Is There Any Hope To Control Or Reverse Diabetes?

Diabetes expert Dr Neville Wellington, medical director of Nutrition Network, shares valuable insight into managing type 2 diabetes.

- Dr Neville Wellington

Type 2 diabetes is the type that affects more than 90% of patients who have diabetes. Professor Noakes previously mentioned the work of Dr George Campbell who assessed the diets of the Zulu and Indian patients who attended his clinic at The King Edward VIII Hospital in KwaZulu-Natal in the 1960s.

He found that the intake of sugar was approximately 40kg per year in the urban population. He also noted that “the peak incubation period in 80 such diabetics lay between 18 and 22 years”, which led him to develop “the rule of 20 years”. He was able to corroborate this with many other researchers around the world.

In other words, he showed that a high sugar or carbohydrate intake for 20 years was linked to type 2 diabetes onset in susceptible people. Of interest is that South Africans are still consuming about 34 to 36kg of sugar per year per person according to the US department of agriculture. The recent 2019 International Diabetes Federation statistics on diabetes prevalence show that 12.8% of South Africans have diabetes.

Since the 1960s when it seemed apparent that the intake of sugar was the principal cause of diabetes, science has confirmed the mechanisms by which diabetes is caused by sugar. In short, a high intake of sugar, which digests to glucose and fructose, is then metabolised in the liver. The sugar is converted into fat and is deposited in the liver ultimately causing a fatty liver.

Under normal circumstances the liver also manufactures glucose for the body’s energy needs, and this process is controlled by insulin (released by the pancreas). However, when someone has a fatty, damaged liver, it tends to become unresponsive to the effects of insulin, and glucose levels rise.