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Research by a Newcastle University team has inspired a Channel 4 special resulting in women reversing their Type 2 diabetes.
The Food Hospital special: Extreme Diet Ward follows ground-breaking research by Professor Roy Taylor which found people could reverse their diabetes with an extreme low calorie diet alone.

Affecting two and half million people in the UK – and on the increase – Type 2 diabetes is a long-term condition caused by too much glucose, a type of sugar, in the blood. In the clinical trial published two years ago, 11 people reversed their diabetes by drastically cutting their food intake to just 600 calories a day for two months. And three months later, seven remained free of diabetes.


For the Channel 4 programme, six women embarked on a low calorie diet with three of them following this extreme regime. All five who completed the filming lost weight, reduced the fat around their liver and saw an improvement in their diabetes. Two no longer had Type 2 diabetes.

Professor Roy Taylor of Newcastle University who led the study and also works for The Newcastle-Upon-Tyne Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust said: "To have people free of diabetes after years with the condition is remarkable - and all because of an eight week diet.



"This is a radical change in understanding Type 2 diabetes. It will change how we can explain it to people newly diagnosed with the condition. While it has long been believed that someone with Type 2 diabetes will always have the disease, and that it will steadily get worse, we have shown that we can reverse the condition."

This diet was only used to test the hypothesis that if people lose substantial weight they will lose their diabetes

Even for a short period a diet like this should not be undertaken without close monitoring and assessment, from the same BBC source

Dr Iain Frame, director of research at Diabetes UK, which funded the study, said the diet was not an easy fix.

"Such a drastic diet should only be undertaken under medical supervision. Despite being a very small trial, we look forward to future results particularly to see whether the reversal would remain in the long term."