Genetics Shows A Possible Cause For Failure To Lose Weight After Gastric Bypass Surgery

By Author: Donald Saunders
Total Articles: 84
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Gastric bypass surgery is proving to be a lifesaver for more and more individuals as the problem of obesity continues to sweep across the western world but its greatest problem lies in the fact that a sizeable number of individuals either fail to lose enough weight after surgery or subsequently put back much of the weight that is lost.

Naturally there are various explanations for this failure to lose weight or to regain weight and top of the list in without question the fact that far too many people just find it too hard to make the lifestyle changes necessary after surgery and eat their way back into obesity. However, scientists have now discovered a genetic component that might explain some people's failure to lose weight after a gastric bypass.

In a study involving more than 700 severely obese patients blood samples were tested for two single nucleotide polymorphisma (SNPs). In simple terms a SNP is a human DNA sequence, variations in the pattern of which might indicate the way in which people will develop diseases and also respond to such things as vaccines and drugs. Without going into the details of this ...
... particular study which are complex to say the least, the scientists found that just under twenty percent of those examined showed a combination of particular SNPs that indicate that they are at risk of not simply failing to lose weight after weight loss surgery, but may actually be at risk of putting on weight.

The problem we are facing now is not mainly one of finding an answer for those people who suffer from obesity, but of stopping obesity in the first place and this is very much a matter of education. There is no doubt that a minority of people are prone to obesity and genetics and other similar factors could well play a role in this. Nonetheless, the vast majority of the obesity we see nowadays results from nothing more than poor eating habits and a failure to take sufficient exercise.

The true problem however is that once people are obese it is simple human nature to try to find any cause for their excessive weight that removes that guilty feeling brought on by the fact that they may just have caused the problem themselves. Now what better excuse can you give somebody than to tell them that their weight problem is genetic.

This is not to suggest that there is no foundation for the research into SNPs or to suggest that there is not a genetic component to either the failure to lose weight or to regain weight after weight loss surgery. However, the danger lies in releasing this information at too early a stage in the research process and to simply hand people another excuse for not dealing with their obesity at a time at which obesity is at epidemic levels and more importantly is increasingly being seen in very young children.

Scientific research is vital and has to be given its place in the overall scheme of things but we need to be careful to ensure that it does not sidetrack us from the real need to tackle the problem of obesity by educating people to alter their eating habits and take more exercise.