Achieving Remission for Type 2 Diabetes

Type 2 diabetes nearly killed Anthony Wilson before he had even been diagnosed. One morning in 2012, his wife Sheila woke up for work to see that her husband had dark circles under his eyes and his skin looked gray. She knew something was seriously wrong, and that she had to get him to the hospital immediately. He resisted, but she persisted and prevailed, he recalls. “She walked me down the stairs at home, and the next thing I remember was when I woke up in the ICU,” says Wilson, now 54, who lives in Virginia Beach. Tests revealed Wilson’s blood sugar was multiple times higher than the threshold needed to diagnose Type 2 diabetes, a chronic condition where the body doesn’t use insulin properly, allowing blood sugar to rise unchecked. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] So intense was the strain on Wilson’s body that his organs were failing. His doctors were talking about putting him on dialysis because of kidney failure, and they had to shock his heart twice to get it back into rhythm because his diabetes had exacerbated an under-lying heart condition, Wilson says. Once he was stabilized, a doctor told Wilson he had Type 2 diabetes and would need to take insulin for the rest of his life. But not only was he able to come off insulin within months of his diagnosis, he can also now keep his blood sugar in a normal, healthy range with no diabetes medication at all. After losing 60 lb. in 2020—thanks to diet changes and regular exercis...
Source: TIME: Health - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized healthscienceclimate Source Type: news