Major news media including USA Today, Reuters, LA Times and CBS News are today covering a new study from Cleveland Clinic that shows bariatric surgery is a highly effective and durable treatment for type 2 diabetes in patients with moderate and severe obesity, enabling nearly all surgical patients to be free of insulin and many to be free of all diabetic medications three years after surgery.

The Cleveland Clinic physicians started a one-year clinical trial (with a four-year follow-up) to discover the effects on diabetic patients of advanced medical therapy versus medical therapy plus one of two types of bariatric surgery on glycemic control in obese patients with uncontrolled type 2 diabetes.

This is the first randomized controlled clinical trial that compares surgery with intensive medical therapy head-to-head for this patient population.

The study followed 150 patients with diabetes: one-third was treated with medication and lifestyle changes; one-third also had gastric bypass; and the other third had
sleeve gastrectomy.

This is one of the the first times doctors have studied a weight loss surgery for diabetes in patients that aren’t severely obese. (Typically, bariatric surgery is performed on patients with a BMI over 35.)

Maintaining a healthy body weight is essential for reducing the risk of heart disease, according to a new study from Denmark. This is true even for people who don’t have metabolic syndrome (MetS), a group of risk factors for heart disease, diabetes, and stroke.

Full story: http://www.foxnews.com/health/2013/11/13/healthy-obese-people-still-at-increased-risk-heart-attack-study-shows/

Publication of a new, albeit retrospective, study has shown that almost a third of obese patients with type 2 diabetes undergoing gastric bypass were effectively “cured” of their diabetes, being in complete remission as per the strictest definition possible that was maintained for 6 years after the surgery.

Read the full story here.

President William Howard Taft, the country’s was only morbidly obese commander in chief and a high-profile “yo-yo” dieter in his time, lost 60 pounds in the early 1900s on a low-carb diet with the assistance of a diet doctor.

he 27th U.S. president was lugging around 354 pounds on his 6-foot-2 frame when he was inaugurated in 1909. His obesity was the subject of jokes, editorial cartoons and newspaper articles.

Letters uncovered between Taft and the English physician hired to help him lose weight, provide “a detailed look at patient care for obesity during this time,” says historian Deborah Levine, an assistant professor of health policy and management at Providence (R.I.) College and author of an article, out Monday, in the Annals of Internal Medicine.

In today’s medicine, doctors would likely reccommend President Taft weight-loss surgery — which usually provides substantial weight loss — or weight loss drugs, which have a minimal effect at best. But the diet he was advised to follow would be largely unchanged, Dr. Allison said.

Obesity — often said to be a product of our sedentary lifestyle and fast foods — has been a concern for over a century.

Obesity experts said Taft’s experience highlights how very difficult it is for many morbidly obese people to lose substantial amounts of weight and keep it off, and despite surgical options, how little progress has been made in regards to finding a balanced combination of foods that lead to permanent, sustainable weight loss.