If you’re obese, and haven’t managed weight loss through traditional methods, bariatric, or weight loss, surgery could be the wellness boost you’re after, but can the same be said of people with type 2 diabetes?
According to Vincent Woo, MD, chair of the clinical and scientific section of the Canadian Diabetes Association, there are advantages to the surgery: ‘With significant weight loss, individuals will dramatically improve glucose levels and in some, diabetes will go away.’ There is evidence to support this, as from a review of weight loss surgery studies that focused on the effects on type 2 diabetes, researchers found that over 75% of people with diabetes saw their disease completely disappear, and 86% found it resolved or improved. Yet the study didn’t follow the patients’ progress over the long term, so it is unknown whether the weight loss or the diabetes results were permanent.
However, Gerald Bernstein, MD, associate professor of medicine at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in Bronx, N.Y., and a past president of the American Diabetes Association, warns that surgery can be problematic because it doesn’t remove the reason for the obesity in the first place: ‘It still requires that the individual make his own commitment to altering the way he lives, with both reduction in food intake and increased physical activity’ and ‘many people find a way back to their old habits’.
Woo admits that ‘Not all patients lose weight. Some say their quality of life is not improved and they have constant pain or diarrhoea, depending on the type of surgery’ and because the way food is absorbed after the surgery, there may be some vitamin and iron deficiencies.
Therefore, bariatric surgery is only recommended for those whose health is more at risk to their weight than the potential surgical risks, and who can’t lose weight any other way. The potential risks prove that this is not a decision to be made lightly, and Bernstein’s assertion that lifestyle changes are still necessary means that weight loss surgery must only be undergone if you are determined to continue working at keeping the weight off once it’s been lost. Otherwise, it is a pointless and potentially dangerous step to take.
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