Get gastric band surgery. A doctor mentioned on BBC 4 earlier this week that 80% of people suffering from Type II Diabetes have their diabetes disappear after they underwent gastric band surgery. Many within 48 hours of surgery.
Source: Weight loss surgery 'cured my type 2 diabetes' - BBC News
I think you maybe meant to say “the symptoms” disappear - but not the Diabetes.
Engineer_comp_geek made an important distinction about that above and AFAIK, he is completely correct and it’s extremely important to know that. Like he said, people that think they are cured could be in for a real bad problem. Once diagnosed with D, people need to have a doctor monitor their condition forever more. It’s never cured. If you keep it motitored, it could be as good as cured. But people who think they are cured could do themselves harm if they don’t have a doctor monitor their condition forever more.
For many people their back pain is linked to excess weight, so losing weight makes a huge amount of sense (especially with diabetes) but it sounds like for you that your back pain is caused by something else. Putting weight back on could make it worse (there is no way it is going to make it better).
Now is a chance for you to perhaps be taken more seriously by specialists? I know when I was overweight, if I complained of pain I was treated fairly lackadaisically by doctors. For example I damaged my knee, I was told that I should just sit around and rest. I knew that I had seriously damaged something and was able to find someone who took me seriously and I was in surgery within a week.
I often think that we need to treat our bodies as though we are sports stars! No top level athlete would put up with weeks of pain without proper testing, diagnosis and treatment.
Don’t let the doctors turn you away without properly understanding what is going on. You need to know what the issue is with your back and what options are available able to you. Now when you go they wont just say “do more exercise” “lose weight” … they’ve run out of easy diagnoses!
Yay I inspired a thread.
Sorry about the issues with your doc. Because of the social prejudices against obesity many people want to treat weight loss like a miracle cure for everything because then they can use any medical condition under the sun to encourage weight loss. Your doctor seems in denial about the fact that weight loss didn’t fix your back and now he cut your drugs. Sorry about that.
Have you tried Z coil shoes? When my legs and back act up I wear those and they help me.
As to your question, there are different kinds of fat. I don’t ‘think’ subcutaneous fat really affects diabetes, but visceral fat does. There was at least one study recently, small in nature, that found severe caloric restrictions like only eating 500 calories a day reversed diabetes. I believe because doing that mobilizes fat out of your vital organs. However after a short period of time I think many of them gained the weight and diabetes back.
Miss_Gnomer,
I want to tell you that you have caused me a great deal of embarrassment. The two excerpts you have quoted are contradictory and they don’t make much sense.
But I am not unhappy with you. Not at all. In fact, I want to thank you very much because you have made it clear just how crazed people can get when they are living with excruciating pain.
I will probably have more to say about that later. In the meantime, you have states some excellent info and I thank you very much for that. The following explains the nature of my back pain. Thanks again. You know I was just trying to be funny when I said you had embarrassed me. It may have been true. But after several dies of lying in bed with terrible pain, you would not believe what kind of alternatives go dancing through my mind. “Dancing” is hardly the correct description. Know what I mean?
So, I take my hat off to you and I thank you. I want to tell you my back pain was caused by an accident I had when I was 11 years old. I got a CAT Scan about ten years ago that shows the pain is caused by a damaged disk. It was a football injurt. I wasn’t even in high school but there was a cast iron grate protruding from the ground and I fell on it when playing football and knew something was terribly wrong with my back.
The following is an angry rant I want to warn you all about my opinion that it’s a terrible mistake for young boys to play HS or college football. I realize it’s almost impossible to talk any young boy out of playing football. I know because I was a young boy and I loved playing football more than just about anything. But I feel it’s important to make the following rant. So please be warned.
/RANT ON
It’s probably worth saying to parents who have boys who want to play high school football, if they do not have a reasonable chance to play pro ball, it’s a really bad choice to let them play HS ball because the kinds of injuries they can suffer may not be very serious until they are much older - like in their 50s or 60s and then … they will rue the day they ever played HS football. There is no good reason for anyone to play HS football unless they are certain they will make millions of dollars playing in the NFL. If not, it’s a terribly bad gamble that you will make it to the NFL. Even if a boy has good prospects, the odds are similar to winning the lottery. And you know how terribly bad those odds are.
/RANT OFF
You are not stuck. You are a healthcare consumer; you can find another doctor.
I’d suggest a pain management specialist. Find a clinic that has a multidisciplinary approach, not just opiates. Mention your tolerance, and be honest.
You will also need to have your X-rays/CT/MRIs redone. They may want to do other tests; DO THEM. Treating just the pain without figuring out the underlying cause is pointless. I have had treatment to denervate an area in my back that was a big help. I’ve had steroid injections and local trigger point injections. Massage helps. Chiro helps some people. Antidepressants work on the chemicals in the brain and help a lot of people. Muscle relaxants, NSAIDs, and opiates help, too. PT helps some people. It’s in getting the right mix of treatment. You have to work at it.
Please don’t just accept this, or your less-than-helpful doctor.
Hey Wesley!
I’d love to know the stats on how many people lose weight but then put it all back on later. My previous post explains the nature of my back pain. I’ll have to look into those shoes. I may send you a PM. I’m currently preparing a post to explain a couple of things about my doctor. When I’ve made that post, I may try to contact you if that’s OK with you?
Heh Heh. I love your confidence.
But things may be a little different for me than for you. I live in Canada and our medical system is all funded by the Federal gov. So, it’s a little more involved. I will try to make a post tomorrow that explains more.
But your post made me feel good and made my back stand up straight. Thank you very much.
P.S. In terms of playing in the NFL …
Even if a boy does make it to the NFL, you all do know what doctors are finding today in men who have played in the NFL?
Do you realize their brains pretty much turn to mush as a result of playing in the NFL? They get senile and lose their minds. If you want to know more about that, there is an excellent program on the PBS show Frontline about high school football. If I had a son who wanted to play high school football, I would make sure he saw that.
Actually, it’s the parents who should see that show. IMO, the parents should then tie up the boy and take him out of the country rather than let him play organized football.
I know that is a terrible opinion to state in an American forum and I’m sorry. I know most of you will hate me for saying that. I just wish you could know the same info that I know from having played HS football myself and now I lie in bed for days at a time with so much pain that I can’t think straight.
Please forgive me my angry opinions. I wish you all the best and hope you get to see that Frontline program.
This. I’m a Type II diabetic, who is not on any medication, losing weight and learning to eat correctly is all the medicine I needed.
So, you don’t need to see a doctor regularly any more to monitor your condition? Or do you?
Glad it helped.
I have friends in Toronto, so I know what you mean. If you are in that area, I can get some recommendations.
PM away. Z coils look silly (like high heels) but some people get good benefits from them.
As far as dieting and diabetes, apparently (according to this) fat in the pancreas and liver can cause diabetes, and severe calorie restriction can reverse it.
http://www.ncl.ac.uk/magres/research/diabetes/reversal.htm
However I could swear I read that some/many people who reversed their diabetes doing that gained enough fat back to get diabetes again with a short timeframe. But I can’t recall the timeframe or find the article.
Thanks very much Wesley. I hope to be in touch in a day or two. Believe it or not, I just spent several hours trying to write the next post about my doctor. It was originally about four times the size that it is now and I reallized no one would want to read a huge post. It was amazing how much effort it takes to organize a large post and turn it into a small one.
But I will post it now.
I know I’ve said a few things that make it sound like I’m unhappy with my current doctor. The truth is that I think he is probably the best doctor I’ve ever had. Why? There are two issues that lead me to that conclusion. They are: 1) Punctuality and 2) Level of Caring.
Since first being diagnosed in 1995, I have been to at least a dozen doctors. Those doctors have had a wide range of punctuality. The worst was almost always at least an hour late for our appointments. When it comes to punctuality, he must be the worst doctor I have ever experienced. I swear to you, I am not exaggerating. He was almost always at least an hour late for our appointments. If a doctor can never be on time for their appointments, it indicates to me that their work is likely sloppy and disorganized. Would you want to be treated by a doctor if you suspect their work is sloppy and disorganized?
During the past ten years I have been seeing my current doctor and he has only once been late for an appointment due to some personal emergency. That level of punctuality doesn’t necessarily mean that he is good at practicing medicine. But it does indicate that he’s good at managing his affairs. He seems highly organized and capable in his approach to his work and IMO, a doctor who can manage their affairs well is more likely to manage my health care well. At least, that is the impression I have formed about most of the doctors who have treated me.
About four years ago, I developed an ulcer and wound up in the hospital. This doctor called me at the hospital to talk with me. He then met with the doctors at the hospital and worked with them to decide on the best way to manage my health. I’ve subsequently learned it’s a rare for a GP to do that. More than one of the doctors at the hospital told me they had a very high regard for this doctor. That meant a lot to me.
The fact that he clearly cares about my welfare and wants the best for me is enormously important to me. Ever since first seeing him, he kept trying to help me lose weight. He changed his style more than once to find a way to reach me. His style of “gentle persuasion” was very different from most doctors. Their styles were always akin to bullying and badgering. If that didn’t work, they would try more bullying and more badgering. Does that sound familiar to you? Well, I got the message loud and clear. It’s always been obvious to me this doctor really cares about my health and welfare and that has to be one of the most important attributes a a doctor can possess.
I am writing this post in order to try and set the record straight. There are some things that I am unhappy about. But overall, my opinion is that I am very lucky to have found this doctor. He is probably the best doctor I have ever had.
That is amazing. I once met someone who told me that. I remained silent because I didn’t want to say anything that might trigger them into smoking once more.
But every time I remember that person saying that, it just floors me.
How could someone really believe that it could be more healthy to smoke and then quit as opposed to never having smoked in the first place?
I don’t agree. You don’t have the symptoms and no test shows any diabetes = you’re cured. You might still have a damaged pancreas and if you revert back to your old lifestyle in full force, the diabetes will come back, but saying that you’re never cured sounds too much like the AA mantra.
And anyway, my point was, if you read the research, the diabetes disappears for many people within 48 hours of having gastric band surgery, which is way before any results from weight loss can kick in.
You are correct in that I failed to read your post carefully enough to understand what you were saying and I apologize for that. As soon as I got the message that you were disagreeing with what the established medical community, I just switched off.
But someone with a serious disease like mine should never ignore the opinions of others that could prove to be helpful to them. That’s just not clever. I will now wait and see what others have to say.
Thank you for making that clear.
If you trust the established medical community more than a total stranger on the internet, then you deserve exactly what you get. 
But if the established medical community does not know how to help you, then the last thing one should believe is that there is no cure available. IMHO and in my experience, of course.
There is researching showing that, in part, the effect is due to changes in incretin levels after surgery.
When they gave a drug that blocked GLP-1 (which increased 3-5x after surgery) the diabetes seems to have came back according to that study.
My understanding is they are finding obesity surgery doesn’t work due to restriction, it works because it alters your gut microbiome and endocrine hormones. If so, maybe we will soon have treatments for obesity and diabetes that are pharmacological instead of surgical.