Obese individuals who undergo bariatric surgery show evidence of improved memory function, according to the results of a new study.

“There are 2 take-home messages from our research,”Chinese Diet Pills lead study author John Gunstad, PhD, from Kent State University in Ohio, told Medscape Medical News.

“The first is that this very clearly demonstrates that obesity causes adverse changes to the brain but that some of these changes might be reversible through significant weight loss. The second is if obese individuals are looking for yet another reason to motivate them to lose weight, this is it.”

Dr. Gunstad said he and his colleagues got the idea to study whether weight loss improved memory and concentration from previous clinical work.

“I was working at Brown University Medical School in Rhode Island with people who were looking to lose weight through behavioral means or weight loss surgery. 7 Days Herbal Slim I kept noticing that these patients would make the same mistakes on cognitive function tests,” he said.

More Benefit With Time?

In this study he and his team studied 109 bariatric surgery patients who were enrolled in the Longitudinal Assessment of Bariatric Surgery project and 41 obese control subjects who were not having weight loss surgery.Botanical Slimming Soft Gel All subjects completed a cognitive evaluation at baseline and at 12 weeks of follow-up.
Dr. John Gunstad

The average weight of the patients in the study was 300 lb.Fruit Plant Weight Loss Those who had bariatric surgery lost about 50 lb by week 12, Dr. Gunstad said.

At baseline, many bariatric surgery patients showed impaired performance on cognitive testing, but at 12 weeks, they had demonstrated improved memory and concentration, compared with the control subjects (P < .001).Meizitang Strong Version In fact, the memory performance of the obese subjects had actually declined.

“Several test results improved in the bariatric surgery patients relative to the obese controls, including multiple memory indexes and a test of psychomotor speed,” Dr. Gunstad said.

In addition, surgery patients without hypertension had better short delay recall at 12 weeks than those with hypertension (P = .005).

“We know that people who go through weight loss surgery are going to lose substantially more than just 50 lb, so we are going to follow these patients for up to 2 years after their surgery as they continue to lose weight to take a closer look at what happens over the course of time,” he said.

Ray of Hope

For Sudeepta Varma, MD, a psychiatrist at New York University Langone Medical Center in New York City, the results of this study are exciting and encouraging.

“It is nice to know that if I am treating an obese patient, perhaps I should work closely with the primary care doctor and we should refer this patient for bariatric surgery. Slim Forte Such surgery may be an option to try. It gives us more tools to work with,” she told Medscape Medical News.

Losing weight may also help improve depression in obese patients, she added.

“We see a high rate of depression in obesity. Now the possibility is raised that treating the obesity might treat the underlying depression. This study gives us a little bit of hope to say that declining cognitive function does not have to be this person’s destiny, that things can be changed,” she said.