Brian Shelton, who lived with Type 1 diabetes for nearly 50 years, is now free of the condition – thanks to stem cells.
Recently, after checking his blood sugar level and eating a meal with his ex-wife, Shelton checked his blood sugar again and wept because his insulin levels were perfect and within normal limits.
Type 1 diabetes is a chronic metabolic disease in which the beta cells of the pancreases, which make insulin, are destroyed, making a person dependent on insulin for life. People with this condition have to take insulin shots every single day to stay alive.
Shelton achieved a diabetes cure after an infusion of stem cells, which restored his beta cells that had never worked in his life before.
In an interview with New York Times’ Gina Kolata, Shelton said, “It’s a whole new life. It’s like a miracle.”
A year before he received stem cell treatment, Shelton had suffered five potentially dangerous episodes of hypoglycemia (low blood sugar), according to USA Today.
In one of the episodes, his blood sugar levels dropped after he shoveled snow, causing him to fall, as he describes it, “face-first into the concrete.”
He told Good Morning America, “You spend your entire life every minute of the day, trying to keep track of where your numbers are at. I do all the things that I’m supposed to do and nothing was working.”
Now, after the treatment, his blood sugar levels are pretty much under control – thanks to the stem cell-based procedure that could be a cure for diabetes.
Researchers are now optimistic about Shelton’s stem cell results, but they are guarded.
UCLA endocrinologist Dr. Peter Butler, who was not part of Shelton’s trial, told Kolata, “It is a remarkable result. To be able to reverse diabetes by giving them back the cells they are missing is comparable to the miracle when insulin was first available 100 years ago.”
Now Shelton, 64, is at the forefront of a potentially ground-breaking cure for people with Type 1 diabetes.
He said, “I feel like I got released from handcuffs. I came home that first day, my numbers were textbook perfect and now everything is completely level. I’m not sitting here like where’s my orange juice, where’s my pills, where’s my shot. It’s like I don’t need them. My body does it.”
