Hormones And Weight Loss
IrishTimes.com September 11, 2008
Hormones play a crucial role in weight issues. They are to be “blame” for being obese or overweight. Weight-loss surgery is a successful way of getting slim figure back as it changes hormone levels. There are three hormones involved: the hunger one, Ghrelin, which is reduced during the surgery, the satiety hormone, Peptide YY, (responsible for being full) is increased and the hormone that helps to regulate glucose, CGP-1, is altered.
Researches show that weight-loss surgery is a highly reliable way of losing weight for a long time.
The majority of the British population (two-third, as researches show) are overweight or obese. Both genes and environment are responsible for that situation.
To understand our metabolism we need to go back to the times when people suffered from starvation. That is when our metabolism evolved and learned to store the oodles as fat to survive when food was no longer available. Nowadays, however, when food is always within the reach it makes it difficult to diet.
Dr Batterham describes dieting as “fighting the biology we have developed to fight starvation”.
Batriatic surgery changes the amount of the hormones in the body which allows weight-loss. Dr Le Roux thinks batriatic surgery should be widely available for the society as obese people risk type II diabetes. Patients who had their weight-loss surgery tend to lose their diabetes. As Dr Le Roux highlights, the surgery is not cosmetic but it is about health.
