Bariatric Surgery

Confused about what your number means? Wondering if you really need to be worried about your weight at all? I mean, sure, you’ve gained a few pounds over the years, but it’s not that big a deal, right?

Well, answer these questions.

1. Are you a hundred pounds heavier than you should be when you calculate your bmi? Is it over 35 over 40?
2. Do you also have diabetes, sleep apnea, high blood pressure, or high cholesterol?

If you answered yes to two of these questions, you qualify for bariatric surgery. That’s right. You have severe obesity and ignoring it or taking more pills for your medical problems isn’t wise. In fact, your life expectancy is at least seven years shorter than someone who didn’t answer yes. If your BMI is really high, like 55, you are likely to die 14 years earlier than you would at a normal weight.

It’s time to get a sense of urgency about this problem and it’s time to face facts. Obesity is a chronic disease and it needs to be treated. It’s easy to blow it off now because it doesn’t hurt or cause a lot of symptoms, but just like cancer and heart disease, it will progress without treatment and it will end your life early If you have obesity.

It’s not just a willpower problem. You’ve tried a hundred times to lose weight with diets and exercise, so willpower isn’t the issue. It’s biology, environment, genetics, and yes, it’s behavior too. If you’re obese, you just have to own it. It doesn’t mean you need to be embarrassed or ashamed. Would you be embarrassed if you were told you had diabetes? No. You would get it treated. Same should be true for obesity.

Unfortunately, many doctors don’t have the time or expertise to discuss or treat obesity. There are experts out there though that focus their careers on treating this disease. Bariatric surgery programs offer all kinds of treatments for obesity, including medication, endoscopic treatment, and surgery. Learn more about the safe and effective treatment options.

Check your BMI and take charge of your health by finding a program near you at this link.

Did you know the typical bariatric surgery patient is a woman between the ages of 35 and 50 and is about a hundred pounds overweight? Not extreme at all.

Take Sarah for example. She’s a 45 year old wife and mom of three kids. She’s five five and weighs 245 pounds. That means her body mass index or BMI is 41. That’s too high. In fact, anyone with a BMI over 30 has the disease of obesity.

Sarah’s parents were heavy and she has always been bigger than her friends, but in the last few years, she has steadily gained weight despite her best efforts. Oh, by the way, she takes medicine for high blood pressure, was just diagnosed with sleep apnea and her doctor told her she has pre-diabetes. She goes to the gym two or three times a week and eats a pretty healthy diet, but her weight is now out of control.

Sarah wants to be slimmer, but like most Americans, she thinks it’s a willpower problem. She has always quietly fought this battle on her own, but is now at her wit’s end. The straw that broke the camel’s back was when she was too big to get on the rollercoaster last summer with her kids. What Sarah doesn’t know is that in addition to the frustration she feels about her weight, obesity has put her on a path towards heart disease type two diabetes and many other life-threatening chronic diseases.

Most people think of obesity as a defect of character. People with obesity are often looked at as lazy and undisciplined. That’s not the case for other chronic diseases though, and it shouldn’t be the case for obesity like cancer or heart disease. Obesity is a combination of environment, genetic, and lifestyle factors, and left untreated it’s deadly. Sarah doesn’t wanna drag her feet until she develops diabetes, has a stroke or heart attack or worse, so she takes action and asks her doctor to help her find effective treatment.

Once she realizes how much her weight is putting her health and future at risk, she considers having bariatric surgery. Sarah’s bariatric surgery team talks to her about two options, sleeve gastrectomy and gastric bypass. Both procedures decrease hunger and improve feelings of fullness when eating by decreasing stomach size, changing hormones released by the gut and altering the way Sarah’s stomach talks to her brain.

Unlike dieting, Sarah’s body won’t fight back when she rapidly loses weight after bariatric surgery. Over time, her body will find a much lower and a much healthier set point for her weight that she can maintain. After talking with her surgeon, Sarah chooses to have a sleeve gastrectomy. The surgery is done laparoscopically with a few small incisions, takes about an hour to complete, and she spends one night in the hospital before starting her new life.

One year after surgery, Sarah has lost 90 pounds. She no longer takes blood pressure medicine or uses her C P A P device and her blood sugar is normal. She feels great and still exercises three times a week, but can do a lot more in the gym. Now, she still eats a healthy diet, but her portions are smaller than before. She knows she has to work hard to maintain her weight now, but she has the tools to do it. Most importantly, she has tons of energy to play with her kids and is back to riding that rollercoaster.

While there are extreme examples of obesity on TV shows, most bariatric surgery patients are a lot like you or someone you know, regular people who have struggled with their weight for too long. There is safe and effective treatment for obesity and it’s not extreme. Join the 200,000 Americans who take control of their health each year by undergoing bariatric surgery. Obesity can be effectively treated, but you have to ask for help. Ask your doctor to refer you for a consultation to a bariatric surgery program or find a bariatric surgeon in your area by using this link.

It’s true. In its early days, bariatric surgery was not commonly performed or accepted. It was performed through large incisions and complication rates were higher. In the last 20 years, though a lot has changed, bariatric surgery is safe. In fact, bariatric surgery is now as safe as gallbladder surgery, hip replacement, and hysterectomy with a mortality rate of 0.2%, which is far lower than most other elective operations perform today.

Speaking of mortality, we also know that people with obesity have a shorter lifespan than people who are not obese. A middle-aged man with a BMI of 40 is expected to die seven years earlier than someone who is normal weight. If your BMI is 55, your life will likely be 14 years shorter. For comparison, these are the same early mortality rates seen with normal way people who are actively smoking.

Why do people with obesity die early? Because obesity causes them to develop heart disease, diabetes, and cancer more frequently than non-obese people. Bariatric surgery, on the other hand, increases life expectancy compared with obese patients who do not have surgery. Bariatric surgery patients can expect to live 30 to 40% longer. Why? Because weight loss and metabolic improvements after bariatric surgery make the risk of heart disease. Diabetes progression and cancer decreased dramatically. In most patients, current procedures do not cause malnutrition.

The two most commonly performed bariatric surgeries today are sleeve gastrectomy and gastric bypass. Both are done laparoscopically with complication rates less than 5%, and an average hospital stay of one to two days. Both procedures are effective and durable one year after surgery. And a typical patient, the average weight loss is 80 to a hundred pounds for sleeve gastrectomy and a hundred to 150 pounds after gastric bypass. Patients need to take lifelong vitamins after both procedures, but these are not malabsorptive operations that cause severe nutritional deficiencies. In fact, bariatric surgery patients continue to absorb every calorie and every gram of protein that they eat, and they eat a regular healthy diet and smaller amounts and have normal bowel habits.

After these operations, most patients do not regain all of their weight. Some weight gain is normal in the long run, but only 10 to 15% of patients regain a lot of weight years after surgery. Remember, we’re talking about chronic condition here, and we’ve dramatically changed the trajectory of the disease. Most patients don’t maintain their lowest weight after surgery. Their body adjusts to a new set point above that, and over time, a few pounds will come back on again. It’s normal.

Even with some weight gain, patients enjoy a better quality of life, fewer medical problems, and weigh less than if they hadn’t had the surgery. Bariatric surgery should not be a last resort like any other chronic disease. The earlier you treat obesity and its metabolic consequences, the better the outcomes. If treated at an early stage, weight loss is better. Diabetes remission rates are higher, and years of life are added. If used as a last resort and a patient with severe medical problems and limited ability to move, we can’t expect the same great results.

If you were told you had heart disease, you wouldn’t wait until you had a heart attack to get treated, would you? We all know that if you treat cancer when it’s detected early and before it had spread, the chance of a cure is much higher. The same idea applies to treatment for obesity. It’s a deadly disease, so why would you wait years to get it treated safe? Effective, durable lifesaving sounds like a great option to treat a life-threatening disease.

Ask your doctor about referring you to a bariatric surgery program or find a program close to you by following this link.