A study by Princeton University and Mpala Research Center, in Kenya, has found evidence for the ‘mismatch’ hypothesis when they found that obesity, diabetes and cardiovascular illnesses increased among whose diet changed from animal-based to carbohydrate-based. The mismatch hypothesis argues that our bodies have evolved and adapted to digest the foods that our ancestors ate and that human bodies will struggle and largely fail to metabolise a radically new set of foods.

Undertaking aerobic exercise prior to bariatric surgery in addition to standard medical care decreased the length of hospital stay in patients receiving bariatric surgery, compared to standard medical care alone, according to the outcomes of a small pilot trial by researchers from University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA. The outcomes were featured in the paper, ‘Pre-operative aerobic exercise on metabolic health and surgical outcomes in patients receiving bariatric surgery: A pilot trial’, published in PLOS One.

Access to bariatric surgery should be increased as part of the main treatment considerations in women with obesity and polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS). The paper, ‘A Review of the Impact of Bariatric Surgery in Women With Polycystic Ovary Syndrome’, published in Cureus, led by California Institute of Behavioral Neurosciences & Psychology, Fairfield in the US, also recommends that additional research with better study designs are required in the future to investigate the relationship between PCOS and bariatric surgery.

Researchers at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU) have discovered a neural subnetwork of connected regions between the brain and gastric basal electric frequency that correlates with future weight loss based on connectivity patterns.

Vietnamese-American adults who did not have obesity were 60% more likely to have diabetes than those without obesity, non-Hispanic, White Americans, after accounting for age, sex, sociodemographic factors, smoking history and exercise level. Overall, only 9% of Vietnamese Americans with diabetes in the study had obesity. In comparison, half of all non-Hispanic White Americans with diabetes had obesity.