The generic "cure for diabetes" in the headline seems extremely misleading when the article suggest this is only for "brittle diabetes" which makes up only 0.3% of people with Type 1 diabetes which makes up only 6% of people with diabetes. So this wouldn't be a "cure for diabetes", it is a cure for "0.018% of people with diabetes".
> In March 2023, the FDA gave Vertex the greenlight to begin clinical trials of VX-264, an advanced version of the therapy in which the transplanted islets are encapsulated in a device that protects them from the recipient’s immune system, eliminating the need for immunosuppression.
What's depressing is that Type 2 diabetes also has a functional cure, but nobody is promoting it (or is it that nobody is willing to commit to it?).
Type 2 diabetes is entirely diet controlled (and triggered), adhering to a proper diet can entirely eliminate the need for insulin. Additionally, fasting is very effective at jump starting the treatment and resetting your insulin sensitivity.
Melatonin up-regulates insulin receptors. Get a lozenge or sublingual form. It can push T2 back to prediabetes, and it can reduce insulin requirements in T1. I'm T1, been taking melatonin 25 years now, my requirements stabilized at 40% less and that's continued until now. I have to use a 30 unit syringe w half unit markings to take my long acting insulin. I weigh 180 pounds and take 11.5 units of Novalog. My A1C has stayed below 7 for 15 years. And w these in arm sensors I'm down below 6.5. The doctor doesn't want me going lower and focus more on less highs & less lows.
T1 or uhh, brittle(?) diabetes is where your pancreas just doesnt exist. Gone. I had a relative who got a nasty viral "flu". 2 weeks later their pancreas was eaten and gone. Thats when I found out viral T1 diabetes was a thing.
T2 is a whole different thing, where your cells get resistant to insulin, the similar way you can get resistant to caffeine. And it takes insulin+glucose to get energy. So you end up with more glucose in your bloodstream cause your cells wont "eat" it fast enough.
Eventually, T2 will damage and destroy the pancreas. That takes years though. But even if you do a islet replacement, you still have the resistance problem.
> This is great news for people with Type 1 Diabetes
Currently this only cures the "brittle" Type 1 variant, not all T1. I'm based that off this line in the article:
> There’s reason to believe, however, that the therapy could one day functionally cure people with manageable T1D, too, and an in-development stem cell-based version of the therapy could make it more widely available.
It is unlikely that it will work for type 2 diabetes. This treatment is a way for pancreas cells to start producing insulin again. However, type 2 is typically characterized by insulin resistance, where your body does produce insulin, but doesn't respond adequately to the insulin that is produced.
I'm a type 2 diabetic in remission (no drugs but a blood glucose level lower than pre-diabetic) for three years with a very low carb diet. Candy is right out, but I satisfy my sweet tooth with artificially sweetened drinks. It would probably be better for me if I didn't but I'm afraid I'd fall off of the wagon without them.
I'm curious if by volume you primarily eat veggies, then fats, then meat. I'm generally healthy and have found this works great for maintaining body weight and minimizing cravings. This morning I had a few carrots for breakfast along with coffee spiked with coconut oil.
Carrots have too many carbs for a low-carb diet (<=20g/day or 25g/day), but would work for a medium or moderate carb diet (<=50g/day or 100g/day).
Generally things like carrots, apples, or milk would be an occasional indulgence for this kind of diet. One serving is 10g+ of carbs (one apple, 1 cup of raw carrot, one glass of milk), which is over half the daily budget, so most would simply avoid them almost completely.
Another option is to do every-other-day fasting, which on eating days doubles your carb budget to still maintain a low average intake of carbs.
The typical ratio of macros in terms of calories is roughly 80% fats and 15-20% protein, with under 100 calories per day coming from carbs, so less than 5%.
On day 1 of my undergrad anatomy class, my professor told us about a cure he developed for Parkinson’s. He showed us footage of debilitated patients that were fully functioning after a year of his treatment. He thought it would be his ticket into the history books, but when he courted the pharma companies to commercialize his research, nobody wanted it because according to him, treating Parkinson’s was more profitable than curing it. He was so bitter that he spent every first lecture of every class he taught telling his story and showing the videos of his research.
I say all of this because I hope a functional cure for diabetes is found and sticks around because what pharma companies are doing to insulin-dependent people (among many others) is just criminal. It makes me wonder why we don’t hear about cures more often.
This sort of thing isn't without precedence. For instance, there was a commercialized Lyme Disease vaccine back in the 1990's, but anti-vaxxers kept hitting the manufacturer with nuisance suits, so they withdrew it from the market.
I wonder if the patents have expired yet. Maybe someone could make a generic version? There's a lot of money going into creating a new vaccine, since that would be more profitable, but there's nothing wrong with the old one.
A large number of people working in specific areas of disease research and study, especially at the pharma companies, are doing it because they or someone they love dearly suffers from or died from the disease. How would all of these people be kept quiet?
>A large number of people working in specific areas of disease research and study, especially at the pharma companies, are doing it because they or someone they love dearly suffers from or died from the disease.
Conviction and being smart are totally different things. There are more people with convictions than smart. What do you expect if nearly every doc/practitioner that does things outside of the established ideology is labeled as a quack?
