7 Things You Need to Know about Diabetes and Weight Loss Surgery

http://type2diabetestreatment.net/diabetes-type-2/7-things-you-need-to-know-about-diabetes-and-weight-loss-surgery/

The American Diabetes Association now officially recommends weight-loss surgery as a possible helpful option for patients who are obese and who also have diabetes.

In the US, two-thirds of adults are struggling to manage their weight and type 2 diabetes is more and more common. The ADA has published a book called 21 Things You Need to Know About Diabetes and Weight-Loss Surgery written by Dr. Scott A. Cunneen (who has performed thousands of weight-loss surgeries) and Nancy Sayles Kaneshiro to help clarify the this overwhelming topic of weight-loss surgery options and how diabetes may be helped.

To help you decide if you want to learn more, I read the book and want to share:

7 Things You Need to Know About Diabetes and Weight-Loss Surgery

1. “Weight-loss surgery isn’t a quick fix. In fact, it requires a lot of hard work and a lifetime commitment. However, a majority of bariatric-surgery patients significantly improve their health in a very short period of time.”

Dr. Cunneen helps make sure you are aware of what you need to know in order to find out if weight-loss surgery is for you and to make sure that you understand the commitment you are considering. The book talks about the ways in which diabetes can be helped by weight-loss surgery.

2. “A wide spectrum of surgeries exists in the weight-loss arena today, running the gamut from what have been traditionally called restrictive operations to procedures that are malabsorptive.”

There are different kinds of weight-loss surgery options and this book can inform you on what kinds exist, what they entail, and who they are recommended for as well as how they might affect your diabetes.

3. “What weight-loss surgery does is change your body’s physiology to allow you to combat hunger and feel satisfied with less energy stored up in your body (meaning less fat, which is the predominant way the body stores energy).”

It can be very challenging to manage diabetes on top of constant hunger and the urge to over-eat. Weight-loss surgery helps to curb hunger so a patient can more easily focus on managing diabetes.

4. “Blood glucose levels often return to the normal range following surgery, and while some people with type 2 diabetes who use insulin may not get off insulin completely, their dosages can often be reduced. For some patients on oral medications, those medications may be cut way back or eliminated entirely after weight-loss surgery.”

The benefits are great to people with diabetes. About 72 percent of obese patients with type 2 diabetes end up going into a diabetes remission for 2 or more years after having weight-loss surgery.

5. “Be aware that you can cause harm to yourself after a gastric-bypass if you choose to ignore the changes your surgeon and health-care team tell you to make.”

After weight-loss surgery, your health-care team and surgeon will give you instructions on how to eat, what to eat, and what supplements, like iron and calcium, you should take. These instructions or recommendations are necessary due to the side-effects of weight-loss surgery. For example, for some patients, iron absorption will be a lifelong issue after surgery and therefore, supplementing iron will be an important thing to do for the rest of one’s life.

6. “Now, weight-loss surgery (or, as it is sometimes called, metabolic surgery) has been added to the list of glucose management options for certain obese patients because it has been shown to be a durable and effective “treatment” for diabetes as well as other metabolic conditions.”

People with diabetes tend to need less insulin if they were already taking insulin and they need less oral medications or none at all after weight-loss surgery. Some patients with type 1 diabetes will even be good candidates for weight-loss surgery in order to reduce the amount of insulin they require and help provide a more predictable and stable blood sugar management.

7. “Expectation” I will finally be a happy person. Reality: Only if you have the capacity to be happy in the first place. Miserable heavy people can easily turn into miserable skinny people, and their happiness level is not always tied to their weight.”

Dr. Cunneen says that this is why pre-operative education and psychological assessments, post-op support, and maybe even therapy are all available to “help patients enjoy not only weight-loss success, but life itself.Photo Credit: American Diabetes Association and Adobe Stock PhotosLiving with Diabetes Type 2
The Diabetes Solution
Doctor Pearson Diabetes
Original Article
#Diabetes_Type_2
#obesity_help