Diabetes can be reversed with lifestyle changes, weight loss drugs

FOX 2 - You can control your lifestyle but you can't control your genes. Now we know both can impact your risk of Type 2 Diabetes. The doctor is in to say you might be able to reverse it.

For the next meal you eat, think about what your body is doing. The food hits our stomach, breaks down into our blood, our pancreas pumps out insulin to get the glucose or blood sugar from our blood into our cells.

When the cells stop reacting to insulin as with Type 2 Diabetes, the sugar stays in blood.

"So the body's not responding to the insulin," said Dr. Vincent Hannosh, Trinity Health. "So the blood sugar stays high. It has risk factors to damage organs in the body - the brain, the kidneys, the heart,  the liver, nerves and everything in the body."

Sugar in your blood is damaging and while you might not have any symptoms, the only warning might come in the form of pre-Diabetes.

"If your between an A1C which is a three-month average of your blood sugar, 5.7 and 6.4, you're considered pre-diabetic, which is kind of an alarm bell that we have to intervene," he said.

Intervention can come with lifestyle change or medication. One of the top-selling diabetes medications is Ozempic, now also being used for weight loss.

"Ozempic is a phenomenal drug for weight loss," he said. "It improves insulin sensitivity, which reverses that insulin resistance and also, slows down gastric emptying, which means you don't eat as much. And that leads to improvement in your body mass, which then reverses the course of Type 2 Diabetes."

Here's the good news, in spite of the risk of your genes causing Type 2 Diabetes, you can overcome it.

"If you change your lifestyle, you can reverse Type 2 Diabetes," Hannosh said. "After about two years or so, I'll just say that you don't have it anymore if you're able to reverse it. And in most cases it is a lifestyle thing.

"If you can change the way that you're eating, the way you are exercising, the way your sleeping, all those things improve how you handle your body weight and reverse diabetes."

This time of the year pay attention to what you are eating. Make sure your going to an annual physical and getting your A1C checked.

If you're diagnosed with prediabetes , the best thing you can do to reduce your risk is lose even a little bit of weight.