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.
At the moment, more than 700,000 people in the UK are in the weight band that means they qualify for obesity surgery or medical support; around 8,000 surgical procedures are completed in the UK every year. More than 2.5 million people have Diabetes in the UK, with type 2 Diabetes accounting for 90%³.
The Vita Clinics weight management clinics are dedicated to helping people who are overweight or obese and have taken on some of the best dieticians, physicians, nurses, surgeons and psychologists in the country to provide weight management treatments and surgery.
Vita Clinics, which was founded by the Scandinavian healthcare expert Per Batelson, has treatment centres in Birmingham, Manchester, Belfast and London with several more planned nationwide.
This week is Diabetes UK’s Diabetes Week.
Patient information line: 0800 849 4050
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For further media information, photography or interviews, please contact the Vita Clinics communications team:
Helen Barklam, tel: 01772 316924 or 07917 148900.
Notes to editors:
Vita Clinics works with NHS and private patients and offers free consultations with clinical specialists.
Vita Clinics does not employ sales staff. All patients are dealt with by clinically qualified, expert professionals.
The company is one of the most competitively priced weight management specialists in the UK
See information sheet on Vita Clinics for more detail on surgery.
Gastric Band – placing an adjustable band around the upper part of the stomach and creating a small pouch, which fills up and makes the patient feel full quicker.
Gastric By-Pass – reducing the size of the stomach and by-passing part of the intestines.
Sleeve Gastrectromy – when the stomach is reduced in size by 75 per cent.
Duodenal Switch – restricts the amount of food that can be eaten by removing part of the stomach through surgery.
1 Source: Office of National Statistics and The Foresight Report
² Source: Buchwald H et al (2009) Weight and Type 2 Diabetes after Bariatric Surgery: Systematic review and meta-analysis. The American Journal of Medicine 3; 122; pp248-256
³ Source: Diabetes.org.uk