I beat diabetes by changing my life
I’VE been following with keen interest the issue of the growing number of people being diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes and the research into how this condition can be reversed. I was diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes five years ago. It was due to obesity as a result of poor lifestyle. Much money has been ploughed into research on how to reverse this condition. Possible remedies I have seen reported are crash diets or the latest soup and shake diet being trialled by the NHS (Mail). But I have managed to reverse my condition over two years simply by transforming my lifestyle. Eating healthily, drinking far less alcohol and taking moderate exercise has enabled me to shed five stone, down from 17st 7lb to 12st 7lb. The drastic methods being recommended may work, but has enough research been done into more moderate methods?
PAUL BENNETT, Canvey Island, Essex. THE NHS is in dire straits, with medicines, prescriptions and operations being denied or rationed and yet we are going to give soup and shakes to diabetics in the hope they will lose weight. What happens when the trial period is up? Will they go back to their old eating habits? Surely, we need to educate people from a very early age about healthy eating. The soup and shake diet sounds like another hare-brained idea.
JACQUELINE KEMP, Spalding, Lincs. YOU can buy low-calorie soup and shakes in every supermarket, so why supply them on prescription? My wife is a diabetic, but she wouldn’t dream of asking the doctor for soup.
MARK COHEN, Manchester. IF AUSTERITY is to blame for the stalling of life expectancy figures (Mail), why did it keep rising in times of greater hardship, including before the NHS existed? People in their 80s and 90s managed to survive through the Great Depression, World War II and post-war austerity. Lifestyle must shoulder some of the blame for the suggestion that today’s children will not live as long as their grandparents.
MARIE O’BRIEN, Wirral.