Gastric bypass and Lap-Band surgery are two increasingly popular procedures that are used to aid in weight loss.  A new study has found a link between gastric bypass surgery and an increased risk of alcoholism. The study’s data indicates that people who are treated with gastric bypass are more than twice as likely to later enter into treatment for alcoholism compared to those who have Lap-Band surgery.

The study, which was conducted by a team of Swedish researchers, compared the medical records of more than 12,000 formerly-obese patients who had received weight loss surgery to approximately 122,000 people who were healthy and had not had surgery.  Before weight-loss surgery, the obese patients were more likely to suffer from depression, attempted suicide and alcoholism than the healthy group.  After surgery, the presence of all of these disorders remained high, but the incidence of treatment for alcoholism was 2.3 time higher among …