Type 2 diabetes is a common metabolic disease that can be influenced powerfully by health habits that can:

• increase the capacity of your muscles and liver recognise high blood sugar levels, and quickly mop it up out of your bloodtream,

• rest and repair your pancreas so it can repair,

• lower you body's need for insulin so your body becomes more responsive when you do consume foods containing carbohydrates.

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Food As Medicine

Diabetes is less common among people who consume higher fibre and more plants in their diet, and more common in those who eat a diet higher in refined carbohydrates and fats.

Dietary strategies for reducing the risk of diabetes, managing diabetes and, when using intensive approaches, reversal of type 2 diabetes includes:

• a whole-food plant-based diet

• reducing processed sugars in the diet including artificial sweeteners. Replace these foods with fruit, vegetables, nuts and seeds.

• reducing processed grains in the diet including white flour, white rice, puffed and flaked cereals and baked goods. Replace these foods with whole grains, such as rolled or steel cut oats, buckwheat, quinoa. 

• increasing dietary fibre fills you up more and is of lower glycaemic index compared to processed and baked foods. 

• get your protein and fats from plant based sources - legumes, lentils, seeds, nuts, olives and olive oil. 

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Movement

Exercise is an important component to prevention and reversing diabetes. Muscles take up blood sugar out of the circulation, thereby reducing blood sugar levels and reducing damage caused to the body by the high blood sugar levels.

 

Both aerobic exercise and resistance training help reduce blood sugar by requiring the muscle to work harder, it has a higher need and ability to push blood sugar into the muscle cell.

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Intermittent Fasting

Humans evolved to intermittently fast, we all do it overnight anyway. During sleep we give out body a break from eating, digesting and having to deal with incoming sugar into the body. This allows for important other body processes to occur, such as repair and breakdown of damaged cells. With longer fasts such as fasting beyond 12 hours the body switches to utilising fat as an energy source rather than sugar. 

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There are a number of ways to do intermittent fasting including confining eating to a 8 or 10 hour window during the day, thereby extending the time the body is not receiving food. Other methods include the 5:2 where you eat normal meals for 5 days per week and 2 days fasting. 

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Different options work for different people's schedules. We work with you to decide what type of intermittent fasting would work for you. it is important to work with a health professional to to find the best strategy for you and to ensure you are getting adequate nutrition, especially if you are also in training. 

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What about keto diets and very low calorie diets?

Both these diets have been shown to reverse diabetes. However we do not recommend a very low calorie diet as it is hard to sustain long term and achieves diabetes reversal through weight loss. Once a person resumes eating at the same caloric level as they previously did, unless they change their dietary pattern they will likely experience rebound weight gain and recurrence of diabetes in the longer term. 

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In terms of the ketogenic diet, it also is effective at producing weight loss and reversing diabetes in the short term. However, cutting many healthy fruit, vegetables, legumes and wholegrains and nuts from the diet because they contain carbohydrates means you are cutting out vitamins, minerals, phytonutrients that are packaged in those foods- nutrients that are anti-inflammatory and protective to the body.

 

Also the keto diet alters the gut microbiome. Due to the high fat content of the diet, it favours bile-loving bacteria. The low fibre content reduces the diversity of gut bacteria as well as health promoting species such as lactobacillus. A diverse gut microbiome is associated with lower chronic diseases and improved health status.

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