By Ron Winslow
Some people who undergo weight-loss surgery end up trading their struggle with food for one with alcohol but perhaps not for the reason you think.
The largest prospective study to examine the connection found that 10.7% of patients who underwent a bariatric operation called roux-en-Y gastric bypass got in trouble with drinking by the second year after the surgery. That compared with about 7% of patients who drank too much before they had the same operation, reflecting a 50% increase in relative risk.
The results, presented Monday at a meeting of the American Society for Metabolic & BariatricSurgery in San Diego, are based on 1,945 patients, 70% of whom had the roux-en-Y operation. They are consistent with smaller studies and anecdotal reports suggesting a link between weight-loss surgery and alcohol abuse.
The earlier reports led some experts to speculate that patients were swapping one addiction for another a phenomenon psychiatrists call addiction transfer.
But the [new] study doesnt support that, Wendy King, lead author and an epidemiologist at University of Pittsburghs Graduate School of Public Health, tells the Health Blog.
For one thing, King says, most of the patients who didnt have the roux-en-Y operation had a less-invasive lap band procedure, which wasnt associated with an increase in alcohol problems after the operation. Indeed, having the roux-en-Y doubled a patients risk of alcohol dependence or abuse after the operation.
If it was shifting addictions, it seems like you would expect to find it in both procedures, King says.
For another, 16% of the patients were classified as binge eaters, an indicator of food addiction, and they werent any more likely than other bariatric-surgery patients to develop new alcohol problems after the procedure.
So what might account for the increased risk associated with roux-en-Y? By shrinking the stomach and bypassing the upper portion of the small intestine, the operation changes the way people digest alcohol, King suggests.
Read more from the original source:
An Unintended Consequence of Weight-Loss Surgery: Alcohol Abuse
