Myths, Advice and Miracle Cures
Reviewed by CDE Mehandi Sharma · Updated
A diabetes diagnosis attracts advice. Relatives, neighbours, forwarded messages and advertisements all arrive with something that reportedly cured someone.
A few questions sort most of it out. Who benefits if you believe this? Is there any evidence beyond one person's story? And does it require you to stop something your doctor prescribed?
That last question is the one that matters. Stopping a working medicine on the advice of anyone other than your doctor is the single most harmful thing in this whole area — and it is exactly what many miracle-cure programmes ask for, sometimes indirectly.
It also helps to know what is genuinely true, because it is more interesting than the myths. Type 2 diabetes can go into remission — an HbA1c under 6.5% held for at least three months with no glucose-lowering medicine. That is real and documented. What is also documented is that remission frequently does not last, and that people who achieve it still need their regular checks.
The full picture is in can Type 2 diabetes be reversed?. So the honest position sits between the two extremes: this is not incurable and hopeless, and it is not fixed permanently by a powder, a juice or a thirty-day programme.