The Newcastle Diet Research Study

[Carina1962]

Does anyone know any more updated information on the Newcastle Diet Research Study? ie the people who were the 'guinea pigs' in the trial whether their diabetes has stayed in 'reverse' since the experiment or whether they have gone back to being diabetic? would be interesting to know on an update 🙂

 

[yorksman]

Newcastle maintain a web page about their study and have recently published a follow up..

 

[everydayupsanddowns]

Interesting read - personally I'm still quite uncomfortable with the use of the term 'reversal' in the context of the data reported.

It would appear to me that a significant proportion of the 'reversal' that is being described sounds more like 'well controlled diabetes supported by lowered IR following weight loss'. Which is pretty much exactly what many forum members have been able to achieve by 'eating to their meter'. It still doesn't seem entirely clear what happens to post-prandial levels when the people involved to back to eating freely, since they are defining reversal by FBG only.

Still good to have such a clear indication of the importance of diet as a piece of research though - so often T2D is described as universally and inevitably progressive through ever increasing meds, and at least this research is suggesting that that isn't necessarily the case for everyone.

 

[yorksman]

I think reversal is a bit of a misnomer as it suggests returning to a point before the onset of diabetes. My understanding is that this is not possible as once part of the beta cell mass is lost, it is not replenished. What they suggest in the text is:

"Normalisation of both beta cell function and hepatic insulin sensitivity in type 2 diabetes was achieved by dietary energy restriction alone. This was associated with decreased pancreatic and liver triacylglycerol stores."

The hypothesis is that an increase in liver trigs results in an increase in pancreatic trigs which in turn causes the beta cells to die off faster than they are replenished, hence the progessive deterioration. Calorie restriction appears to restore that balance, albeit for a lower beta cell mass.