Five tips for those considering an operation By James Limbach, ConsumerAffairs.com America is a fat country. Sixty-six percent of all U.S. adults are overweight or obese according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And, faced with heart disease, high blood pressure and diabetes, many are shopping for bariatric surgery to help manage these conditions and, in some cases, cure them. What should a consumer look for in a bariatric program? Stephen Hamn, M.D., medical director of the weight loss surgery program at Baylor Medical Center at Frisco, an American Society for Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery (ASMBS) Bariatric Surgery Center of Excellence, offers these tips: • Take your time choosing a program. Weight loss surgery is a not a magic bullet, but requires life style changes to be effective. A good-quality program will tell you up front about the different options for weight loss surgery and the post-operative work -- exercise and changes in diet -- required for...

High intake of added sugars implicated in numerous poor health conditions By James Limbach, ConsumerAffairs.com That's advice from the American Heart Association, which recommends limiting the consumption of added sugars and is providing information about the relationship between excess sugar intake and metabolic abnormalities, adverse health conditions and shortfalls in essential nutrients. A new scientific statement, published in Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association, for the first time, provides the association's recommendations on specific levels and limits on the consumption of added sugars. Added sugars are sugars and syrups added to foods during processing or preparation and sugars and syrups added at the table. High intake of added sugars, as opposed to naturally occurring sugars, is implicated in the rise in obesity. It's also associated with increased risks for high blood pressure, high triglyceride levels, other risk factors for heart dis...