Obese people have finally received some good news from researchers at McGill University in Montreal.

According to their study, gastric bypass surgery, known to reduce heart disease and diabetes in obese people may also reduce their chance of cancer by 80 percent. The findings were presented on Wednesday at the annual meeting of the American Society for Metabolic & Bariatric Surgery in Washington D.C.

For the study, Dr. Nicolas Christou, director of bariatric surgery and professor of surgery at McGill and his colleagues compared 1,035 patients who had bariatric surgery from the mid-‘80s to 2002 and 5,746 obese patients who did not have surgery. The participants were matched by age, gender and the length of time they’d had a diagnosis of morbid obesity. None of them had previously been diagnosed with cancer.

Those having surgery lost an average of 67 percent of their excess body weight. Also, only 2 percent of them (21) developed cancer in the five years of follow-up. On the other hand, 8.5 percent of people in the control group (487) developed cancer.

Breast and colon cancer saw the most dramatic decrease. However, there was a 70 percent reduction in pancreatic cancer, a 60 percent reduction in skin cancer, a 15 percent reduction in uterine cancer, and a 50 percent reduction in non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.

These findings clearly show that besides making you feel better, weight loss also “can reduce your chance of developing cancer and improve your diabetes, sleep apnea,” Dr. Christou said, quoted by CTV.ca.

It has long been stated that obesity is a profound risk for cancer, but nobody knows how weight loss reduces the incidence of cancer.

Dr. Christou further encouraged his colleagues to look to their data and see if patients having bypass surgery had registered the same improvements.

According to the American Society for Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery, about 205,000 Americans underwent bariatric surgery last year and the number is expected to rise by 5 percent this year.