by Nick Jacobs

How do you stop a speeding freight train? Type 2 diabetes is one of the most poignant ailments of the 21st Century. According to the American Diabetes Society website: If present trends continue, one in three Americans, and 1 in 2 minorities, born in 2000 will develop diabetes in their lifetime. That prediction alone could lead to our children having shorter life spans than their parents. In 2005 1.5 million new cases of diabetes were diagnosed in people age 20 years or older.

Diabetes is the fifth-deadliest disease in the United States. Since 1987 the death rate due to diabetes has increased by 45 percent, while the death rates due to heart disease, stroke, and cancer have declined.

Sedentary lifestyles and inappropriate diets are at least two of the primary culprits contributing to this situation. It is no secret that diabetes is a disease that can destroy your body in numerous ways including:

* High Blood Pressure
* Blindness
* Kidney Disease
* Nervous System Damage
* Amputations
* Dental Disease
* Pregnancy Complications
* Sexual Dysfunction
* Others

What is the answer? Maybe the answer is to employ the Ad Council? White bread is bad. Broccoli is great. If all else fails, however, there may be one last emergency rip cord to pull for the auxiliary chute.

A few weeks ago, Parade Magazine featured an article that reported the findings of a study from Melbourne, Australia confirming what many of us have known definitively for a number of years now. Type 2 diabetes can, through weight loss attributed to bariatric banding surgery, be reversed.

Bariatric banding surgery involves the careful placing and then inflation of a small silicone type band around the top of the stomach. How is the surgery done? A miniature camera is inserted through a small incision and transmits images back to a video monitor. The band is then inserted through very small incisions that, post surgery, can simply be covered with band aids.

This procedure limits the amount of food a patient eats and thus begins the weight reduction process. That is what contributes to the reversal of diabetes. The study found that, “after two years, 73% of those treated surgically went into remission from diabetes. That was in comparison to the other 15% who underwent the conventional therapy of diet and exercise. The surgically treated patients lose over 20% of their weight during that amount of time. The researchers did observe that the magic number leading toward reversal seemed to have been a weight loss of about 10%.

Of course the reversal itself is directly attributable to weight loss, and is only recommended and paid for by most insurance companies after everything else has been tried.

The pitfalls of the various solutions available including any surgical procedure must be fully understood, but bariatric banding surgery is: 1.) Less risky than traditional gastric bypass surgery 2.) It is minimally invasive, and 3.)Finally, it is reversible. Although this procedure as compared to the complete bypass procedure may result in a little slower weight loss, it is, according to the study, very effective.

Regardless of the type of procedure chosen, the patient must make a commitment for several months to attempt to reduce the weight through conventional diet and exercise, and in a quality, comprehensive program, numerous professionals including: a physician, dietitians, exercise physiologists, a psychologist and nurses are provided to give the patient the support needed to enable them to stay on the program.

Post surgery, that same team of professionals must be available to monitor you so as to ensure that your progress is appropriate, that appropriate nutrients are consumed, and that no complications are permitted to go unchecked.

If the train won’t stop, maybe banding is the solution.