Weight Loss Surgery Cures Diabetes
Weight loss surgery for gastric bypasses and gastric bands can cure diabetes, a leading UK obesity expert said today.
Dr Carel Le Roux, from weight management centre Vita Clinics, said weight loss was really just a side effect of weight loss surgery. The real benefit was a dramatic improvement in health and quality of life.
Dr Le Roux said: “Studies of more than 1,000 people in the US have found that 83 per cent of those with type 2 diabetes who underwent weight loss surgery were cured of the disease². This is a massive breakthrough and could help millions of people in the UK do away with this debilitating illness.
“I have seen people who are dependent on insulin leave hospital 48 hours after weight loss surgery insulin free. It is a modern miracle!
“It is important to try to prevent obesity, but we have a current generation of adults who, without specialist medical or surgical treatment, will die early from their obesity – as many as nine years early. With obesity related diseases such as type 2 diabetes cured by surgery in around 80% of cases, it is essential that obese people have access to the proven treatments they so badly need,” he added.
Sharon Watterson battled with obesity for several years and reached the stage where she couldn’t even walk and had to give up work as a nurse practitioner because she was carrying so much weight and felt so unwell. In 2005 she developed type 2 diabetes which was so unstable doctors were considering putting her on insulin. Sharon underwent a gastric bypass and her diabetes rapidly disappeared.
“I dropped 16 dress sizes, 12 stone and I don’t have to take my diabetes drugs any more because the symptoms have just disappeared. It was amazing. I am a completely different, disease-free person,” she said.
The rates of obesity in the UK have more than doubled in the last 25 years. Nearly a quarter of men and a quarter of women are obese. Based on current trends nearly 60 per cent of the UK population could be obese by 2050 - that is almost two out of three people1.
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