Note that it is similarly without any substantive details. Not to be a naysayer, buuuutttt... knowing a fair amount about type 1 diabetes, I can suggest any number of possible explanations that are far short of "miracle." The most obvious one is that he had over-treated type 2 diabetes and increased physical activity is leading to an increase in insulin sensitivity that looks like a miraculous cure. Alternatively, especially given the late age of diagnosis, he might have Latent Autoimmune Diabetes of Adults (LADA), which is kind of like really slowly developing type 1 diabetes. The body naturally goes through ebbs and flows in relative efficiency and autoimmunity, so if he still had some functioning beta cells, a temporary period of reduced autoimmunity could allow those cells to resurge and produce enough insulin to support his body without the addition of exogenous insulin. However, that's unlikely to last if that's the case.
Again, not to pooh-pooh all theoretically good news, but... I see lots of miracle cures for diabetes in headlines, and none on the pharmacy shelves.
But I'm in the U.S. right now: does anyone have any recommendations for a basic CGM setup that I could get off Amazon?
There are great open source systems for us technical people, but the tech is very expensive without an insurance and requires you to solder an extra device to get the values to your phone. At least with an NFC device you can wrap a smartwatch over it to get the readings automatically to your phone, rooted of course.
Poor you. If you were lucky enough to use the greatest health care system in the world, USA, you could also get the Freestyle Libre CGM but would be protected from the NFC data. In the US those data can only be read by a physician; patients do not have access to the readers. Oh I notice the disposable pucks that go on the arm cost more here on Blue Shield than I would have been paying with DKV in Germany.
(Fortunately you can buy the readers OTC in France if you have a friend with a French address and can speak French. Even in Germany you can only the hardware by prescription).
Of course you must know what you are doing. The readings should be calibrated every week with blood, but if you do this, your Android device with xDrip Plus is giving more accurate readings compared to the official reader.
REMINDER
Do not try to do any of this if not knowing what you're doing. There is a risk of dying if you follow wrong readings and take a wrong amount of insulin.
Very cool! I've recently become friends with a type 1 diabetic and have been learning a lot about it myself. It really is an incredibly intrusive thing that involves constant supervision even with automatic pumps, constantly switching spots to place the needle that much stay in him constantly. He's actually getting a service dog in a month that's trained to wake/warn him if his blood sugar levels get too low. Have you open sourced your solution?
This is the fork I'm using and I made the support for InfluxDB. If you want the cheapest CGM solution, it might be the FreeStyle Libre with a rooted android watch wrapped next to it. By paying more there are better solutions but you still need to solder an extra device to carry if you want the readings with Bluetooth, at least in Europe.
Nightscout is an open source hacker community in Europe providing support and tools if interested.
A disclaimer: do not use any of these if you don't know exactly what you're doing. If you do acknowledge the risks and have some backup system for measurements, this system is making the life of a type 1 diabetic much easier...
As a programmer I'm good with numbers so everything was pretty much under control but I started noticing that I needed less and less insuline up to the point that I needed no insuline at all. This was about a year ago. At that same time I had some new physical health problems and it turned out I had celiac disease as well. Bummer :(
One side-effect of 'untreated' celiac is that carbohydrates are less well converted to glucose and so my glucose levels stayed normal without using insuline. Unfortunately it meant I was not cured from type 1 diabetes.
Now that I am on a gluten free diet my insuline usage is back to normal and I stopped farting as a bonus :)
Generally people are diagnosed with Type 1 at a very young age, since it is caused by your own immune system destroying beta cells in the pancreas, which if untreated results in eventual death.
Type 2 is more often associated with age and diet. It is the most common type in particular at later ages, but some people get it younger due to genetic predisposition.
There is early and late-onset T1D. About 25% of T1D is diagnosed as an adult [1]
It appears, based on this, that carbohydrates drove your diabetes? I wonder if the problem is with refined carbohydrates or with gluten specifically?
Do you eat sugar, chocolate, etc?
T1D is an autoimmune disease which destroys the pancreas' ability to produce insulin. Your body needs insulin to process sugar in the blood into energy, a large part of that sugar comes from carbs.
Celiac is an autoimmune disease which is a reaction in the gut to gluten. Exposure to gluten causes inflammation in the gut and ultimately damages the lining of the intestine to the point where your body cannot absorb nutrients (including the carbs) from the food you eat.
What bluemax observed is the damage from celiac was restricting his carb absorption which reduces the amount of insulin required to keep blood sugar in range.
It takes ~6 months abstaining from gluten for the intestine to heal and for carb absorption to return to normal, over which time insulin requirements would also return to normal. Going gluten free allows the intestine to heal (and you have to stay gluten free -- the celiac doesn't go away).
My daughter is T1D+Celiac so I'm quite familiar with it as well.
I suspect (and it can't be more than a suspicion) that many of those with diabetes diagnoses never take the risk of reevaluating their physical condition, but passively continue their medication -- and that seems wise and prudent.
Maybe a carefully designed study, an animal study at first, could reveal that what happened to this individual is on the roster of possibilities, that some people have the ability to reactivate their pancreases in the right circumstances.
It's already well-established that physically active people have a lower risk for diabetes, but once the condition is diagnosed, most people start an insulin regimen that never ends. This case suggests that a person's pancreas can be reactivated -- but for how many? And is the change permanent? These are unanswered questions.
But, the risk of "testing" insulin response yourself would be pretty high, too, so I would hope folks would do so under doctor supervision. Hopefully, this will make that kind of experimentation become more common. If there's something to it, a whole lot of people could see a tremendous improvement in their quality of life.
Usually term "reversed" is used in context of Type 2 diabetes, meaning that patient can have normal range blood sugar without any medications, but patients still cannot eat cookies/cakes without blood sugar spiking to dangerous levels.
