Researchers from Columbia universities in New York, and Duke, in North CarolLoss only through the diet.
According to the article published in the latest issue of the 'Science Translational Medicine' magazine, understanding how gastric 'bypass' affects metabolism can be key to the development of new treatments for type 2 diabetes, a global epidemic strongly related to theobesity and lack of physical exercise.
This surgery is becoming increasingly popular, since obese people have a hard time losing weight and avoiding complications derived from their excess weight, such as diabetes, joint pain and some cancers.
Therefore, in this study they analyzed two small groups of diabetic patients with severe obesity that underwent a gastric bypass or strict diets and, in both cases, they managed to lose around 9 kilos.
In the study, metabolites were taken into account, chemical by -products of the food present in the body, observing that, unlike the diet, surgery changes the metabolism of a person significantly decreasing the levels of amino acids, traditionally linked toObesity, diabetes and insulin resistance.
"What we observed was a very clear difference between bariatric surgery and food intervention," said Professor Christopher Newgard, author of the research, since patients in the operated group had lower levels of amino acids.
Specifically, these operated people had undergone an operation known as Roux-EN-Y, in which doctors surgically reduce stomach size to prevent patients from eating too much.
Therefore, Newgard acknowledges that it is not clear to what extent this stomach reduction can affect metabolic changes.However, he adds, the objective now is to develop medications that can imitate this effect.