Importance of diet and exercise
This Michigander is announcing winter might just be over. I am so done walking on my ugly, hated, overrated treadmill, looking forward to moving my morning routine outside.
If you too are feeling a bit of spring fever, or preparing for a lifestyle change, check out the links provided below and learn about the importance of diet and exercise for people with HCV, type 2 diabetes or fatty liver disease.
On The Radio
To get you started we begin with Dr Norman Swan, the host of
Health Report, along with his guest Professor Mike Lean, lead author in a study investigating the impact of weight loss on type 2 diabetes, published in the Lancet 10 February 2018;
Primary care-led weight management for remission of type 2 diabetes (DiRECT): an open-label, cluster-randomised trial. The study found after a year, participants who lost weight (around 30 pounds) on a 800 calorie diet, no longer had type 2 diabetes. The diet may be too difficult or not recommended for some people, in the trial patients were followed closely, however, the outcome is amazing. The interview starts at 8:29, listen to the program,
here, read the transcript below or visit
Health Report.
Transcript
Norman Swan: There's good news, for once, from the west of Scotland where a trial in general practice of an extremely low calorie diet has reversed type 2 diabetes in a large percentage of participants. Mike Lean is Professor of Human Nutrition at the University of Glasgow and is on the line. Welcome to the Health Report.
Mike Lean: Hello, how are you?
Norman Swan: Fine. You say in the paper that this is the first trial of its kind in type 2 diabetes, which is extraordinary.
Mike Lean: We've known about type 2 diabetes and thought of it as a distinct disease growing enormously in numbers and costing perhaps more than any other single disease for about 100 years, and it has been noted in a number of studies that some people if they lose enough weight will get rid of their diabetes. But no study has previously gone out to actually try and do that, to actually get as many people as possible to become non-diabetic, to get rid of their diabetes completely.
Norman Swan: So what did you do in this study?
Mike Lean: Well, this is not rocket science. What we did was we recruited people in primary care, in general practice, who were overweight, BMI over 27, so not enormously overweight but overweight, with type 2 diabetes. And we ask them to follow a formula diet, not a very low calorie but and 800-odd calorie diet for as long as it took, and it took quite a long time in some cases, to lose enough weight to become non-diabetic. And we aimed to get 15 kg weight loss because we knew from other observations that that was likely to do it. And of course not everybody managed, sadly, a lot of people found it really hard. A lot of people did manage. In the end we got about a quarter of our patients to lose that amount of weight. And those who lost 15 kg, almost 90% were no longer diabetic after a year, they were off all their medication, they were off all their diabetic medication and their antihypertensive medication, and they felt a lot better, their quality of life went up.
The remainder who didn't lose 15 kg, none of them got worse. Of those who lost over 10 kg, over half of them were non-diabetic. So you don't need to lose 15 kg but it's much better if you do. And I think what we've learnt from this is what we've regarded as a distinct disease, type 2 diabetes, is actually all part and parcel of obesity when you think about obesity as a disease process…
Norman Swan: We'll come back to the diet in a minute. And what was the recidivism rate, if you want to call it that, in terms of people gaining weight again and returning to diabetes?
Mike Lean: Yes, so that is of course…we've only published the one-year results and there's a lot more to find out. What we did find out was that the proportion of people with diabetes who wanted to have a go at this was very high. It was probably no great surprise because being diabetic is a penalty and it carries terrible medical risks as well as financial. The number within a year who put on any weight was really quite small, but we know very well from earlier studies that it's hard to maintain…the biggest problem is not losing the weight, it's actually maintaining it long term, and that's where our big research effort needs to go.
Norman Swan: So the diet itself…an 800 calorie diet is not something you try yourself at home because you can go into nutritional deficiency. This was a shakes and bars diet, wasn't it, it was a meal plan diet.
Mike Lean: That's correct, it was a formula diet which made sure it had all the vitamins and minerals, everything that was necessary, provided the patients actually followed this. And they didn't have to pay for it, they were given it for the study. And so they did that, so it was perfectly safe, there was no…
Norman Swan: That's my point, so it's one of these things you can buy in the chemist and it comes in various boxes, but we won't talk about the branding.
Mike Lean: The branding doesn't matter, all these things are pretty much the same. What matters is not what comes in the box or out of the packet, it's the support that is given with it, because people who go and get these type of diets from the chemist or from a supermarket generally do it for two or three or four weeks and then they peel off. If you are going to get rid of your diabetes you've got to stick in for probably 12 weeks if you do it full time. There are plenty of people who do it off and on for 12 weeks and need to carry on doing it off and on for a bit longer to lose their 10 or 15 kg. So there are different routes to getting there, you don't half to lose it all in one go but it works better if you do.
Norman Swan: What about complications, like if you lose weight fast when you are overweight you can get gallbladder disease…
Mike Lean: Ah, you're well informed!
Norman Swan: You can low blood sugar if you're on insulin, or diabetes complications. What sort of complications did people get?
Mike Lean: Well, the first thing was for this particular study we didn't include people who were already on insulin, partly because their likelihood of getting a remission is much lower. It had probably done damage to their pancreas by that stage. And what we did on day one was that we stopped all our anti-diabetes medication, so there's no risk of hypoglycaemia at all, and nobody had hypoglycaemia. And the same thing went for the blood pressure tablets, we stopped all their blood pressure tablets on day one because otherwise if you lose weight there is a risk of possible hypotension, and just to pick up your other point, there was one patient amongst the 150 who started, one who developed abdominal pains and we think that was probably by gallstones. That's a common complication of obesity, very common in people with diabetes anyway, and it can be made worse during weight loss.
Norman Swan: These are similar findings to bariatric surgery.
Mike Lean: Oddly the remission rate was actually a tiny bit better than bariatric surgery if you can lose 15 kg. If you lose 15 kg you will almost certainly get rid of your diabetes, whether or not it's done with surgery. There are of course many fewer hazards doing it without surgery. They produce very similar results, yes.
Norman Swan: Mike, thanks very much for joining us, a fascinating study.
Mike Lean: Thank you very much.
Norman Swan: Mike Lean is Professor of Human Nutrition at the University of Glasgow.
Fatty Liver Disease & Type 2 Diabetes
"Given the increasing worldwide incidence of obesity and metabolic syndrome, non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) has become the most common cause of chronic liver disease. Recent developments in the field have shown that NAFLD not only is a “liver disease” but also is the underlying cause of an increasing number of extrahepatic manifestations; thus, it should be treated as a multisystem disease. NAFLD is most prominently linked to chronic kidney disease, mellitus type 2 and cardiovascular disease, as well as a number of other severe chronic diseases. These findings demonstrate that NAFLD ranks amongst the most serious public health problems of our time."
Also noted in the article;
The prevalence of Nonalcoholic Steatohepatitis (NASH), in people who are obese and have type 2 diabetes may be as high as 40%, whereas it is less than 5% in people without type 2 diabetes.
Read the article,
here.
Presented at Liver Congress 2018
Hepatitis C & Diabetes
Several studies have demonstrated the risk for development of diabetes is increased in people with chronic hepatitis C infection (HCV), for instance people with HCV have a 2.3 fold increased chance of having type 2 diabetes. According to a 2013 study published in
Alimentary Pharmacology Therapeutics;
Chronic hepatitis C virus infection is independently associated with presence of metabolic conditions (insulin resistance, type 2 diabetes mellitus and hypertension) and congestive heart failure.
HCV Treatment & Type 2 Diabetes
The good news is with today's high sustained viral response rates using direct antiviral medications to treat HCV, people who successfully reach SVR, or achieve a cure, lower their risk for the development of type 2 diabetes, the recent study was published in the Journal of Viral Hepatitis [
published online February 25, 2018]. A quick overview of the study can be found online,
here.
Fatty liver is very common in hepatitis C virus (HCV) patients post-SVR
This particular study may be of interest to people with HCV, according to data published Mar 21, 2018 in the online journal
World J Gastroenterology, evidence of steatosis was reported to be found in close to half of patients who achieve a sustained virologic response after treating with direct-acting antivirals. Full-text,
here....
(Reuters Health) - People who make an effort to improve their diet may be more likely to have less fat in their livers and a lower risk of liver disease than individuals who stick to unhealthy eating habits, a U.S. study suggests.
The Liver Loving Diet
"
The Liver Loving Diet" is a book that will help you learn to eat well during all phases of liver disease. Karen Hoyt, the author, also
blogs about living with and treating hepatitis C, cirrhosis, liver cancer and liver failure.
Mediterranean diet reduces liver fat, risk for NAFLD
March 30, 2018
Improved diet quality based on the Mediterranean-style diet score and Alternative Healthy Eating Index score correlated with less liver fat accumulation and a reduced risk for new-onset nonalcoholic fatty liver, according to a recently published study.
Continue reading @
Healio
Bottom Line
Spring is a great time to start again, experts agree two key elements in the prevention and management of type 2 diabetes and fatty liver disease is weight loss and exercise. In the end, its all good for your liver!
See you soon,
Tina
