Benefits of Weight Loss

Ready to Take Control of Your Weight?

What Are the Benefits of Weight Loss?

Losing weight is a great accomplishment in itself—but it can also help patients reach important goals: going on a dream vacation, having children or running a 5K.

The most important benefit is feeling better and improving a patient’s general quality of life. But patients who lose a significant amount of weight have reduced rates of developing cancer, cardiovascular diseases, endocrinological disorders, infectious diseases, musculoskeletal disorders, psychiatric disorders and pulmonary disorders.

Weight loss has been shown to dramatically improve conditions such as:

• Diabetes: Nearly all patients show improvement in their diabetes after surgery by reducing blood sugar levels to normal levels, reducing the dosage of medication required and improving diabetes-related health problems.
• Gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD): Weight loss as a result of bariatric surgery can often help relieve GERD symptoms, and the gastric bypass procedure itself resolves symptoms in many patients.
• Sleep apnea: Sleep apnea (difficulty breathing during sleep) decreases dramatically as patients lose weight. 
• Ease of daily activities: Patients who became short of breath from walking find that after surgery, they can participate in many more activities with families and others, and can also begin more rigorous exercise as time goes on.
• Asthma: Patients with asthma find that they have fewer and less severe attacks after surgery, especially when attacks are triggered by episodes of gastric reflux.
• High blood pressure: Weight loss in patients who’ve undergone gastric bypass surgery has been shown to resolve or improve high blood pressure in the majority of cases.
• Osteoarthritis and joint pain: Weight loss can lead to significant improvement in symptoms, pain relief, physical function and quality of life.
• Life expectancy: Several clinical studies of bariatric surgery show that surgery improved life expectancy in patients by at least 29 to 89 percent.

Weight loss also may improve conditions such as:

• Depression
• Congestive heart failure
• High cholesterol
• High triglycerides
• Urinary incontinence
• Menstrual irregularity
• Back pain