14 DAY TRIAL // As shown by previous investigations, being overweight or obese and type 2 diabetes tend to go hand in hand. Thus, over 80% of the people diagnosed with diabetes pack too much weight for their own good, and 3% of the people who qualify as severely obese develop diabetes on a yearly basis.
The good news is that, according to the recent paper in the journal The Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology, it is possible to reduce an individual's risk of developing diabetes simply by helping them lose weight.
Thus, researchers say that, having monitored over 4,000 overweight or obese patients over the course of several years, they found that those who underwent weight loss surgery during the time that they were included in this investigation experienced a drastic drop in their type 2 diabetes risk.
Specifically, weight loss interventions such as laparoscopic adjustable banding, sleeve gastrectomy and gastric bypass were linked to a 80% drop in type 2 diabetes risk, regardless of variables such as smoking, high blood pressure, and high cholesterol.
The thing is that, for the time being at least, scientists cannot say for sure how and why weight loss surgery works to reduce a person's chances to develop diabetes at some point in their life. Hopefully, future investigations will solve this puzzle.
“Our results suggest that bariatric surgery may be a highly effective method of preventing the onset of new diabetes in men and women with severe obesity,” Professor Martin Gulliford said in a statement, as cited by EurekAlert.
“We need to understand how weight loss surgery can be used, together with interventions to increase physical activity and promote healthy eating, as part of an overall diabetes prevention strategy,” the researcher went on to explain.