Harvard Health Content API

Weight loss surgery helps people keep weight off for at least 6 years, and also leads to lasting health improvements, a new study shows. The study focused on 1,150 severely obese people. More than 400 of them had gastric bypass surgery. The procedure they had blocks off part of the stomach. The small pouch that is left is attached to the small intestine, bypassing the first part of it. Other people in the study tried to lose weight just with diet and exercise. After 6 years, people in the surgery group had lost about 28% of their weight. Of those who had type 2 diabetes before surgery, 62% no longer had the disease. About 42% of those with high blood pressure returned to normal pressure. The no-surgery groups did not lose any weight long-term. During the study, 17% of those in the no-surgery groups who did not have diabetes developed the disease.

American children eat too much salt, and those who eat the most have higher blood pressure, a new study finds. The study came from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Researchers looked at data on 6,200 children who took part in recent national health surveys. The children were ages 8 through 18. Children were asked twice over several days to list all foods they had eaten the day before. Researchers estimated how much sodium they ate. Salt is the biggest source of sodium in food. On average, children ate 3,300 milligrams daily. That’s 1,000 milligrams above the recommended amount. Overall, 15% of children had either prehypertension or high blood pressure. Prehypertension is blood pressure that is above normal but not as high as in high blood pressure. Children who ate the most salt were twice as likely to have one of these conditions as children who ate the least.