I’m not a doctor, just a guy who writes a blog on trying to live healthy by getting enough exercise and eating intelligently. So, I find the conclusion of this study to be almost karmic.
Toxic man-made chemicals—such as polychlorinated biphenyls and organochlorine pesticides—that are absorbed into the body and stored in fat may be released into the bloodstream during the rapid fat loss that follows bariatric surgery, according to a study from researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. The finding points to the need for further research to understand the health effects of this potential toxicant exposure.
For the study, published online November 5 in Obesity, the researchers examined 26 people undergoing bariatric weight-loss surgery, and found evidence of post-surgery rises in the bloodstream levels of environmental toxicants that are known to be stored long term in fat, including PCBs, organochlorine pesticides, and PCB-like polybrominated diphenyl ethers. The study also revealed that participants born before 1976—when most of these chemical compounds were still widely used—tended to have much higher bloodstream levels of the chemicals, compared to younger participants.
“The fact that this increasingly popular type of surgery may be causing these compounds to be released into the bloodstream really challenges us to understand the potential health consequences,” says study senior author John Groopman, PhD, the Edyth H. Schoenrich Professor in Preventive Medicine at the Bloomberg School.
About 16 million people in the U.S. are morbidly obese, defined as having a body mass index (BMI) of 35 kg/m2. Their extreme overweight condition confers a relatively high risk of type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, hypertension, and many cancers. For almost three decades, the U.S. National Institutes of Health has recommended weight-loss surgeries called bariatric surgeries—including stomach stapling and gastric bypass procedures—for people who are morbidly obese and have serious obesity-related conditions such as diabetes, as well as for anyone with a BMI over 40. More than 200,000 bariatric surgeries are now performed in the country every year. Continue reading
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