Is there a cure for Type 1 diabetes?
No. People your whole life will give you their “miracle cure” for diabetes that their cousin/grandmother/niece used to get rid of their type-1 diabetes, or something they read out of a tabloid. I can assure you, if cinnamon or turmeric cured diabetes, the whole community would know about it, and I wouldn’t be writing this book.
Will there be a cure for Type 1 diabetes soon?
I can only tell you what I think, after speaking with many doctors, diabetics, and other experts: I don’t believe there will be a cure for diabetes in our lifetimes. However, if history shows anything, it’s that T1D that it will become easier and easier to treat it.
Here are my reasons for believing that no cure is near:
- For the past 50 years, people have been writing that there would be a cure in 5 or 10 years, but none have been successful. We’ve wanted flying cars for about as long as we’ve wanted a cure for diabetes.
- There are fundamental gaps in our understanding of diabetes, simple aspects that we still can’t explain. For instance, the present theory about diabetes explains why we T1Ds get high BG, but why can’t a T1D’s body automatically deal with a low BG like a glucose-normal?
- Multiple experiments have been able to grow beta-cells, or small islets of beta-cells. But nobody knows how to stop our immune system from destroying them again without suppressing the entire immune system.
So I think it is best not to hope for a cure, because we will probably be forever disappointed. If it does end up happening, it will be a happy surprise anyways!
On the other hand, how we treat diabetes has made truly enormous progress in the past 40 years, and it is much easier than ever before to manage and control our blood glucose.
For instance, 40 years ago, people who were diagnosed with diabetes were told, at diagnosis, that they would die by age 30 and that they should not have children. Nowadays, based on information from the 90s, data shows that our life expectancy is only 8 years less than glucose-normals, and, in fact, for us in the newer generation, thanks to all the new technologies we use, it may actually be practically the same as glucose-normals!
So, in the end, I think it’s unlikely we’ll see a cure for diabetes. What’s more likely is that diabetes will become much easier to manage, that our lives will be much less impacted by the daily care of diabetes, and that we are likely to have a life expectancy practically as long as glucose-normals, provided that we do our due diligence with responsible treatment. If there ends up being a cure, we will be thankful that we have kept our bodies in good condition in the meantime.
Growing up T1D 