ASK DR MOSLEY YOUR QUESTIONS ANSWERED

YOU say it is possible to ‘reverse’ diabetes with a very low-calorie diet – other articles I’ve read refer to ‘remission’, which means a person is still diabetic. What’s the difference? PROFESSOR Roy Taylor, from Newcastle University, showed during a groundbreaking study that feeding diabetics a very low-calorie diet (800 calories a day) put their condition into remission. In this context, I use reversal to mean the same thing. This means people can come off medication, but still have to be careful. The fat has come out of the pancreas and the cells are now responsive to insulin, meaning blood sugar is better controlled. One reason why I prefer ‘reversal’ to ‘remission’ is the latter is a term associated with cancer and implies, wrongly, that improvements are temporary.