Weight loss surgery: do the benefits really outweigh the risks?

Posted by Neill Abayon

Obesity prevalence is the highest it has ever been. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) states that more that one-third of American adults are affected. And with the increase in obesity comes an increase in the number of weight loss surgery procedures. But how safe are the procedures, and do the benefits outweigh the risks?


There is no doubt that obesity is a major cause of a number of serious and potentially life-threatening diseases.

The condition can lead to type 2 diabetes, heart disease, stroke, and it has also been linked to some cancers, including breast cancer and colon cancer. A recent study reported by Medical News Today even suggested a link between obesity and pancreatic cancer.

Furthermore, the condition can severely damage a person's quality of life, leaving them immobile and often triggering depression.

Based on these factors, it is not difficult to understand why excessively overweight individuals look to various weight loss interventions in order to combat their obesity.

And weight loss surgery, also known as bariatric surgery, is now one of the most common interventions to which obese individuals turn.

According to the American Society of Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery (ASMBS), the number of surgical weight loss procedures carried out in the US has increased from 13,000 in 1998 to more than 200,000 in 2008.


More here.

 

Diabetes drug enters clinical trial for Alzheimer's treatment

 Posted by Neill Abayon

A drug commonly used for treating diabetes may reverse symptoms of late-stage Alzheimer's disease and is now in the process of entering a major clinical trial.

Researchers from Lancaster University in the UK conducted a study revealing that the drug, liraglutide, may reverse memory loss in the late stages of Alzheimer's, as well as prevent the build-up of toxic plaques on the brain that contribute to symptoms of the disorder.

Liraglutide is from a class of drugs known as GLP-1 (Glucagon-like peptide-1) analogue. The drug is prescribed to those suffering from diabetes and is used to stimulate insulin production.

But the study, published in the journal Neuropharmacology, shows that the drug can also pass through the blood-brain barrier and protect brain cells.

The researchers tested the drug on the brains of 14 month-old mice who were suffering from late stage Alzheimer's disease. Liraglutide was injected into the mice over a 2-month period.

More here.

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Diabetes lifetime costs - as expensive as a house?

Posted by Neill Abayon

A recent report published in theAmerican Journal of Preventive Medicinebreaks down the costs of living with type 2 diabetes over the course of a lifetime. The dollar amount is eye-opening, and so are the differences in costs between men and women.

To calculate the costs of living with type 2 diabetes on an individual basis, researchers from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and Research Triangle International created a simulation model that could compile the costs of both treating the condition and managing its complications. This is as opposed to only focusing on the overall economic burden of treating type 2 diabetes in a year.

The findings reveal that on average, a person with type 2 diabetes spends more than $85,000 over the course of their lifetime on treating the disease and managing complications.

Additionally, the point at which a person is diagnosed with the disease can affect how much they spend during their lifetime. For example, a man diagnosed with type 2 diabetes when he is between 25 and 44 will spend $124,700.

But women from the same age range will pay over $5,000 more, at $130,800 during their lifetime. Researchers note that costs go down the later in life a person is diagnosed with the condition.

More here.

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The 10 Most Common Reasons People Visit Their Doctor

Source: Vic, Flickr.

By Sean Williams

With the full implementation of the individual portion of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act less than five months away, physicians and doctor's offices around the country should be bracing for what could be an influx of new patients. With the mandate for insurance comes the potential that more people (both those covered under Medicaid expansion and self-insured individuals) may choose to visit their doctor more often to address ongoing and preventative concerns.

From an investing standpoint and as a society, we understand what diseases are most prevalent, where the trends are rising, and what medications are being developed to treat these diseases. Obesity, for instance, is a disease that affects 35.7% of the U.S. population, and with it comes a considerably higher risk of developing high blood pressure, high cholesterol, diabetes, and cancer. Similarly, some 25 million people in the U.S. are diabetic, with another nearly 80 million in a pre-diabetes stage. You'd think with staggering figures like these that the majority of doctors office visits would be related in some way to chronic weight or diabetic issues.

More here.

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'Diabetes-cure' operation explained

Weight loss surgery can help with diabetes

By James Gallagher

The reason some patients are cured of type-2 diabetes after a gastric bypass may have been explained by US researchers.


Their animal study showed bypassing the stomach made the intestines work harder, use more energy and keep blood sugar levels under control.

They hope their findings, published in the journal Science, will lead to less invasive treatments for the condition.

Diabetes UK said a healthy lifestyle was the best way to avoid the disease.

Type-2 diabetes, which is mostly the result of a bad diet and little exercise, is a growing problem globally.

It leaves people unable to control the amount of sugar in the blood and can culminate in blindness, limb loss and heart disease.

The condition can be managed with insulin injections.

Researchers at Boston Children's Hospital, in the US, were investigating how a type of weight loss surgery affected diabetes.

Dr Nicholas Stylopoulos told the BBC: "Gastric bypass is the most effective weight loss procedure, but it also cures diabetes.

"If we knew how this worked we could develop new treatments that don't require surgery."

More here.

Sugar and Health Research

Emailed to me by Laura Thomas

That sneaky, sweet substance in many people's favourite treats can be downright dirty when it comes to playing with the heart and liver. Unfortunately, Britons love the stuff and consume, on average, 238 teaspoons of the substance each week, more than three times the average from 50 years ago. Now that's a lot of sugar.

Broken down, table sugar is essentially composed of molecules of fructose and glucose. When too much fructose finds its way into the human body, it doesn't break down and metabolise like other carbohydrates. Robert Lustig, professor of pediatric endocrinology at University of California, explained that what the body does instead is "turn excess fructose into liver fat. That starts a cascade of insulin resistance (insulin promotes sugar uptake from blood) which leads to chronic metabolic disease, including diabetes and heart disease."

Researchers at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth) recently published a study in the Journal of the American Heart Association which showed a correlation between eating too much sugar and heart failure. The reason for this is a small molecule called glucose 6-phosphate (G6P). When too much of this sugar molecule accumulates, it causes changes to muscle proteins and also induces poor pump function, which can ultimately lead to heart failure.

Another study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition illustrated that fructose can rapidly cause liver damage even if no weight is gained. During the study, researchers at the Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center tested animals who were fed a diet high in fructose to measure biomarkers of liver damage. The control group was fed a diet of complex carbohydrates and soy protein.

"What surprised us the most was how quickly the liver was affected and how extensive the damage was, especially without weight gain as a factor," said Kylie Kavanagh, D.V.M., assistant professor of pathology-comparative medicine at Wake Forest Baptist and lead author of the study. "Six weeks in monkeys is roughly equivalent to three months in humans."

Results indicated that, in the high-fructose group, intestinal bacteria was migrating to the liver more rapidly than the control group and causing damage. This was apparently due to the fact that fructose was causing the intestines to be less protective than normal and allowing bacteria to leak out a fairly high rate.

Laura Thomas, founder of happysugarhabits.com, commented, "Changing one's sugar habits is truly about making a conscious choice to be healthier and live longer, and it seems like science is continually proving that point as it delves further into the chemistry and effects of sugar."

EU heart deaths 'halved since 1980s'

About one in five men and one in eight women die from coronary heart disease in the UK

By Helen Briggs BBC News 

Death rates from coronary heart disease have more than halved in almost all EU countries since the early 1980s, according to research.

Most countries have seen steady reductions in deaths in both men and women of all ages, despite rises in obesity and diabetes, a UK study shows.
However, experts have warned against complacency, saying wide disparities remain across Europe.
Coronary heart disease is the UK's single biggest killer.
About one in five men and one in eight women die from the disease.

Read here.

Vitamin D really does prevent cancer

Posted by Neill Abayon

A new study out of Oxford University pinpoints vitamin D deficiency as a culprit in serious illnesses like cancer and autoimmune disorders. According to the report, which was recently published online in the journal Genome Research, genetic receptors throughout the body need adequate vitamin D levels to prevent these and other serious illnesses from developing.

Multiple sclerosis, diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, Chron's disease, leukemia -- these and many more diseases are often caused by a lack of vitamin D. Your genes literally have receptors that need vitamin D in order to properly express themselves. If there is not enough of the vitamin, serious illness is prone to develop.

The Oxford team made specific observations about the importance of vitamin D in the genome regions associated with autoimmune diseases and cancer, noting that the nutrient is absolutely vital in helping to prevent these diseases from forming.

Read the full article here.

Higher blood sugar levels linked to lower brain function in diabetics

Posted by Neill Abayon

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. – Results of a recent study conducted by researchers at Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center and colleagues show that cognitive functioning abilities drop as average blood sugar levels rise in people with type 2 diabetes.

The study appears in this month's issue of Diabetes Care.

The ongoing Memory in Diabetes (MIND) study, a sub-study of the Action to Control Cardiovascular Risk in Diabetes Trial (ACCORD), found a statistically significant inverse relationship between A1C levels (average blood glucose levels over a period of two to three months) and subjects' scores on four cognitive tests. No association, however, was found between daily blood glucose levels (measured by the fasting plasma glucose test) and test scores.

For the study, researchers at 52 of the 77 ACCORD sites throughout the United States and Canada administered a 30-minute battery of cognitive tests to nearly 3,000 individuals ages 55 years and older.

"The tests used in the study measured several aspects of memory function," said Jeff Williamson, M.D., M.H.S., principal investigator for the study at the Wake Forest clinical site. "For example, we tested one's ability to switch back and forth between memory tasks or to 'multitask,' an important skill for people needing to manage their diabetes."

Read the full article here.

Friendly Bacteria Protect Against Type 1 Diabetes

Posted by Neill Abayon

The findings, reported in the journal Nature, support the so-called "hygiene hypothesis" – the theory that a lack of exposure to parasites, bacteria and viruses in the developed world may lead to increased risk of diseases like allergies, asthma, and other disorders of the immune system.

The results also suggest that exposure to some forms of bacteria might actually help prevent onset of Type I diabetes, an autoimmune disease in which the patient's immune system launches an attack on cells in the pancreas that produce insulin.

The root causes of autoimmune disease have been the subject of intensive investigation by scientists around the world.

In the past decade, it has become evident that the environment plays a role in the development of some overly robust immune system responses. For instance, people in less-developed parts of the world have a low rate of allergy, but when they move to developed countries the rate increases dramatically. Scientists have also noted the same phenomenon in their labs.

Non-obese diabetic (NOD) mice develop the disease at different rates after natural breeding, depending upon the environment where they are kept. Previous research has shown that NOD mice exposed to killed (i.e., non-active) strains of tuberculosis or other disease-causing bacteria are protected against the development of Type I diabetes. This suggests that the rapid "innate" immune response that normally protects us from infections can influence the onset of Type 1 diabetes.

Read the full article here.