Reversing Diabetes Without Drugs

It can seem with any chronic illness that the road is one way. You can slow the progression using drugs, but there is no way to go back. This feels particularly true with patients who have diabetes. Yet a new study shows that isn't the case.
The researchers in this study used a novel new approach called diet, foregoing the usual drugs. They found that diabetes patients, many of whom had been diabetic for years, were able to reverse their diabetes by using a low-calorie diet and dropping about thirty pounds.
The numbers the researchers saw in these patients were similar to those seen in weight-loss surgery patients. Surgical practices advertise that they can reverse diabetes, but it usually involves a major surgery and the subsequent loss of over a hundred pounds.
What happened in the low-calorie diet was that diabetic patients were able to reset their insulin levels and increase their body's ability to process sugar. The question is why this study needed to be done at all. Shouldn't diet be the first treatment for diabetes? But doctors reach first for drugs now, even in the U.K. You didn't honestly think this kind of study would ever be done in the U.S., did you? Here's more for the geeks among us, and here's the original study abstract for your doctor.