Diabetes, Weight Loss, Remission or Cure

Diabetes, Weight Loss, Remission or Cure

From Fork U with Dr. Terry Simpson by Terry Simpson

May 28, 2026 · 18 min · Episode 129

About this episode

The episode discusses the surprising effects of bariatric surgery on Type 2 Diabetes and the implications for understanding the disease.

Type 2 Diabetes, Bariatric Surgery, Fasting, and GLP-1s: What We Finally Learned About a Disease We Thought We Understood For years, I watched something happen in bariatric surgery that made very little sense, according to the medical textbooks of the time. Patients with type 2 diabetes would undergo surgery, and within days, their blood sugars would improve dramatically. Some would leave needing far less insulin. Others would stop insulin entirely. Many of them would eventually remain off diabetes medications for years. Now here is the important part: They had not yet lost significant weight. That observation mattered enormously. Because if diabetes improvement were simply the result of fat disappearing from the body over time, then blood sugar should improve slowly over months as weight comes off. But that was not what we saw. Instead, patients barely eating — sipping broth and protein shakes while recovering from surgery — were suddenly metabolically different almost immediately. At the time, we knew it worked. What we did not fully understand was why. And honestly, that story tells you something important about medicine and science: sometimes clinical medicine notices the…

People in this episode

Host: Terry Simpson

Topics covered

  • Type 2 Diabetes
  • Bariatric Surgery
  • Fasting
  • GLP-1s
  • Weight Loss
  • Insulin Resistance

Keywords

  • Type 2 Diabetes
  • Bariatric Surgery
  • Fasting
  • GLP-1s
  • Weight Loss
  • Insulin

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: bariatric surgery

Products: GLP-1s

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