Michael Mosley reversed his own type two diabetes by losing 1.5st in just 12 weeks.
BBC Morning Live’s Dr Xand van Tulleken has claimed that reversing diabetes is achievable, all thanks to one individual. Referring to the late Dr Michael Mosley who managed to reverse his own type two diabetes, he spoke this morning (October 21) on the show and explained how Michael’s health underwent a significant transformation after he lost a stone-and-a-half in just 12 weeks by adhering to a specific diet and daily calorie intake.
He explained: “Michael shifted his diet to allow him to lose weight. He cut down on carbs and he’s not someone living with obesity” with the health expert explaining that the “fat inside your tummy, around your organs, that’s the stuff more likely to give you type 2 diabetes” than than fat we can see on the outside does.
Talking about Mosley’s book Blood Sugar diet he says you can think of diabetes like this – “your body becomes more resistant to insulin, which is the hormone that lowers your blood sugar. Your body has to make more and more insulin and work harder and harder to lower your blood sugar and overtime your insulin rises, your body resists it more.
“Your blood sugar creeps up until you have type 2 diabetes” he explains” adding that “a Mediterranean style diet that rather than being a low-fat diet, was more of a low carb diet” and was they key to the late Doctor’s success, something Mosley emphasissed. In fact, Dr Mosley himself once said: “The worst place to put on fat is around your tummy; abdominal fat infiltrates your internal organs, like your liver and your pancreas (which in turn control your blood sugar levels) and that is where your problems start.
“I wrote the Blood Sugar Diet [book] because, nearly four years ago, I was diagnosed as a type 2 diabetic. I was not particularly overweight, weighing about 189lbs (86kgs) and I didn’t look particularly fat, but that was because a lot of the fat I was carrying was internal. I was a TOFI, Thin on the Outside, Fat Inside. I went for a special MRI scan and I had lots of fat clogging up my internal organs. Rather than start on medication, I went on the 5:2 diet (eat normally 5 days a week, cut your calories to around 600 calories for the other two days) lost 20lbs (9kgs) and reversed my diabetes.”
By introducing a Med diet into your daily life, Dr Xand said it will help “reduce inflammation, reduce demand on your body for insulin and help you lose weight and it’s those fat cells in the middle of your body that will help drive type 2 diabetes in many people.”
To prevent diabetes, Dr Xand said that “you can put it into remission if you are lucky enough to be able to cut calories and find it possible to lose weight” stating that bad habits like smoking, stress and sleep that might all contribute to diabetes. “We do know that if you can interrupt that [bad habits] you can bring your insulin down, bring your blood sugar down and avoid getting diabetes”, he concluded.
