ISOBEL Murray abandoned diabetes medication three years ago after she successfully reversed the condition by losing three and a half stone.
Mrs Murray, a retired civil servant and mother-of-two from North Ayrshire, was diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes in 2011, six months after suffering a heart attack.
When her GP suggested participating in the DiRECT she jumped at the chance. For 17 weeks from October 2014, she stopped all diabetes medication and stuck to a low calorie meal replacement diet before gradually reintroducing food.
Mrs Murray, 65, said: “The diet was very difficult, I can’t say otherwise. I was absolutely determined, but it was still difficult in a lot of ways because it’s such a strange thing to do, to be on a liquid diet for that length of time.
“I made a lot of sacrifices. My husband did all the cooking and food shopping. My husband and any guests would eat in the dining area and I ate separately in the living room. It was also around the time my first grandchild was born, but I still stuck to it.
“Having a liquid diet made it easier in some ways, as you didn’t have to think about what you had to eat.”
Mrs Murray was regularly weighed, and her blood glucose levels checked. She exercised at the gym and walked 10,000 steps a day.
Four months into the trial, Mrs Murray’s diabetes had gone into remission and over the two-year trial period her weight fell from 15 stone to 11 stone 4Ib. A year on, the diabetes has still not returned.
Mrs Murray said the results have “transformed” her life. She added: “I was on various medications which were constantly increasing and I was becoming more and more ill every day. When the opportunity came to go on the DiRECT study, I had absolutely no hesitation.
“When the doctors told me that my pancreas was working again, it felt fantastic, absolutely amazing. I don’t think of myself as a diabetic anymore, I get all my diabetes checks done, but I don’t feel like a diabetic. I am one of the lucky ones to have gone into remission.”
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