CARRY A LIGHTER LOAD
the disease.
I was flicking through a scientific journal when I spotted a graph which showed blood sugar levels plummeted in people with type 2 diabetes in the days immediately following bariatric surgery (an operation to reduce the size of the stomach).
On the graph, the line plunged from the usual high level on the day before surgery to absolutely normal by day seven. Normal blood sugar levels? In seven days? This was unheard of.
The study authors suggested the rapid change might be due to the effect of hormones made by the gut and impacted by the surgery.
But these hormones are typically activated by food, and could not be active in people undergoing stomach surgery who were ‘nil by mouth’ for seven days after the operation.
SOMETHING else was clearly happening. When you stop eating for a few days, or go on a strict diet, your body will tap into the fat in your liver as a source of energy because it’s far easier to access and metabolise than the fat under your skin. Could this change have caused blood sugar levels to be normalised so rapidly?
Perhaps, I reasoned, this process was somehow reversing the insulin resistance of the liver cells in order to prompt a sudden return to normal function. But could the same process also be enough to prompt the insulinproducing cells of the pancreas back into action?
It seemed tantalisingly possible. We just needed to somehow test the theory and discover, through our scans, whether rapid weight loss could have a sufficiently swift impact on the function of the liver and pancreas to normalise previously uncontrolled blood sugar levels.
In 2011, we published the results of the groundbreaking study which replicated the dramatic reduction in calories immediately before and after bariatric surgery by putting people with type 2 diabetes on a low-calorie liquid diet.
We asked everyone on the study to stop taking their diabetes tablets and the results were astounding. Within seven days, their blood sugar levels had dropped to normal — just like after bariatric surgery.
Incredibly, our tests on their liver and pancreas confirmed fat levels inside these organs had decreased and were beginning to function normally again.
To our amazement, we were able to say, with scientific proof, that the underlying cause of type 2 diabetes was reversible, through diet and adequate weight loss. It was a monumental finding.
Although a small number accepted the breakthrough, inevitably it was met by enormous scepticism from many experts. Regardless, we received a huge number of emails from people asking to follow our study to reverse their own diabetes.
We had picked low-calorie meal replacement shakes as hunger is not a big problem and daily decisions were avoided on this diet. But they had also proved very practical, and many decided to try them for themselves.
As the months passed, we were inundated with amazing stories of how people — young and old, male and female, rich and poor, living in India, the US, South America, Europe or elsewhere — were achieving normal blood sugar levels and coming off their diabetes medication by trying what was being dubbed The Newcastle Diet.
That same year, I received a call from Dr Michael Mosley, who was very interested in our work. He was keen to see if he could follow our plan to reverse his own type 2 diabetes.
We worked together on his various TV programmes, and the publication of his 8-Week Blood Sugar Diet series, which has been enormously helpful in making my theories accessible to millions worldwide.
In the many research studies we have worked on in the nine years since, we have used the lowcalorie meal replacement soups and shakes.
The idea of them may be more associated with diet fads of the Eighties, but the need to follow this stage up with a controlled return to eating real food had been overlooked. Until now.
Stage one is the rapid weight loss phase — an eight to 12-week period using liquid meals as the basis to effectively reverse your diabetes. Stage two allows the gradual reintroduction of real meals while avoiding the return of blood sugar problems.
Finally, there’s stage three, a long-term plan of healthy eating, ensuring diabetes stays away, hopefully for ever.
Our many volunteers found the 1, 2, 3 eating plan nowhere near as difficult as they had feared.
Not only was their blood sugar transformed, most lost about 15kg — about 2st 5lb — in just eight weeks and felt better than they had done for years.
We added a plate of non-starchy veg to stage one to compliment the shakes and soups, aware that some may miss having ‘something to chew’, as well as warding off any potential constipation.
Our research goes on. For now, though, we’re confident that this is the recipe for success for ridding oneself of type 2 diabetes, and changing your life for good.