Time magazine reports on a New England Journal of Medicine study: simply limiting calorie intake may be the most effective way to lose weight. This should be pretty intuitive but a whole $40 billion dollar industry has sprung up around the idea that you can just eat certain types of foods to lose weight according to different theories. We still don't really have a pill that makes you lose weight with no side effects. Bariatric surgery is safer and has positive effects on glucose regulation but still requires general anesthesia. A simpler option: portion control.

Patients who are obese have a higher incidence of cardiovascular risk related factors. These have been shown to be improved following bariatric surgery. However it still remains unclear if bariatric surgery lowers the risk of long-standing risk factors for cardiovascular disease. Researchers from the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota performed a methodical study of research that was already published and the cardiovascular risk model utilized in a previously published validation cohort.

New study published in Annals of Surgery One of the first statistical analyses of the results of gastric bypass versus gastric banding has shown that bypass patients are significantly more likely to achieve successful weight loss. This is the case for both the short and long term. Bypass and banding are the two most common surgical procedures used in treatment of obesity. Dr.