People who rely on diets or medications, often experience the yo-yo effect – they manage to lose some weight, just to gain it back as soon as they stop using medication or switch a diet. Bariatric surgery has proven to be a very effective way of losing weight. In this video, you are introduced to some of the most popular bariatric procedures, their benefits, and their risks.
There are a limited number of weight loss options available for overweight people. The most frequently used options are diet and exercise. Results from dieting are generally quite poor. Although weight loss is often achieved without significant lifestyle changes, the weight is often regained quickly, resulting in a cycle of weight loss and weight gain commonly known as Yo-yo dieting.
Yo-yo Dieting
You can lose weight without doing surgery, however, when you do diets, diets usually fail and what happens to most people is they’ll have Yo-yo dieting. Once they do a diet, they can only sustain it for so long, and they’ll lose weight. But once they’re off that particular diet, they gain their weight back.
Weight Loss Medication
Weightloss medications are also available to suppress appetite. These medications require close supervision and result in relatively small amounts of weight loss. Once the medications are stopped, weight usually returns. Weight loss surgery, also known as bariatric surgery, is the most successful option for long-term weight loss.
Bariatric Surgery
There are many types of surgeries, but most of the surgeries are usually restrictive and malabsorptive. Some of the restrictive malabsorptive procedures are the gastric bypass, and then you’ll have restrictive procedures as a sleeve and also the lap band.
Gastric Bypass
Because of its long history gastric bypass is often considered the gold standard, by which all other bariatric surgeries are evaluated. You may also hear gastric bypass called Roux-en-Y gastric bypass or just Roux-en-Y. Gastric bypass surgery involves cutting the stomach to form a smaller stomach pouch and rerouting the intestines so that much of the digestive process is bypassed. Gastric bypass is extremely difficult to reverse and can not be adjusted to meet patients changing needs.
The keyword in gastric bypass is when you bypass the intestine, so the transient time of the food is less and so it just bypasses, just goes through the intestines quicker so that non of the nutrients or the calories are being absorbed. It is cutting on the stomach, and it is also cutting the intestines, and making a new connection, or making a smaller stomach or pouch. There are some complications with this and there, you can have leaks, you can have hernias, you can have internal hernias, which can lead to surgeries which need to correct these problems. But you’ll have to take vitamins for the rest of your life with the gastric bypass, versus the other procedures like the sleeve and lap band surgery.
Sleeve Gastrectomy
Vertical gastric sleeve surgery reduces the size of your stomach, restricting the amount of food you can eat at one time. You may also hear this surgery referred to as the sleeve gastrectomy, gastric sleeve, or simply the sleeve. Sleeve gastrectomy removes approximately eighty percent of the stomach to shape the remaining stomach into a narrow tube. Sleeve gastrectomy surgery requires permanent changes so cannot be reversed.
Gastric Banding
Gastric banding is a minimally invasive surgical procedure that is often performed as an outpatient procedure. The lap band system is the most frequently used gastric band in the United States. Lap band does not require metal staples, removal of part of the stomach, or cutting of the intestines as occurs in the procedures such as gastric bypass or gastric sleeve. Lap band is adjustable, allowing finer control of weight loss in response to patients changing needs. Lap band can be removed if desired, so that the digestive system returns to its original state.
The procedure of our choice, at my practice, is the lap band surgery. I’ve done over 2000 of these surgeries, all successful. The complication rates are low, and there is studies and literature to prove that the outcomes are great. By having lap band surgery, you should have a fifty-seven to sixty-three percent excess weight loss in the first two years.
In our next module, we will look at the least invasive of the bariatric procedures – adjustable gastric band surgery. Next: Lap Band Surgery – Benefits and How It Works
