Wendie Trubow, MD, MBA, IFMCPPresident at Five Journeys, Functional Medicine & Wellness Provider, Best Selling Author, Passionate Champion for Health

Reversible vs Irreversible Aspects of Diabetes

6 Mar 2026 · 0 min

Watch on YouTube

0:16

In this brief multi‑speaker discussion, the participants clarify that while diabetes itself can be reversed through lifestyle and medical interventions, many of its complications are only reversible if caught early. They illustrate this with several examples: blurred vision caused by acute hyperglycemia is reversible; early‑stage diabetic retinopathy can improve, but advanced retinopathy is often permanent. Kidney disease is reversible in stage 3 (allowing patients to come off medication) but not in stage 4 when dialysis is required. Peripheral neuropathy can improve, whereas gangrene is irreversible. The speakers stress that minor early symptoms should prompt patients to act quickly, as early detection dramatically increases the chance of reversing complications.

You can definitely reverse diabetes, but you can't always, if you have diabetic retinopathy, that may not be reversible if it's gotten that bad.
Right, you can reverse the disease, but not the consequences of the disease.
Sometimes, I mean, hopefully, other times you can.
Right.
Yeah, it's all on the timeline, right? Like you said, if you get blurred vision caused by high blood sugar, that's reversible. If you catch the retinopathy in the early stage, we've seen that reverse. But if it's, you know, there a while, Yeah, it's not going away. Just like kidney damage. You catch kidney, you know, like in stage 3 kidney failure, 100% you can reverse that, right? Getting them off the meds. But they're in stage 4, like already on dialysis, that's not reversible, right? With your feet, if it's already gangrene, you can't reverse that. But if it's just neuropathy, that's reversible. So those things, so you gotta catch it before it gets really bad. But I think luckily for a lot of these people, just the minor symptoms is enough to make them go, holy crap, I need to do something.
That's the bad enough philosophy. Is it bad enough yet? If not, come back when it's bad enough. We'll talk about it.