There have been a couple of recent threads on LinkedIn regarding the definition of a "cure" for diabetes.

As everyone here who takes insulin will agree, diabetes cannot be "cured" by diet alone. And as everyone whose diabetes is currently controlled in part, or entirely, by diet and exercise will agree, just like "insulin is not a cure", "eating the right foods" is not a cure, either.

Merriam-Webster defines "cure (noun)" in our sense as the following:

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Yesterday, I merged inspiration from Ecclesiastes with the liturgical forms of responses and contrasts to highlight some of the variables that make each person's experience of living with diabetes unique.

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"The human race can be divided into two groups: those who produce their own insulin, and those who don't."

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The first week in August marked the start of the 2010 run of the New York Renaissance Faire, an event in which the most popular exhibitions involve aiming long, pointy objects at impossibly small, circular targets. Whether it's an 8-foot-long lance hooking a three-inch-diameter ring, or a 26" arrow aimed at a bull's eye 100 yards away, or a sword or spear looking to unhinge a 1/2"-diameter ring of chain-mail armour, these are impressive displays of marksmanship and control -- kind of like trying to keep one's blood glucose levels between the mythical "102" and "104" (mg/dl) of glucometer-packaging displays, regardless of what one eats and when. (READ MORE)

From time to time, a heated discussion will erupt around the terms and phrases "prediabetes", "borderline diabetes", and "beating diabetes". The basic gist of the debate goes like this:

Someone will post that he was told he has "borderline diabetes" or "prediabetes", or that he had type 2 diabetes, but since he changed his diet, got off his diabetes medications, and has normal lab results, he has reversed or cured his diabetes.

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It's so easy to fall into the trap of thinking that just because I don't have to take a pill to control my Type 2 diabetes, I'm "cured". After all, that's what so many people in my condition were told, so many times, over the past half-century. Some are still told that today. And given that most of the time, my blood glucose levels stay between 85 and 120, with the occasional high postprandial excursion (which occasionally -- like, when I'm low and having dinner at a restaurant -- will lead to a high fasting reading the next morning), there's nothing to alarm the unsuspecting practitioner that back in 2002, at fifty pounds heavier than I am today, the doctor's meter read 170 mg/dl after a ten-hour fast, with an HbA1c of 7.8. Or in lay terms, "I had diabeetus".

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