Ignoring the Miracle-Cure Market

Prediabetes is an ideal market for someone selling a cure. You have a diagnosis, you are worried, there is no prescription, and you are looking for something to do.

So the offers arrive: powders, herbal supplements, detox regimes, machines, and programmes promising to reverse diabetes in thirty days.

Three questions sort most of it out. Who profits if you believe this? Is there evidence beyond individual testimonials? And does it ask you to stop or avoid something a doctor recommended?

That last one is where the real harm sits. Any programme that discourages testing, or tells you to stop a prescribed medicine, is dangerous regardless of what else it contains.

It also helps to know that the genuinely effective intervention here is not a secret and is not for sale. Structured lifestyle change reduced progression to diabetes by 58% in the Diabetes Prevention Program and by 28.5% in Asian Indians in the IDPP. Those are large, replicated effects — and the intervention is food, activity and modest weight loss.

Nothing on the supplement shelf has that evidence behind it.

One nuance: paying for structured support — a dietitian, a supervised programme, a trainer — is not the same as buying a cure. The Indian programme that reported 47.1% remission was exactly that kind of structured support. The distinction is whether you are buying help doing the work, or a way to avoid it.