“Some people are under the impression that you have surgery and you’re cured,” said Dr. Vivian Fonseca, the president for medicine and science for the American Diabetes Association, who was not involved in the study. “There have been a lot of claims about how wonderful surgery is for diabetes, and I think this offers a more realistic picture.”
The findings suggest that weight loss surgery may be most effective for treating diabetes in those whose disease is not very advanced. “What we’re learning is that not all diabetic patients do as well as others,” said Dr. David E. Arterburn, the lead author of the study and an associate investigator at the Group Health Research Institute in Seattle. “Those who are early in diabetes seem to do the best, which makes a case for potentially earlier intervention.”
After surgery, about 68 percent of patients experienced a complete remission of their diabetes. But within five years, 35 percent of those patients had it return. Taken together, that means that most of the subjects in the study, about 56 percent — a figure that includes those whose disease never remitted — had no long-lasting remission of diabetes after surgery.
7 comments:
There is a philosophical and psychological component to obesity that also must be resolved. Without resolving those, obesity will return with vengeance if it ever went away.
I agree Fred. If you are an alcoholic in my country you can get help, if you are a junkie you can get help. But if you are heavily overweight you get to be the butt of the joke, and the media portray you as a lazy person that eats too much. Which of course puts more negative pressure on the person who needs help. The medics are clueless most of the time. I believe it’s not how much you eat to a degree, it’s also what you eat that can make a huge difference.
Eddie
I too agree with the comments here. You only have to see or read items about the obese to see the often negative affect it can have. More still has to be done to educate both the medical and ordinary person as to what really does constitute a good healthy diet and what does not. Having said that the individuals must take this to heart and want to change and improve on lifestyle, diet and excercise, and unfortunately not all want to open their eyes and ears to this.
Grace
Great to see this blog back by the way, I've missed it
I do question weight loss surgery for anyone let alone diabetics. It seems to me to be 'the last chance'. It is such a shame that it gets to this for some. It is hard to have the determination that is required for any weight loss, fitness regime etc. My family were for me the get up and go to get on with it and improve my weight and more importantly my health. Some may not be as fortunate as me to have this surrounding them.
I think surgery of any kind is best avoided if at all possible. Sometimes of course it isn't. But you have to question surgery for weight loss and perhaps use it as a last resort.I do feel for those who are heavily overweight, the extra burden it puts on all the body.
At this time of year those of us that could do with losing weight often find that with Christmas parties, outings etc it is even more difficult to keep your resolve to eat sensibly with the right sort of food.
For those of us diabetics we know to keep the 'naughty' food i.e. sugar, starch down as much as we can, it's not always easy, but try and keep the good resolve going, you owe it to yourself and family to keep yourself as fit and healthy as you can.
LB
I had a Gastric Bypass and although overweight and diabetic it was for mainly for a kidney disease and it had the added benefit of "curing" my diabetes now its only been a year so will be interesting to see how it plays out long term. But although allot of bypasses are for obese diabetic just making clear according to my surgeon more and more are done for other issues that happen to coincide with the main one. Of course no bypass is going to be any good if your mind set is not changed beforehand. We had 6 months of diet control and training first but allot of health boards are working on a roll them in and cut them up then send them packing method and they wonder why they fail :(
Dave
Thank you for your comments. There are many reasons for people becoming over weight. Genetics/heredity, lifestyle, very poor dietary advice, psychological etc etc. One thing is for sure, no one decides or goes out of their way to become over weight or a type two diabetic. I believe many start to suffer from what Gerald Raven describes as Metabolic syndrome X.
There have been 4 generations of type two diabetics in my family and obesity was not am issue, although I was 50lbs over weight at diagnosis. Prior to that, for almost all my life, (63 years) I had held a 32/34 waist and been around 150/160 lbs.
Kind regards Eddie
Post a Comment