Simple Care for Diabetes, John McDougall MD, Updated October 11, 2021

Type-2 diabetes is a disease of overnutrition. The safest, most effective treatment is prevention or reversal through dietary therapy.

Some excerpts:

This is a good paragraph, for this sentence, which is the answer in a nutshell: “if you lose weight your diabetes will improve and possibly go away”, and especially for that last sentence. I saw this in the practice I worked for. It is very hard to lose weight when you are taking insulin.

Imagine sitting across from your doctor and being told your blood sugar is elevated and that you now have type-2 diabetes. Next you are informed that this condition is in part due to your excess body fat and that if you lose weight your diabetes will improve and possibly go away; however, in the meantime, you need to take medication. The doctor prescribes a diabetic pill (say a sulfonylurea) and hands you a sheet of paper describing a calorie-restricted diet; which incidentally was provided by a drug company representative selling diabetic pills to your doctor. On your first follow-up visit, the next month, despite all of your best efforts, you have gained 4 pounds. Because of your weight gain your blood sugars are still no better in spite of the medication. Your doctor doubles his efforts and adds another medication with a stern warning to lose the weight. The next month your weight is up another 4 pounds. Your blood sugars are now over 200 mg/dL and insulin shots are prescribed. This downhill spiral continues and after one full year of intensive treatment you have now gained 20 pounds of weight, a bag full of pills, bottles, and syringes, and worse health. Nearly every patient gets the same results because the medications do nothing to fix the illness and they compound the patient’s problems by raising the levels of insulin in his or her body — One important effect of insulin is to facilitate the storage of dietary fat into fat cells.

Another good paragraph … Insulin resistance is, in a way, a natural gatekeeper.

In type-2 diabetes the pancreas is synthesizing normal and sometimes excess amounts of insulin.8,9 However, in this case the problem is not with the pancreas; the problem is that the cells throughout the body have become resistant to the actions of insulin. This peripheral resistance results in less sugar entering the cells and more remaining in the blood. The development of insulin resistance is a normal adaptive mechanism the body uses to ward off extreme fat accumulation when faced with the rich Western diet.

Medication alone keeps you sick, but with good numbers:

Most physicians believe that better control of blood sugars means better long-term outcomes for the patients and they enthusiastically prescribed these medications. Research proves otherwise. Diabetic medications are approved by the FDA for market based upon their ability to lower blood sugar levels, not based on any improvements in the quality or quantity of the patients’ lives.
…
Aggressive Treatment Harms Patients: All six major studies published over the past thirteen years show that attempts by physicians to make the patients’ blood sugars and Hemoglobin A1c levels look more “normal” with medications harm the patients. [He gives examples.]

He ends:

Consideration for the truth, and the appropriate medical practices that must follow, would change the entire healthcare system for the good, reducing costs and improving patient outcomes substantially.

Reducing healthcare costs is not beneficial to drug companies.