I’ve found fastest the way to BEAT type 2 diabetes

He’s devoted his career to curing type 2 diabetes and inspired 5:2 creator Michael Mosley. Today, starting a major serialisation of his new book, Professor ROY TAYLOR explains his revolutionary discovery and how it can change YOUR life...

NO DOUBT you’re full of resolutions for what you want to achieve in the first few months of this new decade. Maybe you’ve decided to join the gym or master a new language. A lot can be achieved in a few short weeks, after all.

So what if I told you that by March – just

eight weeks from now — you, or someone you love, could make a truly revolutionary change. For that is how long, I’ve conclusively discovered, it takes for someone to be rid of type 2 diabetes, reversing it potentially for ever.

The stakes couldn’t be higher. As I’ve witnessed during the course of my medical career, this is the epidemic of our times; a health crisis that puts an intolerable strain on our health service, at a cost of millions ever year.

According to the latest figures, around 200,000 of us are living with a type 2 diabetes diagnosis and thousands more are in danger of developing type 2 or are pre-diabetic.

And, make no mistake, this is a truly gruesome illness, as I’ve seen first-hand many times since becoming a doctor in the Seventies.

Even if you try to muddle along at first, being more careful about what you eat and taking your pills diligently, type 2 diabetes is usually progressive — which means that it is only likely to worsen.

Amputations, blindness, nerve damage and excruciating pain in your legs and feet are all agonising consequences of this debilitating disease. With every passing year you are very likely to need more drugs to control worsening blood sugar swings, as well as enduring more pain. You may have to retire early and your life expectancy will certainly be shortened.

Whatever your age, a diabetes diagnosis doubles your risk of having a stroke and considerably ups your risk of heart attack.

I’m sorry if this all seems rather blunt, but you don’t want a doctor who hides the truth.

My journey to the discovery of how to reverse type 2 diabetes has been driven by the heartbreaking stories I’ve witnessed over the years.

Practising medicine as a hospital specialist means that I saw the most seriously affected. Meanwhile, my friends and colleagues in general practice see the whole range of damage that diabetes visits upon men and women — and their families.

Not just loss of mobility, sight and health, but the entire fallout of unemployment, family stresses and depression.

It’s the reason I so passionately believe those diagnosed with type 2 diabetes deserve a real choice: conventional ‘treatment’ or a chance to return to full health.

And it’s why I chose to work at the cutting edge of diabetes research, probing the precise causes for this complex, debilitating disease. Indeed, it was my groundbreaking work which Dr Michael Mosley famously used to successfully reverse his own diabetes diagnosis.

Now I’ve written a revolutionary new book, Life Without Diabetes, based on these decades of scientific discovery.

Serialised all next week in the Mail, it reveals the science behind the cause of diabetes, and guides you through an effective, three-stage weight-loss plan that could save your life and the life of anyone you know who is at risk of, or currently battling, this horrific disease.

AND it really is as easy to follow as 1, 2, 3. Beginning with a short and super-effective diabetes-busting phase, where a simple liquid diet allows your body to begin reversing the root causes of the illness, stages two and three show you the delicious meals (from hearty haddock and prawn chowder to spicy harissa aubergines) you can incorporate into your diet to keep diabetes away and transform your health — potentially for ever.

Type 2 diabetes is characterised by too much sugar in the blood when the body is unable to produce enough of the hormone, insulin, which should control blood sugar levels, and cells throughout the body stop responding effectively to the insulin they do receive.

The disease is a true merchant of misery. One of the first patients I treated with type 2 diabetes was a man in his mid-40s with severe diabetic foot ulcers.

High blood sugar levels damage nerves and circulation and make terrible ulcers more likely.

So serious was this man’s condition that I was forced to battle to save his feet, all the while acutely aware that the months he spent in hospital meant agonising time spent away from family, away from work.

Then there was the 59-year-old lady I met in the coronary care unit. Until her heart attack struck, in the prime of life, her type 2 diabetes had seemed to be just a bit of inconvenience.

But this apparently fit lady had suffered one of the most sinister, silent complications of her diabetes

— premature heart disease.

She required major surgery, then long-term drug treatment. Her outlook was profoundly changed by this shocking brush with death, and she undoubtedly led a less carefree life than she may have done.

Had we known then about the possibility of reversing type 2 diabetes, these two people may have been able to avoid these devastating problems and enjoy an active life way beyond retirement.

Watching my patients suffer spurred me to move into research, and since the Eighties I have worked both in research and as a consultant specialising in diabetes.

In 2006, I expanded my research, leading a multi million-pound project at Newcastle University, which brought together brilliant physicists with state-of-the-art scanners to create the Newcastle

Magnetic Resonance Centre.

My interest in this was to investigate the main organs involved with diabetes, the liver and pancreas, which jointly control your body’s management of insulin and glucose.

Thanks to these sophisticated scans, we found those with type 2 diabetes had a clear and consistent picture of excess fat in both the liver and the pancreas — far more

than in people without diabetes even if overweight.

Our focus then turned to investigating the possible links between the fat deposits in these organs and two apparently separate problems: the failure of the pancreas to make insulin normally and failure of the insulin to work properly.

Ask anyone what type 2 diabetes is, and they’ll tell you the disease is linked with too much sugar. And, yes, it’s true diabetes occurs when there’s excess glucose in the bloodstream. But our research has shown type 2 diabetes is actually caused by just one factor: too much fat in the liver and pancreas.

We were able to show that excess sugar in the blood is converted to fat, which is stored around the body, including in and around the organs. If this fat accumulation continues (if you eat too much and exercise too little), at some point you reach your own ‘personal fat threshold’ when fat in the liver and pancreas start to impede their ability to function effectively.

Normally, your liver will produce just the right amount of glucose that your body needs. But when there is excess fat in the liver, it will produce too much glucose and also pass excess fat to the pancreas.

As we saw on our scans, this excess fat then attacks the pancreas’s insulin-producing cells, leading to them malfunction. The result is type 2 diabetes. Anyone given a diabetes diagnosis was routinely advised to try to lose weight. Doctors have long known diabetes is linked with, and exacerbated by, being overweight.

However, it always seemed to be a rather half-hearted request, rarely backed up with support. And it was made so much harder by the fact many diabetes drugs have the sideeffect of making people actually

gain weight, instead of losing it. Then, in 2006, I had the epiphany that led me to under stand the root cause of

■ DIABETES is a serious condition characterised by having too much sugar in your blood.

■ WHEN you eat, food is converted into glucose (a form of sugar) and sent out into the bloodstream as fuel for cells throughout your body.

■ IN A healthy person, the pancreas produces a hormone called insulin which steps in to control fluctuating blood sugar levels after and inbetween meals.

■ TYPE 2 diabetes is a progressive disease which causes your pancreas to produce insufficient insulin and the cells around your body to be less reactive to insulin.

■ IT IS caused by a build up of fat in the liver — the chief role of which is to filter the blood — and the pancreas.

■ WHEN you eat too much food, the excess sugar in your blood is converted to fat, which is stored around the body, including your organs, ultimately impeding their ability to work.

■ NORMALLY, your liver will produce just the right amount of glucose that your body needs. But when it contains excess fat, it produces too much glucose and also passes fat to the pancreas. This excess fat then attacks the pancreas’s insulin-producing cells, leading them to malfunction. The result is type 2 diabetes.

JOIN THE 1,2,3 REVOLUTION

■ COMMON signs of diabetes include increased thirst, passing water more often, especially at night, extreme tiredness or blurred vision. If you are concerned, speak to your GP or practice nurse.

■ IF YOU have already been warned by your GP that your blood sugar levels are high or in the ‘pre-diabetes’ range, this plan will certainly help you avoid full-blown type 2 diabetes.

■ YOUR risk of type 2 diabetes is increased if you know you are overweight. This plan will help reduce your risk.

■ IF YOU have a close family member (parents, siblings, grandparents) with type 2 diabetes, you are considered to be a risk of the disease. Your risk may be elevated if you had gestational diabetes when pregnant or if you are of Asian or Far Eastern descent.

■ YOUR GP surgery might be willing to perform a (free) blood test to screen for diabetes, or you can drop into a number of pharmacies for a swift check (Hickeys do these for €15). Aim to attend in the morning before eating breakfast, for a more accurate result.

■ IF YOU have been diagnosed with type 2 diabetes talk to your GP or practice nurse and discuss this plan (your medication levels will probably need to be reduced, under supervision, as you lose weight).

■ THIS approach is only suitable in type 2 diabetes, and not type 1 or other forms of diabetes. ADAPTED by Louise Atkinson from Life Without Diabetes, by Professor Roy Taylor (Short Books, €14). © Roy Taylor 2020.