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Obese people are more prone to many diseases and one of them is liver disease. Liver disease in many is closely associated with irregular food habits, abusive alcoholism, over eating and sedentary life style. For the overweight and obese patients, to protect liver from dangerous disease affliction is to take care of their weight and reduce through physical exercise and maintaining a healthy diet prescribed by dieticians depending on individual body. For those who are obese and really want to be safe from the liver getting damaged a weight-loss surgery may come as a big boon.

In a published report recently it has been stated that obesity weight-loss surgery helps in preventing the liver to overcome from disease as it was found in a majority of patients who underwent weight loss following bariatric surgery. Obesity, which has become epidemic in the United States, has grown from afflicting 15 percent of the population in 1980 to 32.9 percent in 2004. It leads to nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) in around 70 percent of the obese and in 85 percent to 95 percent of those who are morbidly obese. NAFLD has the potential to develop into cirrhosis or cancer of the liver, both deadly diseases. Obesity is defined using body mass index (BMI), which relates an individual’s weight to his or her height. A person with a BMI of 30 or above is considered obese. People who are morbidly obese have a BMI of 40 or more.

Gagan K. Sood, Associate Professor of Surgery, and his team analyzed the data from 15 other studies and arrived at a hopeful conclusion. “Our team assessed and quantified this effect [of post-bariatric-surgery weight loss on the liver] and found encouraging news: a majority of patients experience complete resolution of NAFLD after bariatric surgery, and the risk of progression of inflammatory changes and fibrosis seems to be minimal.”

Gagan K. Sood and his colleagues looked at four different aspects of NAFLD: steatosis (fat accumulation in liver cells), steatohepatitis (liver inflammation accompanied by fat accumulation), nonalcoholic steatohepatitis, or NASH (inflammation, fat and liver tissue damage), and fibrosis (progressively worse liver damage characterized by growth of connective tissue and scars). It was found by the team that there was improvement in or curing of steatosis among 91.6 percent of patients, of 81.3 percent of those exhibiting steatohepatitis, of 69.5 percent of NASH patients, and of 65.5 percent of those with fibrosis.

People who are overweight and obese can consider of weight-loss surgery and protect themselves from damaging liver. Also, obesity surgery for weight-loss not only protects the body organs from getting damaged by also helps people regain confidence in them for a more social active life.