6 ms·

The Diabetes Cure That Most Insurance Companies Won't Pay For

46 points by victorbojica 8y ago

stephengillie 8y ago
> In May 2016, however, Benari received a procedure known as a gastric bypass, a laparoscopic surgery that gave him something few of the 30 million diabetic Americans ever have—a life free of insulin therapy and other medications. The article keeps calling this a "cure" to diabetes. If anything, it's a cure to the "never feeling full" sensation that leads some (usually mildly autistic) people to constantly eat. And this constant overeating is what leads to the diabetes. Having known people who had gastric bypasses, it's far from a miracle cure. The procedure causes many issues, from intestinal discomfort to life-threatening complications. Treating the procedure with such rose-colored glasses could be considered harmful. --- Part of the reason nobody wants to pay for it is it costs as much as a Model 3: > The estimated average cost of bariatric surgery is around $15,000, according to a 2017 review. But even these estimates might be underselling it. Benari recalls that his surgery, with expenses before and afterward, was about $35,000 without insurance. The price tag kept him from pursuing the procedure for almost a decade. And an interesting reaction - the person briefly considered gaining 40 pounds, but instead of considering losing 40 pounds, they guilt-tripped their employer into paying for it. > “Obviously I couldn’t gain 40 pounds so I could get surgery—that’d be suicidal. I just held off, trying to not think about it,” he said. “Eventually, through a lot of back and forth, nagging and whining, I convinced [Microsoft’s] HR department to overhaul their policy and allow people in my situation to get the surgery done.”
- jeffdavis 8y ago
  From the article: "For over a decade, Cummings and others have tried to reframe the very concept of bariatric surgery (they prefer “metabolic surgery”). Their work has shown these procedures just don’t change how much food the stomach can fit; they trigger a cascade of metabolic and bodily changes, many of which help people with type 2 diabetes naturally get their blood sugar under control. Some changes even start happening before a patient loses weight, such as higher levels of peptide production in the gut that seem to restore a patient’s sensitivity to insulin."
- perl4ever 8y ago
  I have never heard of an association of obesity with autism. Claiming the converse wouldn't startle me as much, but surely the incidence of obesity and type 2 diabetes are far, far greater than autism. Do you have any particular reason for your statement? Lately, I've been noticing frequent mentions of autism on the internet in weird and novel (to me) contexts.
- martin_bech 8y ago
  Nope it really is a cure. I know people involved with diabetes research, and it really is a cure, and they dont know why. Its not because of the weight loss, because it is instant! They day the get the surgery, the loose the Diabetes II. (The people I know, work at Novo Nordisk, i would think its the world leader in diabetes and diabetes related research.)
  - xinyhn 8y ago
    As someone rather interested in the subject that has been my general understanding. The refusal for people to look beyond "eat less and fast etc" is rather disheartening.
  - kmundnic 8y ago
    What if they gain weight again, months or years after surgery? Does diabetes come back?
    - martin_bech 8y ago
      Im not doing the research, so I cant answer, but it dosent seem to be weight related, as they loose the diabetes on same day as surgery. They loose none of the weight on surgery,
  - mark-r 8y ago
    Could it be a side effect of some part of the surgery procedure? Anesthesia perhaps?
- jonknee 8y ago
  > Part of the reason nobody wants to pay for it is it costs as much as a Model 3 That's a bargain compared to paying for a diabetic! http://www.diabetes.org/advocacy/news-events/cost-of-diabetes.html http://www.diabetes.org/advocacy/news-events/cost-of-diabete... > People with diagnosed diabetes incur average medical expenditures of $16,752 per year, of which about $9,601is attributed to diabetes. People with diagnosed diabetes, on average, have medical expenditures approximately 2.3 times higher than what expenditures would be in the absence of diabetes.
zerohp 8y ago
> “My diabetes went into remission basically immediately, almost that same day. And I’ve been off insulin for about 8 months now,” That's not because of the surgery. It's because he was forced into an extended fast before (and after) the surgery. Type 2 diabetes reverses almost immediately with fasting. I have no personal involvement with Dr. Jason Fung's clinic in Canada, but he claims to reverse type 2 diabetes in virtually every case. https://idmprogram.com/ https://idmprogram.com/
- BadassFractal 8y ago
  As someone who has recently gotten into fasting for health and aesthetic reasons, I wonder about the best place to learn more about it in depth. It seems like it could be a very powerful asset in one's health toolbox, but I also don't want to accidentally screw myself up by doing it the wrong way. Please advise.
  - toomuchtodo 8y ago
    https://www.reddit.com/r/intermittentfasting/ https://www.reddit.com/r/intermittentfasting/
    - BadassFractal 8y ago
      Sorry, I should have been more specific. That's specifically intermittent fasting, I've done that for a year, it was ok and didn't do much for me. I'm mostly interesting in longer water fasts, anywhere between 1 and 7 days.
      - dflock 8y ago
        https://www.reddit.com/r/fasting/ https://www.reddit.com/r/fasting/
- aviv 8y ago
  Exactly. Fasting cures diabetes as well as a host of many other "incurable" "diseases". But there is no money in fasting, so our messed up world continues to reject it as a valid solution.
aviv 8y ago
Diabetes can already be cured, without the sick concept of a gastric bypass as some sort of a solution. Type 2 diabetes can be completely reversed following a 14 to 40 day water fast or a series of short 4-7 day dry fasts. This is complete insanity that such a simple solution is still not mainstream in 2018.
- kolpa 8y ago
  How do you survive for 40 days with 0 food, and 7 days with 0 water?
  - trhway 8y ago
    https://www.ncl.ac.uk/press/articles/archive/2016/03/profroytaylordiabetesresearch/ https://www.ncl.ac.uk/press/articles/archive/2016/03/profroy... "In this new study, 30 volunteers with Type 2 diabetes embarked on the same diet of 600 to 700 calories a day. Participants lost on average 14 kilograms - just over 2 stone. Over the next 6 months they did not regain any weight. The group included many people with longer duration diabetes, defined as more than 8 years and ranging up to 23 years. Overall, 12 patients who had had diabetes for less than 10 years reversed their condition. 6 months later they remained diabetes free. In fact, after 6 months a thirteenth patient had reversed their diabetes. Though the volunteers lost weight they remained overweight or obese but they had lost enough weight to remove the fat out of the pancreas and allow normal insulin production."
  - evgen 8y ago
    Do you know many dead people who suffer from type 2 diabetes? Didn’t think so... :)
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
cadamson 8y ago
This is clickbait at best, and isn't a cure for Diabetes. Yes it will help a very small fraction of those that suffer from Type 2, but on the whole the article (title especially) is very misleading.
21 8y ago
Is drastically restricting the amount you eat equivalent to gastric bypass? Or is there something more? Put another way: is gastric bypass a way of solving the psychological problem of eating too much, the lack of will to stop eating?
- stephengillie 8y ago
  Gastric bypass is literally blocking off / cutting out 80% of your stomach. So yes, it is a very extreme solution to the problem - one with a high probability of introducing many other issues into your life.
- tschwimmer 8y ago
  From what I’ve read (https://nyaspubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/nyas.13194 https://nyaspubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/nya...) it looks like the surgery is associated with dramatic physiological and hormonal changes.
- Pete_D 8y ago
  There could be more to it. There's a hypothesis that microbiome changes could be a contributing factor[0]. Restricting food intake is similar in that it reduces stomach capacity[1], though almost certainly not as drastically as surgery. Lots of people have already mentioned fasting in this thread; I'll add an anecdote that for a few days after a fast, I get full much more quickly. [0] https://biodesign.asu.edu/news/dramatic-shift-gut-microbes-and-their-metabolites-seen-after-weight-loss-surgery https://biodesign.asu.edu/news/dramatic-shift-gut-microbes-a... [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8561056?itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum&ordinalpos=1 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8561056?itool=EntrezSyst...
VirtualAirwaves 8y ago
They say he wasn't "obese" but that's misleading. He still was overweight. Fact is, about 80% of people with Type II diabetes would be asymptomatic if they simply lost weight. That's right: there's a "free", and "natural" cure for many diabetic patients, but it's simply too difficult for many people to eat less food. There's a powerful psychology behind that, I guess, but still there should be more done to incentivize these people to eat less.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
bitwize 8y ago
Why even bother with the surgery? Real hackers fast intermittently, and eat strict keto otherwise.
- cosmojg 8y ago
  Lack of willpower perhaps?
  - shadykiller 8y ago
    Completely agree. My father is a T2 diabetic. He tried keto with great results but could not sustain it. Recently he tried fasting and started getting similar results. Stopped insulin altogether from his peak of 30 units a day.
buckthundaz 8y ago
Imagine consuming less sugar and less carbohydrates, and food at more infrequent intervals...
techiferous 8y ago
I was totally expecting the cure to be a gym membership. Exercise is still the gold standard of care for managing type 2 diabetes.
jstewartmobile 8y ago
This piece has the stench of public-relations ghostwriting all over it. Describing a gastric bypass as a "cure" for anything is fake news if I've ever heard any. I know many people who have had them, and in every case they'd describe it as having traded one problem for another.
_raoulcousins 8y ago
I looked into getting it, and the doctor's office was surprised that my insurance didn't cover it. They said that the usual version of my plan normally covers it but my employer had a stipulation that specifically excluded weight loss surgery. $15k out of pocket if I want to do it. I probably should.
BlakePetersen 8y ago
Dang. I was hoping they perfected pancreatic beta islet transplantation... That is a terribly misleading title and a major click-bait let-down for Type 1s hopeful for an actual cure for diabetes.
lolc 8y ago
As a type 1 diabetic myself I'm highly skeptical of the claims. There is wide consensus that most people with type 2 diabetes could reverse it if they changed eating habits and exercised more. In fact many do! Those that don't could possibly profit from a surgery. But that's admitting defeat really. I sure hope for people who undergo this surgery do see an improvement. I just hope they got briefed on how they could try without it before having their stomach mutilated. This article does a very bad job of it. As if the surgery were a miracle cure.
flocial 8y ago
I share the general sentiment of shock in the comments that such a sensational click bait article somehow made it to the front page. A healthy diet with regular exercise might always be the correct answer but this is exactly the kind of problem that would benefit from hacking. While fasting in various forms may be beneficial and less harmful than hacking out a significant part of your digestive system we must acknowledge the psychological barrier faced in doing so. As someone who has successfully fasted repeatedly combined with regular exercise solely for weight control, the effort is quite "character building" and simply expecting diabetics and the obese to engage in what amounts to self denial just because it is the correct approach is quite unrealistic.
xinyhn 8y ago
This is a good review of current understanding of the effects for anyone interested in more than some of the comments so far. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2936261/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2936261/ Abstract Bariatric surgery is now widely reported to ameliorate or resolve type 2 diabetes mellitus in adults. Some clinical investigators even suggest its use as an early therapeutic intervention for type 2 diabetes in patients not meeting standard criteria for bariatric surgery. However, little is known about the exact mechanisms explaining the metabolic consequences, and much active investigation is underway to identify hormonal changes leading to diabetes resolution. This review includes a detailed description of various bariatric surgical procedures, including the latest less-invasive techniques, and a summary of current data providing insight into the short- and long-term metabolic effects. We outline current hypotheses regarding the mechanisms by which these surgical procedures affect diabetes and report on morbidity and mortality. Finally, we discuss the available data on bariatric surgery in adolescent patients, including special considerations in this potentially vulnerable population. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0196978115002454 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S019697811... Abstract Bariatric surgery for obesity has proved to be an extremely effective method of promoting long-term weight reduction with additional beneficial metabolic effects, such as improved glucose tolerance and remission of type 2 diabetes. A range of bariatric procedures are in common use, including gastric banding, sleeve gastrectomy and the Roux-en-Y gastric bypass. Although the mechanisms underlying the efficacy of bariatric surgery are unclear, gastrointestinal and pancreatic peptides are thought to play an important role. The aim of this review is to summarise the effects of different bariatric surgery procedures upon gastrointestinal and pancreatic peptides, including ghrelin, gastrin, cholecystokinin (CCK), glucose-dependent insulinotropic hormone (GIP), glucagon-like peptide 1 (GLP-1), peptide YY (PYY), oxyntomodulin, insulin, glucagon and somatostatin.
iamt2 8y ago
There is a distinct difference between Type 2 diabetes "cure" and "reversal". Reversal: what is being described here. Symptoms go away, and the longer you pursue the treatment, more difficult it becomes to clinically determine you ever had the metabolic disorder in the first place. However, the latent characteristics that made you first susceptible still exist. Cure: you not only reverse, but you could stuff your face with pizza and Ho Ho pastries, wash it down with a gallon of Mountain Dew, and your blood sugar hardly budges, like normal people. We do not have a cure. Short of genetically rewiring in vivo, or similar advancement, we won't see a cure. However, ongoing improvement of our understanding of how our bodies work continue to make it simpler than ever before to reverse Type 2. Simple doesn't mean easy, though.
- simonsarris 8y ago
  > wash it down with a gallon of Mountain Dew, and your blood sugar hardly budges, like normal people. If by "normal people" you mean "pre-diabetic", maybe. Any cure to snake bites requires not getting bitten again.
turc1656 8y ago
"The net result is that less food can fit in the stomach, and there’s much less time for that food to be turned into calories before it exits the body. The vertical sleeve gastrectomy, the most popular surgery in recent years, only tinkers with the stomach, using staples to turn it into a small banana-shaped organ." Oh, so the "cure" was to make sure his body consumes/processes less calories? And this is considered some novel solution? Is this a joke? And then there's this technically accurate but misleading sentence - "But Benari, now 44, was a very unusual patient in one clear way: He wasn’t obese." True. He wasn't obese. But he was overweight - "Benari’s BMI before he underwent the surgery hovered around 28, which made him modestly overweight but not obese." Being overweight or obese is a textbook sign of being a diabetic, pre-diabetic, or at-risk for diabetes, as your metabolic functions are most likely comprised to at least some degree which results in the symptom of excess weight. The article tries to mislead the reader to thinking that because he wasn't technically full blown obese by clinical definitions he was somehow an exceptional outlier. Nonsense. This man was clearly consuming too much food or food other than carbs that also results in blood sugar spikes (excess protein is metabolized in much the same way), which is why the restriction of caloric intake worked for him. The part at the beginning about him being restricted from "most carbs" seems irrelevant in that context, especially when you factor in the knowledge that he was already confirmed to be compromised and a full blown diabetic.
- scarface74 8y ago
  And then there's this technically accurate but misleading sentence - "But Benari, now 44, was a very unusual patient in one clear way: He wasn’t obese." True. He wasn't obese. But he was overweight - "Benari’s BMI before he underwent the surgery hovered around 28, which made him modestly overweight but not obese." BMI is a poor measurement for obesity. Especially without knowing his body makeup. When I was in the best shape of my life - a part time fitness instructor, worked out 10 hours a week between classes and my own workouts, and at one point I was down to a 29 inch waist, my BMI was 29.6 - borderline obese - according to the guidelines. I was muscular, toned, and could pass any of the standard physical fitness tests (military, police, etc.) Currently according to the BMI guidelines, I’m “obese” with a BMI of 30.72 and I should weigh 35 pounds less than I do now. I wear a size 33 pants (waist). At most, I want to lose about 10 pounds or one waist size.

46 points by victorbojica 8y ago

> In May 2016, however, Benari received a procedure known as a gastric bypass, a laparoscopic surgery that gave him something few of the 30 million diabetic Americans ever have—a life free of insulin therapy and other medications. The article keeps calling this a "cure" to diabetes. If anything, it's a cure to the "never feeling full" sensation that leads some (usually mildly autistic) people to constantly eat. And this constant overeating is what leads to the diabetes. Having known people who had gastric bypasses, it's far from a miracle cure. The procedure causes many issues, from intestinal discomfort to life-threatening complications. Treating the procedure with such rose-colored glasses could be considered harmful. --- Part of the reason nobody wants to pay for it is it costs as much as a Model 3: > The estimated average cost of bariatric surgery is around $15,000, according to a 2017 review. But even these estimates might be underselling it. Benari recalls that his surgery, with expenses before and afterward, was about $35,000 without insurance. The price tag kept him from pursuing the procedure for almost a decade. And an interesting reaction - the person briefly considered gaining 40 pounds, but instead of considering losing 40 pounds, they guilt-tripped their employer into paying for it. > “Obviously I couldn’t gain 40 pounds so I could get surgery—that’d be suicidal. I just held off, trying to not think about it,” he said. “Eventually, through a lot of back and forth, nagging and whining, I convinced [Microsoft’s] HR department to overhaul their policy and allow people in my situation to get the surgery done.”

jeffdavis 8y ago
From the article: "For over a decade, Cummings and others have tried to reframe the very concept of bariatric surgery (they prefer “metabolic surgery”). Their work has shown these procedures just don’t change how much food the stomach can fit; they trigger a cascade of metabolic and bodily changes, many of which help people with type 2 diabetes naturally get their blood sugar under control. Some changes even start happening before a patient loses weight, such as higher levels of peptide production in the gut that seem to restore a patient’s sensitivity to insulin."
perl4ever 8y ago
I have never heard of an association of obesity with autism. Claiming the converse wouldn't startle me as much, but surely the incidence of obesity and type 2 diabetes are far, far greater than autism. Do you have any particular reason for your statement? Lately, I've been noticing frequent mentions of autism on the internet in weird and novel (to me) contexts.
martin_bech 8y ago
Nope it really is a cure. I know people involved with diabetes research, and it really is a cure, and they dont know why. Its not because of the weight loss, because it is instant! They day the get the surgery, the loose the Diabetes II. (The people I know, work at Novo Nordisk, i would think its the world leader in diabetes and diabetes related research.)
- xinyhn 8y ago
  As someone rather interested in the subject that has been my general understanding. The refusal for people to look beyond "eat less and fast etc" is rather disheartening.
- kmundnic 8y ago
  What if they gain weight again, months or years after surgery? Does diabetes come back?
  - martin_bech 8y ago
    Im not doing the research, so I cant answer, but it dosent seem to be weight related, as they loose the diabetes on same day as surgery. They loose none of the weight on surgery,
- mark-r 8y ago
  Could it be a side effect of some part of the surgery procedure? Anesthesia perhaps?
jonknee 8y ago
> Part of the reason nobody wants to pay for it is it costs as much as a Model 3 That's a bargain compared to paying for a diabetic! http://www.diabetes.org/advocacy/news-events/cost-of-diabetes.html http://www.diabetes.org/advocacy/news-events/cost-of-diabete... > People with diagnosed diabetes incur average medical expenditures of $16,752 per year, of which about $9,601is attributed to diabetes. People with diagnosed diabetes, on average, have medical expenditures approximately 2.3 times higher than what expenditures would be in the absence of diabetes.

zerohp 8y ago

> “My diabetes went into remission basically immediately, almost that same day. And I’ve been off insulin for about 8 months now,” That's not because of the surgery. It's because he was forced into an extended fast before (and after) the surgery. Type 2 diabetes reverses almost immediately with fasting. I have no personal involvement with Dr. Jason Fung's clinic in Canada, but he claims to reverse type 2 diabetes in virtually every case. https://idmprogram.com/ https://idmprogram.com/

BadassFractal 8y ago
As someone who has recently gotten into fasting for health and aesthetic reasons, I wonder about the best place to learn more about it in depth. It seems like it could be a very powerful asset in one's health toolbox, but I also don't want to accidentally screw myself up by doing it the wrong way. Please advise.
- toomuchtodo 8y ago
  https://www.reddit.com/r/intermittentfasting/ https://www.reddit.com/r/intermittentfasting/
  - BadassFractal 8y ago
    Sorry, I should have been more specific. That's specifically intermittent fasting, I've done that for a year, it was ok and didn't do much for me. I'm mostly interesting in longer water fasts, anywhere between 1 and 7 days.
    - dflock 8y ago
      https://www.reddit.com/r/fasting/ https://www.reddit.com/r/fasting/
aviv 8y ago
Exactly. Fasting cures diabetes as well as a host of many other "incurable" "diseases". But there is no money in fasting, so our messed up world continues to reject it as a valid solution.

aviv 8y ago

Diabetes can already be cured, without the sick concept of a gastric bypass as some sort of a solution. Type 2 diabetes can be completely reversed following a 14 to 40 day water fast or a series of short 4-7 day dry fasts. This is complete insanity that such a simple solution is still not mainstream in 2018.

kolpa 8y ago
How do you survive for 40 days with 0 food, and 7 days with 0 water?
- trhway 8y ago
  https://www.ncl.ac.uk/press/articles/archive/2016/03/profroytaylordiabetesresearch/ https://www.ncl.ac.uk/press/articles/archive/2016/03/profroy... "In this new study, 30 volunteers with Type 2 diabetes embarked on the same diet of 600 to 700 calories a day. Participants lost on average 14 kilograms - just over 2 stone. Over the next 6 months they did not regain any weight. The group included many people with longer duration diabetes, defined as more than 8 years and ranging up to 23 years. Overall, 12 patients who had had diabetes for less than 10 years reversed their condition. 6 months later they remained diabetes free. In fact, after 6 months a thirteenth patient had reversed their diabetes. Though the volunteers lost weight they remained overweight or obese but they had lost enough weight to remove the fat out of the pancreas and allow normal insulin production."
- evgen 8y ago
  Do you know many dead people who suffer from type 2 diabetes? Didn’t think so... :)
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]

cadamson 8y ago

This is clickbait at best, and isn't a cure for Diabetes. Yes it will help a very small fraction of those that suffer from Type 2, but on the whole the article (title especially) is very misleading.

21 8y ago

Is drastically restricting the amount you eat equivalent to gastric bypass? Or is there something more? Put another way: is gastric bypass a way of solving the psychological problem of eating too much, the lack of will to stop eating?

stephengillie 8y ago
Gastric bypass is literally blocking off / cutting out 80% of your stomach. So yes, it is a very extreme solution to the problem - one with a high probability of introducing many other issues into your life.
tschwimmer 8y ago
From what I’ve read (https://nyaspubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/nyas.13194 https://nyaspubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/nya...) it looks like the surgery is associated with dramatic physiological and hormonal changes.
Pete_D 8y ago
There could be more to it. There's a hypothesis that microbiome changes could be a contributing factor[0]. Restricting food intake is similar in that it reduces stomach capacity[1], though almost certainly not as drastically as surgery. Lots of people have already mentioned fasting in this thread; I'll add an anecdote that for a few days after a fast, I get full much more quickly. [0] https://biodesign.asu.edu/news/dramatic-shift-gut-microbes-and-their-metabolites-seen-after-weight-loss-surgery https://biodesign.asu.edu/news/dramatic-shift-gut-microbes-a... [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8561056?itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum&ordinalpos=1 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8561056?itool=EntrezSyst...

VirtualAirwaves 8y ago

They say he wasn't "obese" but that's misleading. He still was overweight. Fact is, about 80% of people with Type II diabetes would be asymptomatic if they simply lost weight. That's right: there's a "free", and "natural" cure for many diabetic patients, but it's simply too difficult for many people to eat less food. There's a powerful psychology behind that, I guess, but still there should be more done to incentivize these people to eat less.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

bitwize 8y ago

Why even bother with the surgery? Real hackers fast intermittently, and eat strict keto otherwise.

cosmojg 8y ago
Lack of willpower perhaps?
- shadykiller 8y ago
  Completely agree. My father is a T2 diabetic. He tried keto with great results but could not sustain it. Recently he tried fasting and started getting similar results. Stopped insulin altogether from his peak of 30 units a day.

buckthundaz 8y ago

Imagine consuming less sugar and less carbohydrates, and food at more infrequent intervals...

techiferous 8y ago

I was totally expecting the cure to be a gym membership. Exercise is still the gold standard of care for managing type 2 diabetes.

jstewartmobile 8y ago

This piece has the stench of public-relations ghostwriting all over it. Describing a gastric bypass as a "cure" for anything is fake news if I've ever heard any. I know many people who have had them, and in every case they'd describe it as having traded one problem for another.

_raoulcousins 8y ago

I looked into getting it, and the doctor's office was surprised that my insurance didn't cover it. They said that the usual version of my plan normally covers it but my employer had a stipulation that specifically excluded weight loss surgery. $15k out of pocket if I want to do it. I probably should.

BlakePetersen 8y ago

Dang. I was hoping they perfected pancreatic beta islet transplantation... That is a terribly misleading title and a major click-bait let-down for Type 1s hopeful for an actual cure for diabetes.

lolc 8y ago

As a type 1 diabetic myself I'm highly skeptical of the claims. There is wide consensus that most people with type 2 diabetes could reverse it if they changed eating habits and exercised more. In fact many do! Those that don't could possibly profit from a surgery. But that's admitting defeat really. I sure hope for people who undergo this surgery do see an improvement. I just hope they got briefed on how they could try without it before having their stomach mutilated. This article does a very bad job of it. As if the surgery were a miracle cure.

flocial 8y ago

I share the general sentiment of shock in the comments that such a sensational click bait article somehow made it to the front page. A healthy diet with regular exercise might always be the correct answer but this is exactly the kind of problem that would benefit from hacking. While fasting in various forms may be beneficial and less harmful than hacking out a significant part of your digestive system we must acknowledge the psychological barrier faced in doing so. As someone who has successfully fasted repeatedly combined with regular exercise solely for weight control, the effort is quite "character building" and simply expecting diabetics and the obese to engage in what amounts to self denial just because it is the correct approach is quite unrealistic.

xinyhn 8y ago

This is a good review of current understanding of the effects for anyone interested in more than some of the comments so far. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2936261/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2936261/ Abstract Bariatric surgery is now widely reported to ameliorate or resolve type 2 diabetes mellitus in adults. Some clinical investigators even suggest its use as an early therapeutic intervention for type 2 diabetes in patients not meeting standard criteria for bariatric surgery. However, little is known about the exact mechanisms explaining the metabolic consequences, and much active investigation is underway to identify hormonal changes leading to diabetes resolution. This review includes a detailed description of various bariatric surgical procedures, including the latest less-invasive techniques, and a summary of current data providing insight into the short- and long-term metabolic effects. We outline current hypotheses regarding the mechanisms by which these surgical procedures affect diabetes and report on morbidity and mortality. Finally, we discuss the available data on bariatric surgery in adolescent patients, including special considerations in this potentially vulnerable population. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0196978115002454 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S019697811... Abstract Bariatric surgery for obesity has proved to be an extremely effective method of promoting long-term weight reduction with additional beneficial metabolic effects, such as improved glucose tolerance and remission of type 2 diabetes. A range of bariatric procedures are in common use, including gastric banding, sleeve gastrectomy and the Roux-en-Y gastric bypass. Although the mechanisms underlying the efficacy of bariatric surgery are unclear, gastrointestinal and pancreatic peptides are thought to play an important role. The aim of this review is to summarise the effects of different bariatric surgery procedures upon gastrointestinal and pancreatic peptides, including ghrelin, gastrin, cholecystokinin (CCK), glucose-dependent insulinotropic hormone (GIP), glucagon-like peptide 1 (GLP-1), peptide YY (PYY), oxyntomodulin, insulin, glucagon and somatostatin.

iamt2 8y ago

There is a distinct difference between Type 2 diabetes "cure" and "reversal". Reversal: what is being described here. Symptoms go away, and the longer you pursue the treatment, more difficult it becomes to clinically determine you ever had the metabolic disorder in the first place. However, the latent characteristics that made you first susceptible still exist. Cure: you not only reverse, but you could stuff your face with pizza and Ho Ho pastries, wash it down with a gallon of Mountain Dew, and your blood sugar hardly budges, like normal people. We do not have a cure. Short of genetically rewiring in vivo, or similar advancement, we won't see a cure. However, ongoing improvement of our understanding of how our bodies work continue to make it simpler than ever before to reverse Type 2. Simple doesn't mean easy, though.

simonsarris 8y ago
> wash it down with a gallon of Mountain Dew, and your blood sugar hardly budges, like normal people. If by "normal people" you mean "pre-diabetic", maybe. Any cure to snake bites requires not getting bitten again.

turc1656 8y ago

"The net result is that less food can fit in the stomach, and there’s much less time for that food to be turned into calories before it exits the body. The vertical sleeve gastrectomy, the most popular surgery in recent years, only tinkers with the stomach, using staples to turn it into a small banana-shaped organ." Oh, so the "cure" was to make sure his body consumes/processes less calories? And this is considered some novel solution? Is this a joke? And then there's this technically accurate but misleading sentence - "But Benari, now 44, was a very unusual patient in one clear way: He wasn’t obese." True. He wasn't obese. But he was overweight - "Benari’s BMI before he underwent the surgery hovered around 28, which made him modestly overweight but not obese." Being overweight or obese is a textbook sign of being a diabetic, pre-diabetic, or at-risk for diabetes, as your metabolic functions are most likely comprised to at least some degree which results in the symptom of excess weight. The article tries to mislead the reader to thinking that because he wasn't technically full blown obese by clinical definitions he was somehow an exceptional outlier. Nonsense. This man was clearly consuming too much food or food other than carbs that also results in blood sugar spikes (excess protein is metabolized in much the same way), which is why the restriction of caloric intake worked for him. The part at the beginning about him being restricted from "most carbs" seems irrelevant in that context, especially when you factor in the knowledge that he was already confirmed to be compromised and a full blown diabetic.

scarface74 8y ago
And then there's this technically accurate but misleading sentence - "But Benari, now 44, was a very unusual patient in one clear way: He wasn’t obese." True. He wasn't obese. But he was overweight - "Benari’s BMI before he underwent the surgery hovered around 28, which made him modestly overweight but not obese." BMI is a poor measurement for obesity. Especially without knowing his body makeup. When I was in the best shape of my life - a part time fitness instructor, worked out 10 hours a week between classes and my own workouts, and at one point I was down to a 29 inch waist, my BMI was 29.6 - borderline obese - according to the guidelines. I was muscular, toned, and could pass any of the standard physical fitness tests (military, police, etc.) Currently according to the BMI guidelines, I’m “obese” with a BMI of 30.72 and I should weigh 35 pounds less than I do now. I wear a size 33 pants (waist). At most, I want to lose about 10 pounds or one waist size.