The key to diabetes crisis is weight loss

THERE was good news and bad news about type 2 diabetes this week. Rates of type 2 have doubled in the past 15 years, driven largely by our ever-growing waistlines. The charity Diabetes UK says that by 2030 more than 5.5 million Britons will be living with the condition.

The good news comes in two parts. Firstly, an international panel of diabetes experts has published an article in The Lancet urging colleagues to focus on treating type 2 diabetes through weight loss rather than trying to control blood sugar levels by prescribing drugs.

At last recognition of something I and others have been banging on about for years: that you can reverse type 2 diabetes by losing weight (which is far better for your long-term health than just taking the tablets).

Weight loss helps because people with raised blood sugar are often carrying too much fat around their waists.

This visceral fat, as it’s known, clogs up the liver and pancreas, which can’t then produce insulin to bring blood sugar levels down. A weight-loss diet is a proven way to get rid of visceral fat, fast.

I have a very personal interest in this: nine years ago I was diagnosed with type 2 but reversed it by inventing the 5:2 diet and losing 20lb (9kg) in a couple of months. At the time of my diagnosis, I wasn’t particularly overweight, so I was intrigued this week when my friend, Professor Roy Taylor, of Newcastle University, showed me the early results of a study with people who have type 2 despite a ‘healthy’ BMI (body mass index). He and his team put these patients on an 800-calorie-a-day diet until they lost 10 to 15 per cent of their weight — three quarters got their blood sugar levels back to normal, without medication. Scans showed big reductions in their visceral fat around the liver and pancreas. If they keep the weight off, it will transform their lives, as it has mine.