Posts Tagged ‘bariatric surgery’

Do you think the primary risks of obesity are diabetes and heart disease? Well, perhaps you should think again. The link between obesity and cancer clearly deserves your attention. A new report published in the CDC MMWR examines trends in cancers associated with obesity. Brooke Steele and colleagues found that 40% of all cancers diagnosed in […]

It’s ugly. People who need and choose to have gastric surgery for obesity face a triple bias. There’s the discrimination, bias, and even contempt that people experience just from living with obesity. But more troubling is bias from people making two kinds of false judgments about the surgery. The Label of a Cheat and a […]

Over and over we hear it. The physical changes that come with bariatric surgery are obvious. But the biggest challenges are inside our own heads. And it shows up in research. Rarely, but significantly, substance abuse, alcohol use, depression, or even suicide can follow in the years after surgery. Though we know much about this […]

“At the end of the day, what we’d like to see is fewer obese people in the Medicare population about which we have to have these conversations.” Those striking words came Aloysius Cuyjet, MD, MPH. They came after he chaired more than five hours of evidence review at Medicare’s advisory committee on evidence and coverage […]

You can find plenty of bad advice about obesity in general and bariatric surgery in specific. One bit that’s especially harmful is the false notion that bariatric surgery should be “a last resort.” But a new study in JAMA Surgery provides further clarity. Putting off surgery while obesity gets progressively worse will stack the odds […]

Does gastric bypass surgery save money for patients with obesity and diabetes? That’s the question a new study answers in Obesity this week. Suffering with a chronic disease – at least in the short term – is usually free. So finding savings would indeed be surprising in a two-year study such as this one. This study holds […]

Lose weight and gain telomeres with bariatric surgery. It’s not exactly compelling ad copy, but it might be an important insight into the benefits of bariatric surgery. Researchers from the Geisinger Obesity Research Institute have found longer telomeres in 60% of people three to five years after they had gastric bypass surgery. Telomeres: An Important […]

Since Gabourey Sidibe opened up about her experiences with bariatric surgery, we’ve been enjoying the refreshing rush of reality she offers. Public fascination with personal weight loss is relentless. So in her latest interview with Refinery29, she went right to the heart of what people face from nosy bystanders: What has been happening is, since I’ve […]

Forget the Biggest Loser. Perhaps we should be paying more attention to the smallest losers. We mean the microbes in our guts that serve to digest all of that food we eat. New research is making it clear that the gut microbiome changes profoundly after the most effective widely-used weight loss surgery – gastric bypass. Profound Microbiome […]

In the last two weeks, two new, independent studies with large cohorts of gastric bypass patients are pointing to the same benefit. Gastric bypass appears to cut heart failure risk in half. One of the many major complications of obesity is heart disease. The end stage of heart disease is heart failure. After years of […]