Diabetes Caught in Time can be Surgically Treated

Diabetes Caught in Time can be Surgically Treated

The epidemic of Type 2 Diabetes is reported to be solvable with Bariatric surgery.

What is Type 2 diabetes? It’s is a disease that causes high blood sugar levels. Over time, this can lead to blood-vessel damage in the eyes, kidneys, heart and nerves. Almost 26 million Americans have diabetes, and as many as 95% of those have type 2 diabetes.

Diabetes is a really important health care issue in this country. It’s a major cause of morbidity and mortality, and the prevalence of the disease is going up.

Significant risk factors for type 2 diabetes include: obesity and a sedentary lifestyle, however, not everyone who has the disease is overweight.

Respected Bariatric Surgeon Carson D. Liu, MD, FACS, FASMBS, says, “I know that weight loss with surgery can reverse diabetes, but it has to be done within 7-9 years of diagnosis. After that, it’s difficult to cure their diabetes as the pills destroy the islet cells and patients become insulin dependent.”

Dr. Carson Liu is a very well known and respected Hollywood/Los Angeles Bariatric surgeon. He is professionally in agreement with SignatureMD concierge physicians who promote wellness lifestyle changes to be proactively on guard from preventable diseases like diabetes.

Medication alone does little to improve the long-term health of diabetes patients. Dr. Liu promotes lifestyle and dietary changes which he feels are absolutely necessary to improve overall health, which starts with maintaining a healthy weight, eating foods that support good health and staying physically fit.

Dr. Liu counsels patients to avoid highly-refined foods like white sugar, white rice and pasta and swap with organic raw vegetables, lean proteins and nuts to help improve symptoms and control weight.

The news that patients receiving bariatric surgery are showing near instantaneous improvements in their glycemic control is now reinforced by two recent reports presented today at the ACC, and simultaneously published in the NEJM which support these claims.

Both reports conclude that Bariatric surgery is superior to drug maintenance therapy as a treatment for diabetes.

The authors of the second study reported that all patients treated surgically were able to discontinue all their diabetes medicines within fifteen days of their operation. Almost all of the surgically-treated patients remained free of diabetes after two years, while none of the medically-treated patients were free of the disease.

The authors also reveal that gastric banding procedures is safer and sees improvement in diabetes and correlates more directly with the patients’ weight loss.

SOURCES:

I. http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1200225?query=featured_home
II. http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1200111?query=featured_home

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