Source: learningenglish.voanews.com<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bariatric surgery helps people who are severely overweight. The surgery can help them lose weight and regain their health.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Doctors remove part of the stomach<\/strong>, so the patient is forced to eat less food. It is a difficult, life-changing operation. Yet some doctors think it should be done more often, before patients become severely obese<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Shaun Rogers struggled for more than 20 years to control his weight while he battled the disease diabetes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cBy just dieting and continuing \u2026with the insulin<\/strong>, I was never going to lose the amount of weight I needed to, to change \u2026and get the diabetes under really good control,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Diabetes patients take insulin to get blood sugar, or glucose, into their cells. However, insulin can make people feel hungry, making it even harder to lose weight.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Costly treatment<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Bariatric surgery is costly. In the United States, insurance companies will not always pay for the surgery. They require a patient\u2019s body mass index (BMI) to be at least 35, even if a patient\u2019s diabetes is uncontrolled. BMI is the measure of body fat based on the person\u2019s height <\/strong>and weight.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Stacy Brethauer is a surgeon at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center in Columbus, Ohio. He says the BMI number does not always show how a patient is reacting to treatment for diabetes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cBMI is not really a fair \u2026representation of who should be getting therapy<\/strong>,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Brethauer added that the rules for who gets bariatric surgery need to be changed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe patient who doesn\u2019t get the operation, we know very well that their disease will progress, their lifespan will be shortened if they don\u2019t get effective treatment,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The American Medical Association identifies obesity as a complex, chronic<\/strong> disease that requires medical attention. If it is not treated, obesity can lead to heart disease, cancer and diabetes. Brethauer believes early treatment is necessary for both obesity and diabetes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Double standard?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cNo one asks somebody with cancer or heart disease to \u2018just do it themselves\u2026\u2019 but there\u2019s also effective therapy being offered to those patients at the same time,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Since he had surgery to reduce the size of his stomach, Shaun Rogers has lost a lot of weight. His diabetes is also under control. Rogers no longer needs oral<\/strong> medication. And he has cut down on the use of insulin, going from nearly 500 units<\/strong> a day down to about 10.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIt\u2019s changed my life so much,\u201d he said, \u201cI would tell anyone do it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Diabetes is a health issue worldwide. More than 400 million people have the disease. That number represents one in 11 adults. The World Health Organization estimates that number will rise sharply in the near future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If people with diabetes have bariatric surgery early on, their diabetes can be cured. For those who have had the disease for 10 years or more, and need insulin, bariatric surgery will not cure their diabetes. But as Stacy Brethauer notes, it can greatly improve their health.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Source: learningenglish.voanews.com Bariatric surgery helps people who are severely overweight. The surgery can help them lose weight and regain their […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1003,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[456,191,273,51,1189,166],"class_list":["post-1002","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-weight-loss-gain","tag-bariatric","tag-doctor","tag-health","tag-obesity","tag-stomach","tag-surgery"],"yoast_head":"\n