Question: Is there a way to stop diabetes

Tom Hewat answered on 7 May 2020:

Hi Harvey, it depends on what you mean by stop to be honest! For Type 1 diabetes, the best thing we can do at the minute is give patients the insulin that their body doesn’t make so that they can control their blood sugar. In Type 2 diabetes, there are a lot of things that we know make you more likely to get it. Some of these, such as diet or lack of exercise, can be changed, but others, such as your DNA or your age, can’t be changed. In the rarer forms of diabetes that I study, while we know some of the causes, we can still only control the patient’s blood sugar levels, though the things we use to do this can be different. Overall, we can’t really stop diabetes happening, but we can keep learning more of the science behind it to help us understand it more and treat it better. Hope that helps!