Before You Choose Weight Loss Surgery Read This

A new study confirms what quite a few other studies suggest. The reason that weight loss appears to "cure" diabetes has nothing to do with weight loss. It is because the surgery changes the way that gastric hormones, most notably GLP-1 are secreted.

The study is discussed here:

Science Daily: How weight loss surgery reverses Type 2 diabetes.

I've blogged before about the irresponsible way that stomach amputation is being promoted as a "cure" for diabetes when the promoters' own data show that it doesn't cure it, but merely slows it down for a few years. If you haven't read that post, I'd urge you to read it. You'll find it HERE.

But I bring up the topic again because this latest study--a rodent study--both confirms the temporary nature of the fix and suggests that many people could achieve the same effect without risking a surgery whose kill rate is so high that if it were associated with a drug, that drug would never have made it through the FDA approval process. (Surgery doesn't need to go through any approval process.)

The doctors who profit mightily from selling obesity surgery are NOT going to tell you that there is a drug which is far safer than the surgery and which controls blood sugar and provides dramatic weight loss to one third of those who take it: BYETTA.

Byetta is a synthetic form of GLP-1. It dramatically slows stomach emptying, making it very hard to overeat. For many people it changes the brain's way of processing hunger, making them not feel like eating. It may stimulate insulin release, too.

An FDA report found fewer than 100 cases of pancreatitis in the hundreds of thousands of people who had taken Byetta, which sparked a panic among doctors who stopped prescribing it. For some reason, the fact that 25 people out of every 10,000 who have weight loss surgery die shortly after having the surgery went unnoticed by these same doctors. That same statistic is rarely mentioned by the gastric surgeons they refer their patients to, either.

Further review has not conclusively linked Byetta with pancreatitis--the rate of pancreatitis in obese people who don't take Byetta is pretty much the same as the rate in obese people who do, and that rate is extremely low.

So before you amputate a big part of your stomach, rearrange your intestinal tract or have a band inserted that may cause severe scarring or infection, ask your doctor about Byetta. If he tries to scare you away from trying it, ask why he's not concerned about the far higher death rate from WLS. If he doesn't know the death rate from WLS, find a new doctor.

One huge advantage of Byetta is that if it doesn't work for you, you just stop taking it and any side effects go away. The surgery permanently modifies your digestive tract in a way that cannot be reversed.

It produces a shockingly high rate of complications, and those who have it often require subsequent surgeries when infections occur, stitches tear, and bands become embedded in tissue, These surgeries may also cause permanent malnutrition which puts you in danger of starving to death.

WARNING! There is a new drug similar to Byetta that is much less effective and more dangerous, VICTOZA. Your doctor may suggest you try it instead of Byetta because doctors inevitably put patients on new drugs in response to drug company marketing efforts which often include subtle bribes to the doctor. Don't let a doctor try to talk you into trying Victoza instead.

You can read about why Victoza is a bad substitute for Byetta HERE.

One last thing: If you're desperate enough to be considering weight loss surgery to "reverse" your diabetes, before you do something irreversible, spend a month trying out the drug-free technique that lowers blood sugars to the normal level for a very high proportion of people with Type 2 diabetes of those who try it--including those A1cs as high as 12%.

You'll find this extremely simple and dramatically effective technique described here:

How to Get Your Blood Sugar Under Control

The American Diabetes Association admits in its treatment guidelines that the approach sketched out here is both safe and effective.

It just doesn't pour profits into the pockets of surgeons and drug companies. Give it a try. If it doesn't work, you probably have something else going on besides garden variety Type 2 and need to see an endocrinologist not a gastric surgeon to find out what and get help with it.

The study referenced HERE makes it crystal clear that if your problem is insulin insufficiency or a serious endocrinological problem rather than high carb intake weight loss surgery will have no effect on your blood sugar.