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By GATONYE GATHURA
NAIROBI, KENYA: For the first time scientists are talking of a possible cure for diabetes, a formula that all along has been hidden in what and how much we eat.
An ongoing study in the Newcastle University, UK, which has created a buzz in the international media, has shown that if you put people with Type 2 Diabetes on an extremely punishing diet the disease will disappear within weeks.
Scientists are now testing whether the reversal of this form of diabetes could be permanent.
The researchers put 11 men and women with Type 2 diabetes on what they call a crash-diet and within eight weeks they were back to good health and no longer on any medication.
Last week reports in a UK newspaper, The Sunday Times, said 18 months after the treatment, seven of the patients were still free from symptoms of diabetes giving strong scientific evidence that they could have been cured.
This could be good news for about 1.4 million Kenyans with Type 2 diabetes. According to Dr Nancy Ngugi a consultant physician and specialist on hormones in Nairobi, 28 per cent of all hospital admissions in the country are diabetics. In 2011 for example there were 8,500 visits to Kenyatta National Hospitals by diabetic patients
Physical activity
The UK study was first published in the journal Diabetologia in October 2011 but because of the small sample size did not at the time attract much attention from the scientific community.
But now the researchers have secured more than Sh400 million (2.4 million British Pounds) to test whether the results can be replicated in a bigger study involving 280 patients with obesity induced diabetics.
The important role played by diet in the development and management of diabetes is well understood by most health workers across the world including in Kenya.
Diet actually forms the backbone of the Kenya National Diabetes Educators Manual, developed by the Ministry of Health in 2010. “Dietary modification is one of the cornerstones of diabetes management and should be the first step in dealing with the disease,” says the manual.
In 2012 Kenyan researcher George Omolo Rambo of the Department of Foods, Nutrition and Dietetics, at Kenyatta University in his study showed diet and physical activities as the most important ways to protect against diabetes.
“People with high risk of developing Type 2 diabetes can reduce their chances of getting the disease by up to 50 per cent if they lose as few as 4kg ,” says Dr Rambo.
He recommends that from the onset a patient be put on well-balanced diet while those obese should have a diet that will enable them lose weight.
A look at the national manual and Rambo approach is for a ‘democratic’ diet regimen agreed to by both the health care giver and the patient.
“A ‘diabetic diet’ is not a special ‘diet’. It is rather a healthy eating plan. It is important that the plan is practical, realistic, and avoids setting perfection as a goal,” says the national manual.
But perfection is what the UK approach seems to demand. It is based on a non-compromising austerity plan called a crash-diet. A statement from the Newcastle University says the plan crashes the daily intake to just 800 calories from the recommended daily intake of 2,000 calories.
“Our extreme diet consisted just 600 calories a day of liquid diet drinks plus 200 calories of non-starchy vegetables,” says the university.
In the same statement Dr Iain Frame, Director of Research at Diabetes UK, recommends that such a drastic diet should only be undertaken under medical supervision.
Indeed such a diet is no walk in the park as described by one of the study participants, 67-year-old Gordon Parmley, a diabetic who for six years had been on medication.
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