Last Updated on April 12, 2024 by Fasting Planet
You still remember the day you were diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. Since then, you’ve made careful lifestyle choices to keep your blood sugar under control. Recently, you’ve heard that fasting may be able to significantly help with your condition. Can you cure type 2 diabetes through fasting?
While type 2 diabetes has no cure, it is possible to reverse the condition through fasting. Since you’d lose weight and adjust your diet with an intermittent fast, you may be able to enjoy your day-to-day life without the need for diabetes medication.
In this article, we’ll tell you everything you need to know to treat type 2 diabetes through fasting. From real studies and data on the topic to the best types of fasts for diabetics, you’re not going to want to miss this. Keep reading!
Table of Contents
Understanding Type 2 Diabetes
While you yourself may have type 2 diabetes, in other cases, perhaps it’s a friend or loved one contending with this condition instead of you. Thus, we thought we’d start with some basic info on type 2 diabetes.
Description
Type 2 diabetes is one diabetes type, with the other type 1 diabetes. With that condition, your body fails to provide enough insulin. Type 2 diabetes patients can have the insulin they need, but their body has a bad reaction to it. Then, later, insulin production might slow.
Insulin is a very important hormone in all our lives, but it’s especially crucial in those with diabetes. Without insulin, we cannot control how much sugar our cells receive.
Years before, type 2 diabetes was referred to as adult-onset diabetes because the condition was thought to affect mostly adults at the time. Since children have also started getting this form of diabetes, a different name was necessary, and so it’s been called type 2 ever since.
Up to 30 million people may have diabetes in the United States alone. The vast majority of these cases are type 2 diabetes, with up to 95 percent of diabetics diagnosed with this.
Symptoms
It’s not always easy for doctors and other medical professionals to diagnose type 2 diabetes. The symptoms can manifest gradually, sometimes taking years before you realize something may be wrong with your health.
By that point, you may experience these symptoms:
- Neck and armpit skin darkening (in other parts of the body as well)
- Having infections more often
- Sores and wounds that don’t heal quickly
- Blurry vision
- Exhaustion
- Weight loss without trying
- Feeling hungrier and thirstier than usual
- Urinating very often
Causes
In a normal, healthy body without diabetes, you regularly make the hormone insulin. This comes from a gland near the pancreas, which releases the insulin into your blood. As the insulin travels along the bloodstream, your cells receive sugar or glucose.
Glucose gets converted into glycogen, which gives your cells the energy they need to support your tissue and muscles. Your liver produces this glycogen. It also keeps any leftover sugar stores you might need for later, such as during an intermittent fast. You can also eat to provide glucose to your body.
If glucose levels become dangerously low, also known as low blood sugar, the liver will immediately begin using glycogen in the glucose stores. This prevents your glucose from dropping even lower. In instances of low blood sugar, the pancreas stops releasing as much insulin.
For those with type 2 diabetes, the above does not happen the same way. Glucose won’t travel through your body’s cells. Instead, it gets stuck in your bloodstream, boosting your blood sugar along the way.
Your pancreas’ beta cells, which make insulin, decide to produce even more insulin, sending it to the bloodstream. Your cells are now overloaded with sugar, and so they stop functioning as they should. This inhibits future insulin production.
It’s believed that environmental factors and genetics could cause your body’s cells and pancreas to behave in such a way with type 2 diabetes.
Risk Factors
Having certain risk factors may also make you more likely to develop type 2 diabetes. These include:
- Darkened skin: While type 2 diabetes can cause patches of darkened skin, if you see these around your neck or armpits but have no other symptoms, schedule an appointment with your doctor. You could have a resistance to insulin that needs to be checked out.
- Polycystic ovarian syndrome: This syndrome causes women to have a higher risk of obesity, hair growth, and irregular periods. You’re also likely to develop diabetes.
- Gestational diabetes: Women who are or were pregnant may have gestational diabetes. This pushes up your risk of getting type 2 diabetes as well, as can having a weighty baby that’s over nine pounds at birth.
- Prediabetes: Before diabetes takes full hold, some people are diagnosed with prediabetes. This condition causes blood sugar to increase, but not to a high enough degree that you’d be considered a diabetic. That said, prediabetes can easily evolve into type 2 diabetes without medical treatment.
- Age: If you’re 45 or older, then your chances of getting type 2 diabetes go up significantly. It’s believed that this is because of natural, age-related weight gain, decreases in muscle mass, and getting less exercise.
- Race: Those who are Caucasian may have type 2 diabetes in fewer instances than Asian-Americans, American Indians, Hispanics, or blacks.
- Hereditary factors: If your siblings or parents have type 2 diabetes, then you’ll probably get it, too.
- Lack of exercise: Not only can exercise keep your weight down, which is important for diabetes, but it also increases insulin sensitivity of cells and causes your body to use up its glycogen stores. You need to exercise regularly.
Can Fasting Cure Type 2 Diabetes? What the Studies Say
Managing type 2 diabetes is all about controlling your blood sugar and keeping it from getting too high. If you can empty your body’s glycogen stores, that should set your blood sugar at a reasonable level. While exercising is one great way to do that, so too is fasting.
To show as much, we’ll share a few relevant studies and data that could convince type 2 diabetics to give intermittent fasting a try.
BMJ Case Reports
A study from BMJ Case Reports was done on a group of diabetes patients who decided to intermittent fast. In case you’ve missed the other posts on this blog, intermittent fasting is a start-stop method of fasting.
For example, we’ll highlight the 16:8 method, as it’s by far one of the best-known intermittent fasts. You only get eight hours in which to eat during this fast, and for the next 16, you must refrain. There are variations of the 16:8 method as well in which you may have more or even fewer hours for eating.
Some more experienced fasters will go 24 hours without food (and sometimes even water), then 48 hours, and work their way up to a 72-hour fast. Others will fast for weeks or months at a time by skipping food every other day or only fasting for a few hours daily.
As you can see, there are all sorts of ways to intermittent fast, so it’s really about what works for you.
Getting back to that study in BMJ Case Reports, each of the three male participants were between 40 and 67 years old. They had cholesterol and blood pressure that were both high in addition to diabetes. To control their diabetes, the men received insulin injections every day and were on diabetes medications.
They prepared for the experiment by joining seminars on nutrition. They also learned more about their type 2 diabetes in the process. Then, two participants did an alternate-day fast, in which they’d go 24 hours without food and eat normally on the alternate day. The third participant spent three days of each week on an intermittent fast.
These fasts weren’t very restrictive, in that the participants were allowed a single evening meal that was low in calories. They didn’t have to give up beverages either, as they could consume coffee, tea, or water.
This was a pretty long experiment, 10 months in total. None of the participants had any complaints about the diet, showing it’s easy to acclimate to intermittent fasting.
So what happened when the study wrapped? The three participants no longer needed insulin medication, with one quitting their meds within five days. The men stopped taking their diabetic drugs, too. They also lowered their blood glucose and dropped some extra pounds, about 10 to 18 percent of their total body weight.
The publishers of the study noted the following: “this present case showed that 24-hour fasting regimens can significantly reduce or eliminate the need for diabetic medication.” Yet they also said that since the number of participants was so low–only three people–that more research is needed.
Dr. Fung
Dr Jason Fung, MD is a nephrologist who practices in Canada. Most of his patients have type 2 diabetes. Fung is also a proponent of low-carb dieting and intermittent fasting.
An article on Your Health Matters brings up relevant points about Fung’s work. Dr. Fung mentions that many of his diabetic patients had reached the point of kidney failure, which is also known as diabetic nephropathy.
With kidney failure from diabetes, your blood sugar increases so high repeatedly that your kidneys are damaged. Now, the fluids and waste that are supposed to exit your body remain in your blood.
Dr. Fung suggested intermittent fasting to some of these more advanced diabetic patients. He states that “…a lot of people got incredibly good results – it reversed their diabetes.” That’s in line with what the BMJ Case Reports study found as well.
In fact, Fung cautions against taking medications to treat type 2 diabetes. He states that the intention of these meds, which is to lessen the sugar quantity in your bloodstream, may not do what it says.
Fung mentions that instead, the medications often add too much glucose to the cells. The glucose, in these excessive quantities, then becomes fat. “Even if your blood sugar gets better, you gain weight and your diabetes is only getting worse,” Dr. Fung says.
When your body’s cells have too much glucose, Fung believes their resistance to insulin increases. That’s why he’s such a big proponent for intermittent fasting, especially for type 2 diabetics. He likens the process to removing clothes from a too-full suitcase. That’s the only way to add more, after all.
If you fast and go through your glucose reserves, Dr. Fung believes, “the cells become responsive to insulin once again.”
Even if you can’t fast, Fung advises diabetics to reduce or even fully eliminate refined carbohydrates from their diets. He says that foods like white flour and bread become glucose in our systems, adding more to an already overloaded body of a diabetic.
By incorporating olive oil, nuts, and avocados into one’s diet as well as other sources of healthy fats, you’re not contributing more to the body’s heavy supply of glucose.
Dr. Fung does admit that intermittent fasting isn’t a solution for everybody. He also recommends medically supervised fasts for some patients, like those on meds for diabetes. Then, he notes, these patients may be able to lessen their dosages as they continue intermittent fasting.
Tips for Intermittent Fasting for First-Timers
You’re ready to begin your very first intermittent fast as a type 2 diabetic. How can you ensure your success? Check out these handy tips.
Get Your Doctor’s Permission
While intermittent fasting may be a safe, workable solution for many type 2 diabetes patients, that’s not necessarily true of everyone, just as Dr. Fung says. Before you radically modify your diet and lifestyle through fasting, you want to schedule an appointment with your doctor.
During this visit, discuss your fast. Tell your doctor about the type of fast you want to do (such as the 16:8 method or alternate-day fasting) and ask if they approve. Your doctor may recommend you fast under their supervision or you could be cut loose to fast at home.
Make sure your doctor knows all the medications you’re currently on for your diabetes and any other underlying health conditions. If you have to curtail or stop these meds while on the fast, only your doctor should recommend this.
Start Easy
You’ve gotten the green light to begin fasting. Before you jump into a longer, more involved fast that sees you going upwards of 24 hours without food, start with something shorter and easier. For instance, you may fast for 10 hours, seven or eight of those in which you spend sleeping.
That’s pretty easy and can make you feel successful at intermittent fasting. Those feelings of success might make you want to fast again, and then again, keeping your upward momentum going.
Understand There May Be Side Effects
When you suddenly deprive your body of food, even for a period of 10 or 12 hours, you will feel the effects. More than anything, you’ll be hungry. This sensation can start as a minor annoyance and become a full-fledged distractor. If you’re only fasting for a while, then it’s easy enough to ignore your hunger, but it will be something to deal with.
Headaches are normal from lack of food, so make sure you have some ibuprofen available if your doctor says you’re allowed to take this. Expect to feel moody as well, as going without food for a while could make anyone cranky. Let those in your life know you might not be yourself during your first fast. The more you continue fasting, the easier it becomes to control your mood.
You should also be more tired than usual, as you’re no longer providing fuel to your body for energy. By taking it easy during your intermittent fast and napping when you can, you can counteract the exhaustion.
Avoid Dehydration
You’re already more likely to be dehydrated as a type 2 diabetic, and once you cut out food, your risk of dehydration can increase. Always avoid fasts that restrict the consumption of beverages, such as a hard dry water fast.
Even if you’re not on a water fast, sip on water and other beverages with few or no calories throughout your intermittent fast. This will ward off dehydration despite that you’re not getting any hydration from food.
Reconsider Exercise
When you’re already tired, which you will be when you intermittent fast, the last thing you want to do is exercise. If you’re fasting every other day, then there’s nothing wrong with skipping physical activity on those days as well.
Besides worsening your fatigue, if you overdo it on the fitness, there’s a possibility you could cause your blood sugar to plummet. If you absolutely must exercise, then make sure you talk to your doctor about it during your appointment. They’ll approve certain exercises, probably low-energy ones, but it’s better than nothing.
Beware of Hypoglycemia
Speaking of very low blood sugar levels, this is known as hypoglycemia. We’ve talked about hypoglycemia on this blog before, but never in relation to diabetes.
While a too-high blood sugar is troublesome as a diabetic, so too is when your blood sugar goes too far in the other direction. If you feel confusion, shakiness, or you start sweating a lot, those could be signs of hypoglycemia. We recommend you stop fasting and get in touch with your doctor, who will tell you what to do from there.
Watch What You Eat Post-Fast
After finishing your first intermittent fast, you don’t want to jump right back into your regular eating habits full throttle. If you gobble down carbs hastily, your blood sugar will go from putting you at risk to hypoglycemia to hyperglycemia, which is when blood sugar increases too much.
Your doctor can provide a post-fasting meal plan. This should include light but filling snacks and meals that are balanced and nutritious.
Conclusion
There’s been significant research that suggests intermittent fasting can reverse type 2 diabetes. Some diabetics who fasted have lost weight, stopped taking their diabetes medication, and controlled their blood sugar better.
If you want to go on an intermittent fast for the first time as a type 2 diabetic, the tips we outlined above should point you in the right direction. Good luck and be safe!