diseases, like the many types of cancer or AIDS, and you can understand what that professor meant. When people are dying from a disease that has no known treatment or cure, the medical and scientific establishment places a lot of emphasis -quickly – on research in that area.

Back to diabetes – we’ve not really advanced all that much since the discovery of insulin, have we? In 2007, it was found that 7.8% of the American population – or 23.6 million children and adults – had diabetes, 5.7 million of those people being undiagnosed. In addition, it was found that 57 million people had pre-diabetes, the form of the disease in which the body cannot use the glucose (sugar) in any food to create energy as it should, but in which the blood glucose level is not high enough to be considered frank diabetes. Although we do have more types of treatment available than we did in 1920 when insulin was discovered, having the disease and caring for oneself properly can still be lifechanging as it was then. And more distressing is the fact that having the disease puts one at high risk for heart disease and stroke, among other complications.

And yet, in many people with diabetes (I’m referring here to Type II Diabetes, the most common form), it is curable. Think you may have missed the media blitz about the cure? You didn’t, as it’s so deceptively simple that it’s not sexy enough to be mentioned in the media. I’m talking here about weight loss in those people with Type II diabetes who are obese or overweight. Because in many people, diabetes develops only because of their excess weight, or because of a weight gain. 

With excess weight, the cells of the body become insulin-resistant and can’t use insulin properly to metabolize glucose and turn it into life-giving energy. Therefore, the glucose stays outside of the cells and circulates in the bloodstream, causing the sugar level in the blood to be high and allowing all the bad consequences of that to follow.And in many people, if that excess weight is lost, the cells of the body then are again able to use glucose properly. It’s that simple. I’ve seen many patients be able to stop their diabetes medications and be healthy after weight loss.

So, why are there still so many overweight people with, and getting newly diagnosed with, Type II diabetes when a cure is available? Because it’s easier to take a pill, or even an injection of insulin (or an insulin pump or nasal spray) than to lose weight.  Exercising, and eating a nutritious low calorie, enough to lose weight is difficult. No one is denying that. But look at the rewards if you do have diabetes – getting off your medications, feeling better, not having the ups and downs of a high or low blood sugar, and possibly decreasing your risk of stroke and heart attack.

November is National Diabetes Awareness Month. If you, or someone you know or love, has diabetes, you owe it to yourself to find out all the facts. This is one disease that you can control yourself, and perhaps even cure, by changing your lifestyle.

Stay tuned. We will be chatting here about other topics related to diabetes this month.

For more information, go to: http://www.diabetes.org/