If you’re heading towards diabetes, and you lose weight and start eating better, does the damage done to date start undoing?

Or if your arteries are on their way to clogging up with cholesterol, if you get fit and change your diet, do your arteries ‘improve’ or just stop getting worse?

Or an ex-smokers lung damage? An alcoholic’s liver?

Can damage caused to the body by poor lifestyle choices be reversed if you sort yourself out, or is it just a case of it stops getting worse?

Yes. Not sure how accurate this is, but I think if you stop smoking it takes about 3 years for your risk of dying to reduce to the same level as someone who never smoked.

Or an ex-smokers lung damage?

Benefits of quitting smoking.

After 1 year
Risk of heart disease is about half compared with a person who is still smoking.
After 10 years
Risk of lung cancer falls to half that of a smoker.
After 15 years
Risk of heart attack falls to the same as someone who has never smoked.

With alcohol it’s similar, your liver repairs itself if you stay on the wagon – although if you get to the cirrhosis stage you’re rather more screwed.

Your body is pretty good at repairing damage, so all things being equal, assuming you don’t already have some degenerative condition, if you start living more healthily as a rule you will ‘get better’ and not just stop getting worse.

Don’t think you can reverse out of type 2 diabetes very easily – you can certainly ameliorate the symptoms through weight loss / exercise, and prob for some people this makes it quite a manageable condition. A full return to pre-diabetic health is not generally on the cards, though (AFAIK).

Don’t think you can reverse out of type 2 diabetes very easily

Millions of people suffering from Type 2 diabetes could be cured of the disease if they just lost weight, a new study suggests.

Scientists at Newcastle University have shown the disease is caused by fat accumulating in the pancreas and losing less than one gram from the organ can reverse the life-limiting illness and restore insulin production.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/science-news/12027265/Type-2-diabetes-can-be-cured-through-weight-loss-Newcastle-University-finds.html

Interesting stuff, cheers.

You may reduce your risk of cancer but the lungs do not recover structurally and their degraded performance is permanant AFAIK.

I think after years of damage you will get better generally but never as good as if you had lived well all along. It is damn amazing how the body can sort itself out though.

I reversed type 2 diabetes, however I had a very mild version/case/condition whatever you call it and went through a pretty complete lifestyle change. I never reached the point where I needed medication for it, I suspect I might have just been at high risk and Doc over-stated it slightly to make me take notice, but I can’t be sure.

High Cholesterol / High Blood Pressure / Arterial plaque can be reduced by changing your diet if your otherwise well, if you’ve got something like FH you might need some meds to help you. It can take 2 year or more though.

Everything gets better….

[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oLdk2C25Z14[/video]

So arterial plaque can go away then? What do you mean by FH – family history?

Damaged hearing is one thing that never recovers I believe.

A friend and I were talking over the Christmas holidays, remembering our childhoods. We both said how all the relatives and friends would smoke around us, also we both have photos taken as babies, sitting on the laps of various people holding a cigarette.

She seems to think (or was told) that our chances of getting cancer are greater (even though we have both never smoked ourselves) than someone who wasn’t in the position we were placed in as children.

Could anyone let me know if this is the case?

I read somewhere that if you stop smoking before you are 30, there is no statistical impact to life-span.

Never been a smoker myself though – filthy habit…

Detached retina – unless I want to have an operation where they empty out the vitreous humour and refill my eyeball I’ve lost about 30% vision in my left eye due to a partial retinal detachment 18 months ago.

Could anyone let me know if this is the case?

Almost certainly, but impossible to quantify due to time span / genetics etc.

FH =

https://www.bhf.org.uk/heart-matters-magazine/medical/familial-hypercholesterolaemia

I’ve got it, and by a cruel twist of fate also Dyslexia – which means I can’t confidential spell either.

Cheers

Some are reversible. Others – eg some hereditary heart conditions, types of arthritis etc. – are really only managed decline. Varies considerably though.

There’s no definitive answer to this – science is forever arguing over stuff like this e.g. cause and effect of lifestyle and disease…however, common sense says stop doing the stuff you know is bad for you and the body will heal itself the best it can….and one will feel emotionally positive about this which is good for you too….win win..

anecdotal- 11 years ago, i had heart failure. hypertensive cardiomyopathy; my heart was severely enlarged and weakened from fighting against the high BP. got that under control, then worked on reversing the damage done. these days, my heart is totally normal and weight loss significant enough for a consultant who removed my wisdom teeth 4 years back to query whether they had the right patient records for me…