Diet Controls, Not Reverses Diabetes

People from the Pritikin Longevity Center moved quickly to clarify a researcher’s claim that following their diet and exercise plan for 3 weeks could reverse diabetes.

Guess the Pritikin folks got embarrassed by the press release from the American Physiological Society, in which Christian Roberts of UCLA, lead author of a recent study, is quoted as saying: “The study shows, contrary to common belief, that type-2 diabetes and metabolic syndrome can be reversed solely through lifestyle changes.”

In fact, I got quite excited about this study and posted about it here.

Well, the British charity, Diabetes UK, jumped to refute that claim, according to NutraIngredients.com/ Europe. No, no, the organization insisted, you can’t reverse diabetes but you can control it.

So now the lead UCLA researcher is backing away from his earlier statement.

Roberts, who’s also Research Director of the Nathan Pritikin Research Foundation and Pritikin Center, Dr. R. James Barnard, now is opting for the "control" word versus the "reverse" word.

He now says “These [new] data are similar to other studies on the Pritikin Program (Diabetes Care Vol. 17 pp. 1469) showing that diet and exercise can control Type 2 diabetes.”

This squabbling over the word "reverse" versus "control" sort of misses the point.

If you eat right, cut the culprit carbs and exercise, you can get your diabetes under control. End of the story. Now, if we can just get those millions of Americans to sit up and pay attention to this!