Reverse diabetes by having your cake... and eating it!

Think beating type 2 diabetes means going hungry? Wrong! In this life-changing series, the NHS’s top expert shares his revolutionary plan, with yummy recipes that are so good for you...

AyeAr ago I introduced Mail readers to my low-carb approach to putting type 2 diabetes into remission, telling how it’s transformed the health of patients in my GP practice.

I’ve been overwhelmed by how our story has caught the public’s imagination — and inspired GPs, too. Over a thousand fellow doctors have signed up to take the e- learning course I designed for the royal College of General Practitioners,

I’ve also been asked to give countless talks on low carb and its impact on patients with type 2 diabetes — including later this month, at the Diabetes UK professional conference in Glasgow.

I was even made an ambassador for the All Party Parliamentary Group on diabetes and got to meet Health Secretary Matt Hancock.

Don’t get me wrong, this is not about me — it’s about getting the message out about tackling type 2 with an approach that has given hope to so many.

That’s why I have teamed up again with top chef Giancarlo Caldesi (who reversed his own type 2 diabetes by going low carb) and his wife Katie, a food writer.

Together we will show how you, too, can transform your health — with delicious low- carb recipes published today and all next week, exclusively in the Mail.

From family favourites and meals you can prepare in less than 30 minutes, to thrifty dishes costing under £1 a serving, there is something for everyone.

The depressing truth is that every three minutes, someone in the UK gets diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, largely due to obesity.

Type 2 is not a condition to be dismissed lightly — it is linked to a host of life-changing complications, including nerve damage, that can lead to amputations, raised risk of heart disease, blindness, colorectal or breast cancer, stroke and premature death.

Like many, I, also once saw type 2 diabetes as inevitably a chronic, deteriorating condition needing ever-greater doses of medication.

This now seems ridiculous and sad. Thanks to low carb, my GP practice in Southport, Merseyside, has changed, with nearly 50 per cent of my patients having put their type 2 into remission.

This means they have been able to come off their medication (helping my NHS practice spend £50,000 less annually on diabetes drugs than the average!).

What is perhaps more important is that nearly all of them have experienced improvements in their blood sugar levels. And it’s not just their diabetic control, their weight, blood pressure and liver function have improved, too.

This can work for patients of all ages. I always thought that older people had a slower metabolism and so would really struggle to lose weight, but when I analyse the results of my patients aged over 65, they seem to do just as well as the younger ones.

A great example is Brian Clark, whose story was told in the Mail’s Good Health section last Tuesday. He’s over 80 and has lost lots of weight, reducing his waist by a massive 10in (25cm) by switching to a low-carb diet. After years of no formal exercise, he’s now joined a gym. The oldest patient I have helped in this way is aged 91.

It’s not just my GP practice — doctors across the UK, often led by their patients’ research into low carb (which is how I, too, first learned about it), are now recording similar results.

And increasingly, there is scientific research to back what we’re doing — it’s a grassroots revolution that’s changing our approach to treating type 2.

Low carb is not the only approach by any means, but it is a viable approach and now bodies such as the American Diabetes Association are acknowledging this fact. HOWever,

it is important to remember a low-carb diet may not suit everyone and there are other ways to improve your type 2 diabetes. regular exercise, for example, can make a lot of difference.

And there are other ways to put diabetes into remission without using medication, such as bariatric surgery (which means people are rendered physically unable to eat excessively.

very low- calorie diets are another, as devised by the wonderful Professor roy Taylor at Newcastle University and featured in The Mail in January. It was he who first helped me with my statistics so I was ready to publish them in medical journals.

What matters is losing weight — and low carb offers an effective way to do this.

For me there is no doubt the potential health benefits for type 2 diabetes patients of cutting sugar and starchy foods can offer is important. But in my surgery, what also stands out is the pride people are able to take in being in control of their health — sometimes after years of suffering.