Pre-operative Exercise and Nutrition Therapy on Cardio-metabolic Health in Patients Undergoing Bariatric Surgery

Obesity is a major health concern that has been associated with an estimated 2.8 million deaths worldwide each year. The number of individuals considered obese with a Body Mass Index (BMI) above 30 kg/m2 has grown to more than 500 million. The increased morbidity and mortality associated with obesity stems from a long list of comorbidities, including hypertension, coronary artery disease, stroke, cancer, and type 2 diabetes (T2D). Bariatric surgery is an emerging intervention that has been used frequently to induce weight loss for obese individuals and it has been shown to improve glycemic control and insulin resistance in people at risk for type 2 diabetes. Surgery may also lead to healthy improvements in inflammation, immune cells and vascular health. It is already known that exercise and weight loss from lifestyle modification can improve glycemic control, insulin resistance, inflammation, and arterial stiffness. However, no work has been done to examine a combination of bariatric surgery and pre-surgery exercise. Recent work by the team has evidence demonstrating that health status pre-surgery has an impact on post-surgery outcomes. Such findings suggest that improvements in health status from exercise before surgery may improve surgery outcomes as well as surgery-induced health outcomes. To date, no study has systematically examined the role of exercise on the prevalence of surgery complications or on post-surgery weight loss, glycemic control, and insulin resistance. Moreover, no work currently exists on exercise, with or without bariatric surgery on adipose tissue derived inflammation. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of pre-surgery lifestyle intervention with exercise on bariatric surgery outcomes. To test this objective, subjects will participate in a match paired study, based on BMI. Subjects will undergo testing of blood chemistry and related measures of health before (pre-test) and after (post) intervention. Then all subj