Weight loss surgery not the cure for diabetes

Weight loss surgery continues to be touted as the cure for diabetes when in reality dietary change alone can help heal your body. A starch based (plant based) diet can help you reverse and prevent diabetes and lose weight. I teach all Slender For Life™ mindfulness weight loss techniques so that they can improve their health, achieve their weight loss goals and maintain their healthy ideal weight. Sadly, over the years I have had many people come to me after having weight loss surgery who have gained the weight back and often weight more than they did prior to the surgery. They now have life-long health issues resulting from the surgery. Why did they gain it back? Nothing changed mentally, emotionally or behaviorally in their relationship with themselves and food. If you are thinking of weight loss surgery, please call or email me and schedule a free consultation for mindful weight loss.

Cure for Diabetes Discovered

By Mark Hyman, MD, August 18, 2012: I understand the desire to find a solution. After all, Type 2 diabetes is looming as the biggest epidemic and public health issue in human history. Close to 300 million people are affected worldwide and another 150 million forecast to be diagnosed by 2030. The reason? Obesity.

Yes, obesity is a tenacious problem but surgery is only a Band-Aid solution, albeit one that is growing in popularity. In the last decade alone, the rate of weight-loss surgeries performed each year in the United States has increased from 10,000 to 230,000. But how many of the 1.7 billion overweight citizens of the world can afford gastric bypass? And how many of those will regain the weight?

I have seen many patients go under the knife for these procedures only to gain back the weight they lost, plus some. Weight-loss surgery may seem like a panacea, but it won’t solve the underlying hormonal and metabolic imbalances that are driving the diabetes and obesity.

We also know that weight-loss surgery is not without risks. Altering the gastrointestinal tract can lead to nutritional deficiencies that require lifelong monitoring and supplementation of calcium, vitamin B12, folate, multivitamins, iron, and thiamine. And the psychological risks of these surgeries are often underplayed. In 2010, a study published in the American Journal of Medicine showed a dramatic increase in suicide among patients who had bariatric surgery, most occurring within three years following the surgery.

A groundbreaking new study from England showed unequivocally that people with advanced Type 2 diabetes, when the pancreas has lost its oomph and the insulin-producing (beta) cells are damaged, can reverse the course of the disease in just one week by optimizing dietary strategies.

The best news is that dietary changes alone can help your body heal. Studies of patients who have weight-loss surgery show that even a dramatic change in diet in a short period of time creates beneficial metabolic changes. (6) All the metrics we thought were related to obesity, such as high blood sugar, high cholesterol, high blood pressure, inflammation, and clotting, are drastically reduced even without significant weight loss due to the rapid effects of dietary changes on the body.

Let me be clear, maintaining a healthy weight is ideal for optimal health. But we shouldn’t be signing up for surgery without exhausting every other avenue. Curing diabetes with surgery relies on outdated ideas about the origins of disease and overlooks the complex web of biology as well as the social, political, and economic conditions at the root of our current epidemic.

Read Cure for Diabetes Discovered

Band-Aid solutions for weight loss like bariatric surgery, HCG and other unhealthy fads are not real solutions for lifelong weight loss and improved health. There is a solution and that is starch. Yes, starch. Within a few days of eating a plant based diet can show noticeable improvements in health and wellness.

Learn mindfulness weight loss so that you can restore and maintain your body at optimum health with the food you eat.

Read

Simple care for diabetes

and

Diet and diabetes

Check out Slender For Life™ and call (206) 903-1232 or email for your free consultation.

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