[What is the natural history of type 2 diabetes mellitus].

Type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) is widely accepted as the progressive disease. It is natural to think, if the newly diagnosed patient does not change the life-style habits and does not receive any medications, the state of T2DM will become more seriously. However, in this article, how to arrest the natural history of T2DM will be discussed by summarizing the recent findings on this topic. Those are; autophagy of pancreatic β cell: a sweet process to diabetes, hyperglycemia-induced oxidative stress on β cell function, zinc, insulin and the liver, and so on. In short, the important things are; people should know the reasons why minor abnormalities have happened, and the practitioners have to try hard to remove such causes triggering T2DM.