Eli5: if you are type 2 diabetic and go into a coma for a long period of time, could the doctors treat your type 2 to the point to where you are no longer diabetic?
In: 0
There are certainly cases where a patient has type 2 diabetes, goes on medication, and then at some point later is taken off the medication and declared to “no longer have diabetes”. This is usually associated with the patient having made some beneficial changes to their lifestyle. It also usually implies that their diabetes was in the early stages to begin with.
I don’t see that going into a coma really helps with any of this though and I’m curious why you mentioned this.
The reality though is that severe, long-standing diabetes is not going to be cured even with the best medication and diet. There is a difference between normalizing the blood sugars with long term medication and actually reversing the diabetes – meaning no medication is needed any longer.
Diabetes is a progressive disease. The longer it stands, the harder it is to get it to go away. Furthermore, even if the diabetes itself improves, the damage that has been caused to sensitive organs and tissues of the body will remain.
The way the doctor explained it to me was to think of the part of the blood that binds with sugar as a lock and sugar is the key. Normally, the sugar would fit perfectly in the lock and would signal you body to release insulin. Due very high blood sugar the locks have become warped and the key no longer fits so you no longer release/produce insulin and now that the lock is broken, it will never work again. Through diet and exercise you can become stable enough to be taken off meds but you will always have diabetes.
Latest Answers