Fresno Heart & Surgical Hospital bariatric surgeon Saber Ghiassi led a study through Stanford University that found morbidly obese patients who had gastric bypass surgery were able to significantly reduce their medications for hypertension and diabetes at a year after surgery – which led to a big drop in health care costs. Forty-year-old Paul Ferguson of Fresno’s story serves as an example of real results. He lost more than 200 pounds through gastric bypass surgery more than a year ago, and no longer needs his medications for diabetes and hypertension. 

Your mind and body are intimately connected, and your overall health depends on both of them working well. This is most evident in depression: Research shows that people who suffer from clinical depression face a higher risk for contracting certain illnesses, according to the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH).

Everyday movement can prevent pain, illness and early death. A recently released medical study found that people who sit for most of the day are 54 percent more likely to die from a heart attack than those who stand or walk.

Compared to other Californians, Valley residents have higher poverty rates, lack access to health insurance and medical providers, have higher rates of asthma and diabetes and don’t get their behavioral health needs adequately addressed. Those are some of the findings from research across four counties published in a “Community Needs Assessment” report by the Central Valley Health Policy Institute at California State University, Fresno.

Our Community Diabetes Care Center provides personalized care, education, counseling and treatment to help you self-manage your blood glucose levels. We offer motivational programs, screenings, informative literature, seminars and rural outreach to improve the health status of the region and promote medical education.

Newspaper headlines this past week tout the benefits of using bariatric surgery to cure Type 2 diabetes -- even in people who are not morbidly obese. That’s old news to Drs. Kelvin Higa and Keith Boone, bariatric surgeons at Fresno Heart & Surgical Hospital, who’ve seen these results again and again in their patients and have been studying the effect for several years.