@StowgateResident,
The data used to support the idea that WLS will reverse diabetes borders on the fraudulent. What it does, at first, is make it impossible for people to eat enough carbs at one time to raise their blood sugar. So their blood sugar drops immediately, leading doctors to claim it "reverses" the diabetes.
A person can achieve the identical result by cutting carbs dramatically. But the same doctors who push people into the surgery tell people that very low carb diets are "dangerous." There isn't a scintilla of evidence that that is true.
And over time people who have WLS see their blood sugar come back up as soon as their stomach starts to stretch out so that they can eat carbs again. Less than half had non-diabetic blood sugars in one study that lasted a year. People eating very low carb diets can get much, much better numbers than that and maintain them for years, much more safely.
But the surgeons get paid huge amounts (in the U.S. anyway) for performing these surgeries, and there is no group like the FDA tasked with approving surgeries, so the surgeons are marketing them very heavily (using PR firms, etc.) and no one is paying attention to those death rates.
The data used to support the idea that WLS will reverse diabetes borders on the fraudulent. What it does, at first, is make it impossible for people to eat enough carbs at one time to raise their blood sugar. So their blood sugar drops immediately, leading doctors to claim it "reverses" the diabetes.
A person can achieve the identical result by cutting carbs dramatically. But the same doctors who push people into the surgery tell people that very low carb diets are "dangerous." There isn't a scintilla of evidence that that is true.
And over time people who have WLS see their blood sugar come back up as soon as their stomach starts to stretch out so that they can eat carbs again. Less than half had non-diabetic blood sugars in one study that lasted a year. People eating very low carb diets can get much, much better numbers than that and maintain them for years, much more safely.
But the surgeons get paid huge amounts (in the U.S. anyway) for performing these surgeries, and there is no group like the FDA tasked with approving surgeries, so the surgeons are marketing them very heavily (using PR firms, etc.) and no one is paying attention to those death rates.
