A Surgical Cure for Diabetes?

The Los Angles Times reported on a AMA Journal article by Australian surgeons that compares a stomach banding surgery to a conventional dietary approach for Type 2 diabetics. All patients were obese and had fairly mild cases with recent onset. Those that had surgery lost 20% of their body weight and 73% of them went into complete remission. Those on a diet lost only 1.3% of their body weight, and 13% went into remission. The results stress the importance of weight loss for obese diabetics, but vigorous lifestyle changes including exercise and an integrative approach with a Lo Carb diet to produce the weight loss is surely a safer approach in the long run. This study lasted only 2 years, and the long-term consequences of creating surgical malabsorption were not evaluated. Such surgery should never become a treatment of first resort for type 2 diabetes.