Although gastric bypass surgery has been touted as being a lifesaver for diabetics, a new study found that Diabetics lost less weight as a result of the surgery, than overweight non-diabetics.
The study, from the Bariatric Surgery Program at University of California, San Francisco, studied 310 people. They found that 92 percent of the non-diabetics were able to lose more than 40 percent of their excess weight. Only 79 percent of diabetes patients were able to drop the same amount after one year.
According to Time Magazine, The study's leader, Dr. Guilherme Campos, noted that not all doctors use a standard or set size when restricting the stomach and that could cause some variation in the results. This variation explains why a small portion of gastric bypass patients lose little to no weight.
Other variations are thought to be caused by the Diabetic medications used to control blood sugar. Campos said that because many medications for Diabetes cause weight gain, being overweight is both a cause and complication of the disease.
He said a solution may be for Diabetics to use newer drugs, such as DPP-IV inhibitors, which work to control blood sugar and weight.
If you are trying to manage your weight, check out our guide to dieting with Diabetes.
Or, see what our experts have to say about gastric bypass and diabetes:
this post is truncated- the very next sentence is "but despite the fact that diabetes patients lost less weight after surgery than patients without the disease, 90% of the former group still saw their blood-sugar levels fall after the procedure."!
The other thing that strikes me as odd is that Dr. Campos recommends Januvia post op. It seems to me this is contraindicated- Januvia effects weight loss by slowing gastric emptying, but these patients don't need slower emptying- they just had their stomachs lopped off! Why not recommend metformin?- it causes weight loss, but by increasing insulin sensitivity. I would cry foul if Campos has any interest in choosing Januvia over metformin (generic and cheaper).