The blog is dead, long live the feed!

For curated links on research for management, control, and possible remission of type 2 diabetes mellitus, please see:

• current @T2DRemission on Twitter
• archive Michael.Massing on Pinboard

Pending further developments,these posts will remain online; each represents my best understanding as of the time of publication. Posts are subject to review as science, clinical practice, and my thinking (e.g., about reliance on dietary animal protein) evolve.

Here and elsewhere, read critically. Your life and wellbeing depend on it.

remission defined

As reported in Endocrine Today online:

The [expert study group*] agreed upon the following definitions for patients with type 1 and type 2 diabetes:

• Partial remission: hyperglycemia below diagnostic thresholds for diabetes; at least one year’s duration; no active pharmacologic therapy or ongoing procedures.
• Complete remission: normal glycemic measures; at least one year’s duration; no active pharmacologic therapy or ongoing procedures.
• Prolonged remission: complete remission of at least five years duration.

The term remission may be more accurate than the term cure because “current or potential future therapies for type 1 or type 2 diabetes will likely always leave patients at risk for relapse, given underlying pathophysiologic abnormalities and/or genetic predisposition,” the group wrote. “It may make sense to consider prolonged remission of diabetes essentially equivalent to cure.”
The group modeled its consensus definitions on existing terminology for certain malignancies such as cancer.

*The group comprised experts from pediatric and adult endocrinology, diabetes education, transplantation, metabolism, bariatric/metabolic surgery, and (for another perspective) hematology-oncology.
source: Buse JB et al. Diabetes Care. 2009;32:2133-2135.

remission? cure? control?

2003/12/16 "Looks to me like you're not diabetic anymore."
—my Kaiser Permanente doctor

Wow. I didn't think they were allowed to say that. Nor that any doctor would ever say, as mine did later in the same conversation, "You've cured yourself."

As I've learned since, only the first of these statements is true. Being "not diabetic anymore" can serve, with certain caveats, as an attainable goal in diabetes control. This is what I, along with more and more lay people and professionals, call remission.