You’ve probably already heard the news that a side effect of gastric bypass surgery is the curing of type 2 diabetes in some obese patients. It’s always nice when serendipity decides to pay a visit. This pleasant benefit seems to have been rather unexpected, but on the face of it, it makes perfect sense.

The foremost cure for people suffering from type 2 diabetes, or adult onset diabetes otherwise known as non-insulin dependent diabetes, is to lose weight by any means possible. Be it diet and exercise or preferably a combination of the two.

So it should only follow that in the extreme case of forced weight loss via gastric bypass surgery that in some type 2 diabetics their diabetes would either improve or disappear entirely.

Now gastric bypass surgery should only be a last resort for treating type 2 diabetes just as it’s a last gasp measure to treat obesity. Gastric bypass surgery is radical surgery with a high degree of risk. Enough patients die as a result of the surgery to make it an option only after all others have been very carefully considered with the patient, their physicians, and their loved ones.

As a result of these findings regarding the effect of gastric bypass surgery on type 2 diabetes, the surgery is just now being prescribed to specifically treat patients with type 2 diabetes. A newer procedure called a duodenal gastric bypass is being performed in these cases. The risk is still high, but the risk of living with uncontrolled type 2 diabetes is also high.

Diabetes in either form is a devastating disease.

Blindness, limb amputation, and eventually death is the result of this horrible disease. Unfortunately, as the population continues to become overweight and obese, type 2 diabetes is on the rise. The increase in this disease in children is truly disturbing. Traditionally, type 2 diabetes wasn’t diagnosed until people hit middle age and started packing on the excess weight. Hense the moniker “adult onset diabetes”.

Type 2 diabetes is a very preventable disease.

Unfortunately, bombarding people with admonitions regarding diet and exercise doesn’t seem to be working.

It’s no wonder though. After a while it just becomes a bunch of background static. In many cases, it takes a brush with death or the premonition of severe disability for people to get religion. Even then, it’s often not enough.

To get started managing your weight once past middle age see my post on portion control to lose weight.