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What if you lose weight and find out you've actually gained some brain power. A popular surgery appears to do just that.
In the United States, with most Americans overweight or obese, the demand for gastric bypass surgery is booming. The procedure often results in dramatic weight loss. Patients who lose weight after gastric bypass can see lots of health benefits. It improves sleep apnea, high blood pressure, and cholesterol levels, and it cures diabetes. But there's another, surprising benefit: It makes patients smarter.
Stanford researchers found gastric bypass surgery improved a patient's ability to remember, to think through problems and to pay attention to details. Dr. John Morton, who headed up the research, says, "We saw a pretty big improvement across the board for these people."
He presented his findings at the American College of Surgeons' annual meeting, held this year at Moscone Center in San Francisco. "This is the first study of its kind, so it's going to open up a lot of other avenues for research," he said.
Why the brain boost? Scientists don't know for sure, but the answer may be percolating in toxic belly fat. That fat can release harmful chemicals that trigger inflammation. Get rid of that fat, and your brain benefits.
"We know the gastric bypass really improves insulin resistance; it cures diabetes 82 percent of the time. And at the end of the day, that's really the main reason why patients had such a big improvement in cognition after surgery."
This is the first study to look at brain power after weight-loss surgery. So what about weight loss without surgery? If you lost a hundred pounds, would you score better on tests? Probably yes, but getting the weight off is the hard part. For the morbidly obese, only surgery has been shown to be effective at this point.
