Among the many negatives that come along with being obese, your health is the most important. Carrying around a lot of extra pounds puts excess strain on your joints, affects emotional and mental health, leads to sleep disorders, and damages your blood vessels and heart.
It can also contribute to the development of type 2 diabetes, a serious condition that makes your body resistant to insulin. This makes it difficult to maintain healthy blood sugar levels, which puts your nerves, bones, and joints in danger.
Losing weight is critical to regaining your health and managing your condition, but if you’re 100 pounds or more overweight, the task can be daunting, if not impossible, with diet and exercise alone. That’s where we come in.
Our team of weight loss experts here at Surgical Consultants of Northern Virginia in Reston, Virginia, specializes in helping you reach your healthy weight goals, and we offer several surgical options when more conservative methods haven’t worked. If you have type 2 diabetes, it’s important to lower your weight as quickly as possible.
Here’s how bariatric surgery can help you manage your type 2 diabetes.
With type 2 diabetes, either your pancreas doesn’t make enough insulin, or your cells have become resistant to insulin and don’t process it well.
This is a problem because insulin is what moves the sugar out of your blood and into your cells for energy. If the sugar stays in your blood and spikes or remains at a high level, it puts you at risk for several serious health conditions.
Studies show that losing weight reduces inflammation in your muscles, which makes your body more efficient and more sensitive to insulin. When insulin can do its job once again, your blood sugar can level out.
Both diabetes and obesity contribute to vascular inflammation. When this happens, plaque builds up in your arteries, a condition called atherosclerosis, and puts you at high risk for heart disease and heart attacks. But losing weight can decrease vascular inflammation and protect your veins and arteries.
Obesity and diabetes are both notorious for making it harder to get out and exercise. The very thing you need the most becomes difficult due to sheer body mass, nerve damage, and bone and joint issues. The less active you are, the more weight you gain, and the cycle continues.
Bariatric surgery can relieve you of those extra pounds so you can move more easily and begin to adopt new habits that will improve your diabetes and your weight.
Excess body weight is linked with a sleep disorder called obstructive sleep apnea, where the soft tissues in your throat block your airway and stop your breathing several times throughout the night. Up to 83% of diabetics also suffer from sleep apnea, so if you’re obese and you have diabetes, sleep apnea is a high probability.
But when you drop your weight, both your diabetes and your sleep apnea symptoms improve. And when you sleep better, you have better appetite control and more energy to exercise.
Weight loss surgery, also called bariatric surgery, isn’t for everyone. But if you’re more than 100 pounds overweight, your BMI is above 40, and you have other related health conditions, such as diabetes, it may be time to consider this effective treatment to help you reach your health goals.
Bariatric surgery uses several different techniques, including gastric sleeve and gastric bypass, to reduce the capacity of your stomach, so you eat less and lose weight.
Some procedures are permanent, some are reversible, and some are adjustable. Rest assured that whichever procedure you undergo, our team of board-certified, highly experienced surgeons is with you every step of the way.
After your surgery, you need to follow a strict diet and commit to maintaining healthy habits that support your nutritional needs. If you do, you can expect to lose 75%-80% of your pre-surgery body weight over the next three years and see a marked improvement in your diabetes symptoms.
To find out more about bariatric surgery and how it can help you regain your good health, book a consultation online or call us at 571-512-5300 today.
