Weight Loss after Bariatric Surgery Can Improve Memory and Concentration -

An excessive amount of body fat leads to obesity. “Overweight” refers to an excessive amount of body weight that includes muscle, bone, fat, and water. As a rule women have more fat than men.

When a person weighs 20 percent or more than his or her ideal body weight, in that case the person’s weight posesa real health risk. Obesity becomes “morbid” when it significantly increases the risk of one or more obesity-related health conditions or serious diseases (also called co-morbidities).

Obesity is more than a cosmetic problem now days. It has become a health related problem which may cause diseases like Type 2 Diabetes, High BP, heart disease, Depression, Sleep apnea, Infertility, Urinary stress incontinence, Menstrual irregularities, Emotional suffering, Laziness and memory loss.An obese or a morbid obese person can lose weight through various treatment options like Non surgical weight loss programs, Traditional open weight loss surgery or Minimally invasive or laparoscopic weight loss surgery or Bariatric Surgery.

John Gunstad, an associate professor in Kent State University’s Department of Psychology, and a team of researchers recently discovered a link between weight loss and improved memory and concentration. The study shows that bariatric surgery patients exhibited improved memory function 12 weeks after their operations. 

The findings will be published in an upcoming issue of Surgery for Obesity and Related Diseases, the Official Journal of the American Society for Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery. The research report is also available online here. 

The cost of Bariatric surgery averages around $17,000. Insurance is available for some because weight loss is proven to reduce risk of diabetes, hypertension, sleep apnoea, reflux, high cholesterol and joint pain. In India the Cost of Weight Loss Surgery is about 6000 to 7500 US Dollars. 

Gunstad said that the initial idea came from his clinical work, “I was working at Brown Medical School in Rhode Island at the time and had the chance to work with a large number of people who were looking to lose weight through either behavioral means or weight loss surgery.” \

Gunstad said he kept noticing that these patients would make similar mistakes. “As a neuro-psychologist who is focused on how the brain functions, I look for these little mental errors all the time,” Gunstad explained. 

This research team studied 150 participants (109 bariatric surgery patients and 41 obese control subjects) at Cornell Medical College and Weill Columbia University Medical Center, both in New York City, and the Neuropsychiatric Research Institute in Fargo, N.D. Many bariatric surgery patients exhibited impaired performance on cognitive testing, according to the study’s report.