There is a considerable semantic sloshing back and forth in the low/no-carb community, and elsewhere, about whether or not this way of eating can "cure" the many chronic conditions that it manifestly will ameliorate or cause to disappear entirely. There are folks who's chronic difficulties require a strict adherence to, essentially, a meat and water only regimen to see results. And there are folks who can see desired results with a diet that is only low-carb compared to the never-to-be-sufficiently-damned Standard American Diet. It's a fairly wide spectrum, with efficacy dependent on how much damage has been done by a lifetime of eating sugar and carby crap.
The contentious semantics are based on the fact that when someone who has caused a problem to disappear by eating in the low-carb spectrum, they are once again beset by those problems when they revert to eating what they had been eating before. To one contingent this means that low-carb cannot really cure anything, it will only keep the condition at bay. To the contrary contingent, myself included, this is one of those situations where a difference that makes no difference, is in fact no difference at all.
I think the semantic confusion comes in because we have been programmed to believe that only medicine in the form of drugs and surgery can actually cure something, whereas lifestyle changes can only temporarily ameliorate a given condition. I think this is nonsense on stilts. If, for instance, someone has been ingesting a poisonous substance, then stops ingesting it, they will get better, assuming the ingestion has not already caused death. If, for another example, one's Type 2 diabetes is in complete remission due to low-carb eating, as is quite common, then I maintain that the T2D is in fact cured. If one starts eating sugar and carbs again, the condition will reappear, just as starting to ingest a poisonous substance again will have unpleasant results.
The poison analogy is not limited to sugar and carbohydrates. There are many different foods that will cause problems for someone until they stop eating them. Grains, various vegetables, fruits, seed oils, and low-fat dairy products are among the most common bad actors. This is why a carnivore diet, eating only animal products, is sometimes called an elimination diet. After stabilizing on a strict carnivore diet, sundry different foods are reintroduced and the results noted. Bad results? Don't eat that no mo'.
The various and sundry toxic effects of different foods aside, the cold fact is that for a large fraction of the population, sugar and carbs are poison. Actually I think sugar and carbs are poisonous to the entirety of the population, it's just that the effects of this poisoning have simply not yet manifested themselves in those who currently seem resistant to the baleful effects of the S.A.D. I suppose we need a new locution, to wit; un-cure. When a lifestyle change eliminates (cures) a chronic condition, then when the change is reversed, the condition will be "un-cured" in a hurry.
Cancer is commonly referred to as being "in remission" when it goes away. This implies that the remission is a tenuous shaky state of affairs and that the cancer may reappear at any time for "no reason." If one puts a variety of ailments into remission by eating low-carb, that is not a shaky state of affairs. If one's Type 2 diabetes goes away on low-carb, it will stay away indefinitely if old eating habits are avoided. Time to stop thinking that "remission" is some sort of inferior situation compared to "cure". Overall, low-carb eating is the cure for what ails 'ya.
