Gastric surgery is only cure for obesity By Clive Cookson

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/a9deb9f6-7dc9-11dd-bdbd-000077b07658.html



The use of gastric surgery to treat obesity and its medical complications should be greatly expanded...Clinical researchers told the meeting, organised by the British Association for the Advancement of Science, that the gastric bypass operation, which makes the stomach smaller and removes part of the bowel, was the only effective treatment for obesity. It can also cure type-2 diabetes, the most serious complication of being seriously overweight.

“There is a real social stigma surrounding bariatric surgery and those who choose to have the operation, which needs to be eliminated,” said Rachel Batterham of the Centre for Diabetes and Endocrinology at University College London. “The surgery really does work. Not only does it help people to lose weight by decreasing the amount they eat, but it also alters their hormone profiles, meaning it’s easier for them to maintain weight loss.”

Carel Le Roux, an obesity researcher at Imperial College London, said a 10-year Swedish clinical study showed that gastric bypass surgery typically led to 25 per cent long-term weight loss, while gastric banding – a less radical operation – produced a 13 per cent loss. Lifestyle changes and medication failed to produce any long-term benefits, he said...Another Swedish study showed that patients lived longer after gastric surgery, Dr Le Roux added. Mortality after 15 years was 9 per cent in people who had the operation and 13 per cent in a comparable control group who did not.

Guidelines from the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence say people with a body-mass index above 35, who are suffering from obesity-related disease, should be eligible for gastric surgery. A typical operation costs £9,000...According to Dr Le Roux, the National Health Service should be carrying out gastric bypass surgery on one in 1,000 of the UK population every year, if the Nice guidelines were implemented. In reality, only one in 10,000 people has surgery – equivalent to 6,000 operations per year. Numbers in other European countries and in the US are higher.

Research has shown gastric surgery works not only by reducing the stomach and bowel but also by affecting the balance of appetite-controlling hormones in the blood and brain. “One of the major areas that we are looking into is trying to find a drug equivalent to bariatric surgery,” Dr Batterham said. “An increased understanding of the hormone changes that occur with obesity surgery may enable us to develop non-surgical treatments.”

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I know one fellow who took off 270 pound and kept it off...Just by going to meetings. Now not everyone does that well, but some do..
AA, Alcoholics Anonymous, works too. I am sure that you know someone who goes there..(same program, one about food, the other about Booze and drugs..)....Anyway, if you go and are successful, you can avoid the operation.......

I'm not discounting that OA is beneficial for some people but most addiction treatments work when you eliminate the addictive substance from your life completely. Can't do that with food and therein lies the rub.

and she's gaining a lot of weight back. Another friend of mine was on MediFast, and she said there were lots of people on the program who had gained back their weight after gastric surgery.

Is that the difference? Bypass vs band?

And which did Huckabee have, because he's starting to add on some pounds, too.

Either way, my heart goes out to these folks. Taking such an extreme measure and not having it deliver the results they'd hoped for. ;(

Except Huckabee.

connections to the duodeneum. It may also involve removal of part of the lower stomach.

Lapband is the laparoscopic placement of a band that reduces the size of the stomach available to hold food. Much less invasive and less risky

I thought Huck said he didn't have any kind of surgery. I noted that he looked a little bigger when he was on TDS a while back.

With gastric bypass there is generally a minor increase in weight after the initial period of weight loss is achieved but generally it is not anything near the yo-yo effect you see in a lot of patients who lose weight without surgery. It's important to remember that 95%+ people are unable to achieve and maintain a major weight loss. That's pretty awful odds. For every story you hear about someone who lost 100 lbs through lifestyle modification there are probably thousands who have attempted it and not had success.

My weight has varied by 100 lbs in my adult life (not including pregnancies)and I'm currently 20 lbs over my ideal. It's a lifelong struggle and I've decided that if I can maintain 80% of my weight loss I'm not going to cry about the other 20.

this year. Did mine with Weight Watchers. and they made me set a higher goal than the weight I thought I wanted to achieve. So I am 10 pounds heavier than I think I need to be but I am still 56 pounds lighter than I used to be.

I knew a couple of people who had gastric bypass when it was only done one way and they lost a lot of weight but eventually gained it back.

I aim to use WW to keep myself within range of goal. So far so good.

80% is quite good actually. As we get older we carry more weight. Maybe your ideal is no longer realistic, just like mine.

costs less, and doesn't involve life-threatening surgery. It's called reducing calorie intake and exercising. It only requires effort. Crazy huh.

I did use optifast but now use it only if I am traveling or can't get a meal. I have several hundred calories of protein about every 3-4 hrs. I've eaten a river of brocolli and turkey slices anlong with almonds which have some great fat burning properties.

I go to an endocrinologist.I am overweight. She has observed how I eat how I move and she thinks I do not eat enough food and are not sedentary enough for bad diet and lack of exercise to be the reason I am overweight.I have problems absorbing certain vitamins.
And more than that is wrong too. But for simpletons like you All I gotta do is not eat.Well fuck you,you go starve yourself you neurotic putz..

Diet and exercise does not WORK.If it did nobody would be fat anymore because fat people get abused and shamed for being fat in a fat phobic culture.They get hurt so much emotionally..They lose and gain lose and gain and with each attempt at diet they gain it back and more.Have you ever heard of the Minnesota starvation study?
http://anorexia101.blogspot.com/2008/03/minnesota-starvation-study.html
http://junkfoodscience.blogspot.com/2008/02/how-weve-came-to-believe-that.html
That explains part of why DIETS FAIL.

Learn something for once.

You think fat people are lazy? Haul around a 30 pound or more weight with you everywhere you go,than tell me how weak fat people are.

Next your stuck up fat phobic attitude sucks.

Many of them cannot walk, period, even after surgery and loss of weight, because of the punishment their joints have endured.

Why did you even pipe up in here? Just to show your ass?

Ok, we've seen it. Now what?

I'm a 35 year old man who is restricted to 1500 calories a day - for several years - yet am over 100 lbs overweight. I eat right (monitored by my family, friends and coworkers, so no cheating), I am moderately active, yet don't lose weight as I should. I am diabetic, both insulin dependent and severely insulin resistant - the large quantities of medication that I take daily have the unpleasant side effect of weight gain.

But you're right - I should just reduce my calorie intake and exercise more. My doctors don't know what they're doing.

It's just that easy, right?

Extremely obese people are usually not *able* to exercise, due to their weight and its effect on their body. The sort of people who would be considered for this sort of surgery are often people who have become essentially bedridden as a result of their obesity. And some people, especially if they don't exercise, still maintain or gain weight on a pretty low-calorie diet (this can also be a side-effect of certain medications).

Obviously, lifestyle changes should be tried before drugs, and drugs before this sort of drastic surgery. But I can't imagine the NHS deciding to fund massive numbers of gastric bypass operations (this report is from the UK).

We are not the fattest country on the planet because so many people are stricken with gland problems. We eat too much and lead sedentary lifestyles.

point me to the double blind study that shows actual results. There are a lot of things that everyone knows that just aren't so. We really don't know how the balance of carbohydrates, proteins and fats work in the body in combination with genetics and activity.

He was over 630 lbs...

Not sure I agree with this man claiming it to be the only "cure".

FOR EVERYONE.

Sometimes it fails, it can have bad complications and the weight comes back.Anybody foolish enough to white a book claiming gastric surgery is a cure for obesity for everyone is an stupid asshole who is possibly ruining a few lives with his zeal.

Not everyone is a gastric bypass success story.The procedure has BIG risks,and some may not be prepared for the changes in habits the changes in body so they take up gambling or smoking instead, It is important to QUESTION yourself first ask yourself WHY you eat,and question your emotions ,and preparedness for drastic changes before you undertake a drastic and potentially deadly surgical procedure.


Lets be honest a lot of people are BIGOTS against fat people.You CAN be healthy AND fat,that FACT gets downplayed because of our fat phobic culture.And science has NOT figured out what causes obesity yet. And they Don't how to cure it for everyone.

People always give fat people lots of UNWANTED advice.And shame..Ignorant people repeat stupid simplistic calories in/out myths, but in reality diets FAIL.Yo-Yoing up and down the scale with body weight via diets is far more dangerous than being fat.Educate yourselves look beyond FADS surgeons wanting to sell you up a river and Fitness gurus.

Many common medications people take cause WEIGHT GAIN.
Also,stress contributes , intestinal flora,addiction,metabolic issues,there are LOTS of reasons people gain weight.One size fits all surgical interventions do not always fix the problem.

Part of the obesity problem is people who hate fat ,fear fat or hold onto old medieval beliefs about gluttony as a sin,and the'moral inferiority' of a fat person.That shit needs to STOP and those people need to grow the fuck up and realize bodies are just bodies.WE all will DIE eventually.

And look-ism it is a social sickness that borders on evil as far as I am concerned.

Check out this site and the others,learn something about the risks of bariatric surgery.
http://www.stronghealth.com/services/surgical/bariatric/risks.cfm
http://www.annecollins.com/health-dangers-of-gastric-bypass-surgery.htm
http://www.gastricbypassmalpractice.com/gastricbypassmalpracticeinformation.html

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
How many times have you heard: "No, thanks. I'm on a diet."

Fact: 90 percent of all women overestimate their body size.

Fact: By the age of 13, sixty percent of all North American girls have dieted.

Fact: Female children as young as five expressed fears of getting fat.

Read more about how NEUROTIC most "normal" people are over fatness. It's SICK to be so preoccupied with one's weight.

http://www.cnn.com/2003/HEALTH/diet.fitness/10/14/fat.phobia.ap/index.html
http://www.shs.uwo.ca/publications/mindbody/fphobia.htm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/if/3589269.stm

Think on this poem....


What Are Big Girls Made Of?

The construction of a woman:
a woman is not made of flesh
of bone and sinew
belly and breasts, elbows and liver and toe.
She is manufactured like a sports sedan.
She is retooled, refitted and redesigned
every decade.
Cecile had been seduction itself in college.
She wriggled through bars like a satin eel,
her hips and ass promising, her mouth pursed
in the dark red lipstick of desire.

She visited in '68 still wearing skirts
tight to the knees, dark red lipstick,
while I danced through Manhattan in mini skirt,
lipstick pale as apricot milk,
hair loose as a horse's mane. Oh dear,
I thought in my superiority of the moment,
whatever has happened to poor Cecile?
She was out of fashion, out of the game,
disqualified, disdained, dis-
membered from the club of desire.

Look at pictures in French fashion
magazines of the 18th century:
century of the ultimate lady
fantasy wrought of silk and corseting.
Paniers bring her hips out three feet
each way, while the waist is pinched
and the belly flattened under wood.
The breasts are stuffed up and out
offered like apples in a bowl.
The tiny foot is encased in a slipper
never meant for walking.
On top is a grandiose headache:
hair like a museum piece, daily
ornamented with ribbons, vases,
grottoes, mountains, frigates in full
sail, balloons, baboons, the fancy
of a hairdresser turned loose.
The hats were rococo wedding cakes
that would dim the Las Vegas strip.
Here is a woman forced into shape
rigid exoskeleton torturing flesh:
a woman made of pain.

How superior we are now: see the modern woman
thin as a blade of scissors.
She runs on a treadmill every morning,
fits herself into machines of weights
and pulleys to heave and grunt,
an image in her mind she can never
approximate, a body of rosy
glass that never wrinkles,
never grows, never fades. She
sits at the table closing her eyes to food
hungry, always hungry:
a woman made of pain.

A cat or dog approaches another,
they sniff noses. They sniff asses.
They bristle or lick. They fall
in love as often as we do,
as passionately. But they fall
in love or lust with furry flesh,
not hoop skirts or push up bras
rib removal or liposuction.
It is not for male or female dogs
that poodles are clipped
to topiary hedges.

If only we could like each other raw.
If only we could love ourselves
like healthy babies burbling in our arms.
If only we were not programmed and reprogrammed
to need what is sold us.
Why should we want to live inside ads?
Why should we want to scourge our softness
to straight lines like a Mondrian painting?
Why should we punish each other with scorn
as if to have a large ass
were worse than being greedy or mean?

When will women not be compelled
to view their bodies as science projects,
gardens to be weeded,
dogs to be trained?
When will a woman cease
to be made of pain?

Marge Piercy

There is enough abuse and bigotry and look-ism causing pain
in this world already.So scapegoating fat people is just another form of abuse and bigotry.


It's about learning to accept your bodies.Even if everyone around you treats you like shit for not being the "appropriate size".You have to learn to shut out the abusive wagging tongues and love yourself as you are again..

Body Positive explores taking up occupancy inside your own skin, rather than living above the chin until you're thin. It is a set of ideas that may help you find greater well-being in the body you have.
http://www.bodypositive.com/

If you're 700 lbs or something, you probably need it. However, I have lost a brother-in-law and a couple of friends to complications from this surgery.

I think this guy pushing it as a cure all is at best horribly irresponsible at worst a horrible asshole preying on people who hate their own bodies because they have been shamed so much by such a weight obsessed vain and bigoted culture.

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from 700 pounds seen as life threatening, and now you say 400 pounds.WTF?

How low will you all go ,to rationalize who should be making other people consider dangerous surgeries to fit this"acceptable size" bullshit? What number is the dreaded danger zone? 700,400,300,200?

Thin people die too,of heart attacks strokes,what about the wonderful fit,trim runners keeling over from heart attacks..They are not fat.. and thin people get diabetes too.

Think.

Instead of looking for cures or magic, especially from someone WHO IS TRYING TO SELL YOU A POTENTIALLY DANGEROUS AND CERTAINLY EXPENSIVE PROCEDURE, perhaps people bothered by their weight should investigate and try other things. And understand that there is no such thing as magic.

I am angry at the OP. Anyone who tells you there is "only one way" to do something...which that person is selling...is doing an infomercial. And ought to be paying Skinner a lot of money for doing that.

One of my closest friends had gastric bypass surgery, and nearly died. Four years ago, she lost half of her body weight and now weighs 125 pounds. When I saw her at a reunion last year, she said her doctor told her she was an exception -- that the stomach can expand, and people gradually go back to their previous weight. She told me she has to east almost nothing to maintain the weight. Doesn't sound like a panacea.

She had to locate a bathroom every place she went, first off. She was always needing potassium. And it didn't help; she gained the weight back in a few years anyway.

And I am DAMNED ANGRY at this OP who is pushing devastating, life-wrecking surgery as the "only way" to lose weight. This is an ad that needs a disclaimer badly, and Skinner should be informed.

Define obesity as what, BMI of 45 or something to be generous.

How many die from gastric bypass?

I'd like to see a side by side study.

My opinion is, gastric bypass is more dangerous. I don't oppose people getting it voluntarily, if that's what they want. But they should give the figures.

____ % of people with a BMI over 45 die from obesity related illness

____ % of people with a BMI UNDER 45 die from obesity related illness (as pointed out, people with low BMIs get heart attacks, strokes, diabetes, cancer, etc. too)

___ % of people who get a gastic bypass die from it or complications from it.

Those are the figures I'd like to see. All this stomach stapling reminds of the lobotomy craze of the 1900s.

Track it down. I'm sure everything you ask is there.

definitely not the 'only cure'.

Or is it a case of truthiness?

that it is not the only cure, or that it could be necessary very rarely?

I think it's pretty obvious it's not the only cure.

There are a few people who are so obese that it is life-threatening, and may need the surgery. Even then it needs to be balanced against the fact (with lots of statistical support!) that all forms of surgery are more dangerous when patients are significantly obese.

unless you have medical issues or are taking medication that has a weight gain side effect.


My normal weight for my body type is around 145 lbs. 20 lbs more and I have a beer gut even though I don't drink that much (one or two beers a week). 20 lbs less and I'm a little too skinny.

I ballooned up to almost 180 lbs last year. Thats 35 lbs overweight. At 180lbs, I was 24% higher in weight than I should have been.

What did I do? I limited my eating to mainly fruits and vegetables, along with multi-grain bread, some dairy and hard-boiled eggs for protein. I made sure that my caloric intake was 1200 to 1400 calories per day, along with less than 2000mg sodium per day, and less than 30g fats per day.

Combined that with a multivitamin, Omega-3 fish oil concentrate, and Calcium 500mg + Vitamin D, all of which I purchased at CostCo for around $15.00 each for 400 - 600 tablets or softgels per container.

I stopped drinking soda and alcohol. I drank coffee and green tea regularly, because the caffeine actually helped with my weight loss. I also drank plenty of water and 100% fruit juices I juiced myself or got from an organic foods store.

The only exercise I did was in essence LifeCyle 30 minutes every day at a speed to get my heart rate above 120 bpm and keep it there. No running or weightlifting. Just really fast bike riding in essence. Like those Tour de France riders do their time trials.

At the end of the day, was my stomach growling? You damn straight it was. I still fought the urge to snack or eat more, keeping to my strict regimen. What happened?

I lost those 35 lbs in 4 weeks. 31 days to be exact. That's more than a pound per day.

I didn't eat any pizza, no burgers, no fries, no snacks like Doritos or Snickers bars. No more red vines (one of my favorites). No taquitos or tacos, or burritos. No TV dinners or Hot Pockets. No microwave popcorn. However the hot air popped popcorn, with no salt or butter, I consumed a lot, and that added more protein. Hot air popcorn, with no salt or butter (read: totally plain), not only fills you up, but is very low in calories. You can eat two huge bucketfulls of such hot air popcorn and it will be only several hundred calories at the most.

People often don't realize the caloric content of the foods they eat. Fast food burgers are easily 600 to 1400 calories EACH. You down just two of them and that's ALL the calories you need for the day. But, they are often small and don't fill you up, so you are hungry again in a few hours.

Those 2 for 99 cent tacos at Jack in the Box and elsewhere? Easily 500 calories each. So, for 99 cents, you just consumed 1000 calories. 1000 calories in two puny little greasy tacos!!!

The key is to eat foods that are low in calories, yet high volume and density so they fill your stomach and take a little while to process.

Fruits and vegetables do exactly that. Throw in a lot of multi-grain bread and totally plain hot-air popped popcorn.