This is great news. Any type of pancreatic function restoration is also potentially good for Type 1.5 (which constitute a sizable chunk of misdiagnosed T2Ds) where the body attacks more slowly (over the course of years) instead of acutely like traditional T1D and so doctors assume it's insulin resistance instead of pancreatic function decline since they both present with the same symptom - hyperglycemia.
tracker1 · 1h ago
It would be nice if fasting insulin and other markers were tested more regularly beyond fasted glucose and a1c, since those can vary for other reasons. Not to mention catching those developing insulin resistance potentially years ahead.
Lu2025 · 1h ago
BTW Covid harms pancreatic cells that produce insulin via autoimmune mechanisms.
DarwinsToffees · 2h ago
This is very encouraging, but will take a long time to get to any type of usable treatment because these cells are literally made to evade the immune system they run a whole bunch of other risks. Also cell therapies right now are one of the weakest markets in Biotechs due to the level of costs to develop. This is slightly different since it's Allogenic, but the market seems not very invested in cell therapy.
mlhpdx · 3h ago
This seems like it’s on the right track. Finally something that doesn’t require immunosuppressants.
beached_whale · 2h ago
It was in people and not mice too. So many of these headlines are in cell cultures or mice.
Just sent this to my son, seems legitimately promising
RHSeeger · 2h ago
Because it has been commented over and over "oh, type 2 is because you are overweight"...
> We tend to think of type 2 diabetes as a disease that afflicts people who are overweight. But it can also appear in people with perfectly healthy weights—and be more deadly in them. A study published today in the Journal of the American Medical Association indicates that normal-weight people diagnosed with type 2 diabetes have double the risk of dying from heart disease and other causes than overweight people with diabetes.
(Yes, I know this post is about Type 1... but _all_ of the talk in it when I posted this was about Type 2; and basically blaming the people with it for their condition)
chips_not_fries · 1h ago
type 2 is more closely associated with genetics than type 1
But being overweight is a huge risk factor for developing it and absolutely can contribute to it. I don't how it being more deadly in skinny people detracts from that or is relevant at all.
RHSeeger · 1h ago
Because people (who don't know what they're talking about) respond with statements like "you can cure Diabetes Type 2 with diet and exercise", and
- That's false. For _most_ people, you can prevent the symptoms of it with those, but not all. Nor does it _cure_ it, it prevents it from presenting symptoms. The same way that avoiding a food you are allergic to doesn't cure the allergy, it just prevents it from impacting you
- It's insulting to a lot of people that _are_ eating and exercising well, but still battling with Diabetes Type 2
It's wrong and it's insulting.
tracker1 · 1h ago
Even if you are overweight... it's NOT easy to lose weight.. especially if you've lost a significant amount of weight in your life. You may well have a really dysfunctional metabolism, and most advice is just bad for this case. Many people actually have to eat more of a reduced menu in order to lose weight.
I'm a pretty big fan of carnivore for this, which has its own detractors, and countering half a century of misinformation of meat and fat isn't the easiest thing in the world. And even then, you may still need some level of supplemental insulin for a long while.
That isn't to say I support general gluttony and laziness... but it isn't that easy, and its even harder when people just assume you aren't even trying or have negativity towards you in general. You try to work out and you get dirty looks and stares... you are eating out (healthy options) but again, dirty looks and stares... it doesn't help.
chips_not_fries · 1h ago
it's one factor but weight and diet isn't the only component
m3kw9 · 6h ago
Type 2, they need to solve type 2.
snarf21 · 5h ago
There have been a lot of advancements on this front too. One promising technique is duodenum resurfacing (DMR). This helps reset some of the insulin sensitivity issues. The one problem we have is that this is a one time low risk procedure compared to selling insulin or GLP-1. Like all of our problems in healthcare, we have a major misalignment in incentives.
isn't that what GLP1s are for (before you get full blown type 2)
javchz · 5h ago
Yes, but even lifestyle changes (like a diet low in glycemic load and building muscle) can help reduce many of the harmful effects of type 2 diabetes, even sending it into remission for some people in early stages.
Type 1 is a different story. It’s the lack of natural insulin production (due to a damaged pancreas, autoimmune or other causes), basically the opposite problem to type 2, and no amount of lifestyle changes will replace of need of insulin doses.
kulahan · 4h ago
I just want to make clear what the other commenter said: type 2 is completely reversible in its early stages. Lose weight, eat a more healthy diet, and you should see your body return to normal.
Unfortunately, there's a serious time limit on this news, as the disease does permanently damage your cells, but in a way that's not terrible. It's probably easier to be shocked by a diagnosis into a lifestyle change than to find out now and undo 30 years of living with daily insulin injections anyways.
CyberDildonics · 4h ago
If you treat sugar as an addiction you can solve it yourself.
kingkawn · 6h ago
Nobody had thought of this wow
bentt · 6h ago
We were here, at the moment of inspiration
moi2388 · 5h ago
Why? Type 2 can be mostly prevented and if caught early enough treated with diet and exercise.
If you solve type 2 they’ll just eat themselves into a new episode again
UI_at_80x24 · 5h ago
I know you put the caveat "mostly" in here but it's important to state that this is not always true.
I was diagnosed with T2 a couple of years ago.
During that time I was cycling 25 miles a day.
After the diagnoses I completely eliminated all carbs from my diet.
My blood sugar was still not under control.
My fasting blood sugar (first thing in the morning, and 18hrs of fasting) was the highest point of the day. (14-18 mmol/L)
I fasted (water only) for 1 week.
no difference.
I was on a bunch of medication, none of it helped.
It wasn't until I started taking a GLP-1 drug that my sugar came under control.
So medication (ozempic) was critical to me getting my blood sugar under control.
Diet didn't fix it. Exercise didn't help.
I've lost ~90lbs since then.
I'd probably have died/gone into a coma if not for GLP-based drugs.
My anecdote does not contradict wide-spread science and medically derived knowledge. But it should help temper the fat and diet shaming that exists in society.
fhdkweig · 5h ago
If you lost 90 lbs, you must have been at least 90 lbs overweight. That isn't a little bit of fat. That is a lot of fat. And it takes a lifetime to put on that much fat. You can't really claim that you had proper exercise and diet before you started taking medications. I have seen many episodes of My 600 LB Life and similar shows where the clients and their caretakers swear on their mother's graves that they even eat at all, but that isn't how reality and physics work.
Don't misunderstand, I'm glad they made the GLP-1 drugs, but still, they have for years been reversing Type 2 diabetes through exercise a diet.
ToucanLoucan · 23m ago
Calories in/out is the only reliable way (short of surgery or drugs anyway) to reliably change the size of your body in either direction. Genetics, where you are on the planet, hormones, and your average activity levels tweak things but this remains fundamentally true:
If you eat in a calorie deficit, you will lose weight.
If you eat in a calorie surplus, you will gain weight.
It's not hateful, it's math. If you have a hard time getting your intake down due to life circumstances, addictions, stress, whatever, you have my utmost sympathies and I would do anything I could to help, but I'm not going to bullshit you. If you want to weigh less, you must, over a long period of time, take in fewer calories than you burn in a day. That is how you lose weight in the most nuts-and-bolts way there is.
somenameforme · 3h ago
A bit of a tangent, but the biking stuff is not relevant. What matters is your caloric consumption. Biking 25 miles, depending on your weight, is going to burn something like 1300 calories. For some contrast, a 2L bottle of coke has about 800 calories. So treat yourself to a big serving of Coke after (or during) the biking, maybe a fast food burger or whatever, and it's like you're not even biking at all in terms of caloric effect. This is also true with 'sports drinks' which are also loaded with calories which can be really easy to chug when doing cardio intensive work.
And this can easily happen because biking 25 miles is going to send your appetite skyrocketing. This is why working out to lose weight is probable one of the worst ideas imaginable. Working out is a critical part of staying in good health, but it simply has to be paired with a good diet, permanently. In other words you can't work away a bad diet at the gym (or on a bike), it just doesn't work.
peterfirefly · 3h ago
Exercise is relevant, too. It's not just obesity and it's not just diet.
(And genes matter, too.)
borroka · 3h ago
If you say that diet did not fix it, but then you lost ~90 lbs, which is a massive weight loss [(1) congratulations, 2) we are becoming used to people losing 200 lbs and 90 is a victim of weight-loss inflation], it looks like the problem was that the diet, which can be defined as a particular way of eating and/or caloric restriction, was not really a diet in the second meaning of the term.
Ozempic helped you lose weight primarily by making you stick to a diet, due to its suppressing effects on appetite.
mrguyorama · 3h ago
So very rough estimate:
25 miles of biking is somewhere in the world of 400ish Calories.
If you were doing that and not losing weight, you were eating 400ish excess Calories on average.
That's the equivalent of a single packet of Ramen, or about 4 Oreo cookies. Food is extremely energy dense.
Exercise, especially using efficient means like biking or running or walking, just isn't that effective. You need caloric restriction to make any ground for the majority of people.
>But it should help temper the fat and diet shaming that exists in society.
Why would it? Factually, if Ozempic and similar solved your weight issues, it directly means you were eating "too much" food. People who see that as a personal failing will continue to do so, and will see Ozempic as enabling "weak willed" people, or a crutch for "lesser" people.
bregma · 5h ago
Most cancer can be prevented and if caught early treated with surgery, chemo, or radiation. No need to look for a cure, those people will probably just keep smoking or eating or exposing themselves to the environment and die anyway.
ch4s3 · 4h ago
> Most cancer can be prevented
This is a highly questionable statement. There are myriad reasons for the kinds of DNA copying errors that cause cancer(s), and few are mono-causal. Type-II diabetes is mainly a lifestyle disease and barely existed 50 years ago. That said any treatment or effort to cure Type-II diabetes is laudable, and it's clear that broad societal factors create the conditions for so many people to develop diabetes.
bregma · 1h ago
Your misplaced confidence that Type II diabetes is a lifestyle disease for which you can just judge the victim is questionable.
I have never been overweight, I eat healthy (mostly plants, very little refined carbs), and I am active and run 5k regularly. That didn't prevent me from inheriting T2 from both my parents by the time I turned 60.
I'm pretty certain T2 was widespread 50 years ago. We just didn't test for it and people just lost their feet or went blind or had heart attacks as they got old. Was there even an inexpensive, rapid test for HbA1c in 1975?
peterfirefly · 3h ago
A lot of them are probably not copying errors but errors in which parts of the genome are turned on and which parts are turned off.
(Agree entirely about type 2 diabetes.)
dpc050505 · 2h ago
Also a lot of environmental factors that can cause cancer are out of your control if you live in an urban area.
> We tend to think of type 2 diabetes as a disease that afflicts people who are overweight. But it can also appear in people with perfectly healthy weights—and be more deadly in them. A study published today in the Journal of the American Medical Association indicates that normal-weight people diagnosed with type 2 diabetes have double the risk of dying from heart disease and other causes than overweight people with diabetes.
- https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/diabetes-can-strike-hard...
(Yes, I know this post is about Type 1... but _all_ of the talk in it when I posted this was about Type 2; and basically blaming the people with it for their condition)
https://diabetes.org/about-diabetes/genetics-diabetes
- That's false. For _most_ people, you can prevent the symptoms of it with those, but not all. Nor does it _cure_ it, it prevents it from presenting symptoms. The same way that avoiding a food you are allergic to doesn't cure the allergy, it just prevents it from impacting you
- It's insulting to a lot of people that _are_ eating and exercising well, but still battling with Diabetes Type 2
It's wrong and it's insulting.
I'm a pretty big fan of carnivore for this, which has its own detractors, and countering half a century of misinformation of meat and fat isn't the easiest thing in the world. And even then, you may still need some level of supplemental insulin for a long while.
That isn't to say I support general gluttony and laziness... but it isn't that easy, and its even harder when people just assume you aren't even trying or have negativity towards you in general. You try to work out and you get dirty looks and stares... you are eating out (healthy options) but again, dirty looks and stares... it doesn't help.
No comments yet
Type 1 is a different story. It’s the lack of natural insulin production (due to a damaged pancreas, autoimmune or other causes), basically the opposite problem to type 2, and no amount of lifestyle changes will replace of need of insulin doses.
Unfortunately, there's a serious time limit on this news, as the disease does permanently damage your cells, but in a way that's not terrible. It's probably easier to be shocked by a diagnosis into a lifestyle change than to find out now and undo 30 years of living with daily insulin injections anyways.
If you solve type 2 they’ll just eat themselves into a new episode again
I was diagnosed with T2 a couple of years ago. During that time I was cycling 25 miles a day. After the diagnoses I completely eliminated all carbs from my diet. My blood sugar was still not under control. My fasting blood sugar (first thing in the morning, and 18hrs of fasting) was the highest point of the day. (14-18 mmol/L) I fasted (water only) for 1 week. no difference.
I was on a bunch of medication, none of it helped.
It wasn't until I started taking a GLP-1 drug that my sugar came under control.
So medication (ozempic) was critical to me getting my blood sugar under control. Diet didn't fix it. Exercise didn't help.
I've lost ~90lbs since then. I'd probably have died/gone into a coma if not for GLP-based drugs.
My anecdote does not contradict wide-spread science and medically derived knowledge. But it should help temper the fat and diet shaming that exists in society.
Don't misunderstand, I'm glad they made the GLP-1 drugs, but still, they have for years been reversing Type 2 diabetes through exercise a diet.
If you eat in a calorie deficit, you will lose weight.
If you eat in a calorie surplus, you will gain weight.
It's not hateful, it's math. If you have a hard time getting your intake down due to life circumstances, addictions, stress, whatever, you have my utmost sympathies and I would do anything I could to help, but I'm not going to bullshit you. If you want to weigh less, you must, over a long period of time, take in fewer calories than you burn in a day. That is how you lose weight in the most nuts-and-bolts way there is.
And this can easily happen because biking 25 miles is going to send your appetite skyrocketing. This is why working out to lose weight is probable one of the worst ideas imaginable. Working out is a critical part of staying in good health, but it simply has to be paired with a good diet, permanently. In other words you can't work away a bad diet at the gym (or on a bike), it just doesn't work.
(And genes matter, too.)
Ozempic helped you lose weight primarily by making you stick to a diet, due to its suppressing effects on appetite.
25 miles of biking is somewhere in the world of 400ish Calories.
If you were doing that and not losing weight, you were eating 400ish excess Calories on average.
That's the equivalent of a single packet of Ramen, or about 4 Oreo cookies. Food is extremely energy dense.
Exercise, especially using efficient means like biking or running or walking, just isn't that effective. You need caloric restriction to make any ground for the majority of people.
>But it should help temper the fat and diet shaming that exists in society.
Why would it? Factually, if Ozempic and similar solved your weight issues, it directly means you were eating "too much" food. People who see that as a personal failing will continue to do so, and will see Ozempic as enabling "weak willed" people, or a crutch for "lesser" people.
This is a highly questionable statement. There are myriad reasons for the kinds of DNA copying errors that cause cancer(s), and few are mono-causal. Type-II diabetes is mainly a lifestyle disease and barely existed 50 years ago. That said any treatment or effort to cure Type-II diabetes is laudable, and it's clear that broad societal factors create the conditions for so many people to develop diabetes.
I have never been overweight, I eat healthy (mostly plants, very little refined carbs), and I am active and run 5k regularly. That didn't prevent me from inheriting T2 from both my parents by the time I turned 60.
I'm pretty certain T2 was widespread 50 years ago. We just didn't test for it and people just lost their feet or went blind or had heart attacks as they got old. Was there even an inexpensive, rapid test for HbA1c in 1975?
(Agree entirely about type 2 diabetes.)