WOMEN'S HEALTH: TO LAPBAND OR NOT TO LAPBAND

The lapband is a new device that helps individuals curb their appetites and helps them to lose weight. It is literally a band that wraps around your stomach making it smaller, approximately the size of a robins egg. If you are looking at your options I would like to share my personal journey that led me to make this decision. I had the procedure done five years ago and I have kept off the weight that I lost. I look great, feel great and want to share with you how I made the decision to have a less invasive procedure knowing that it is more difficult than having the traditional gastric bypass surgery done.

Let me say that with any surgery you need to find a Board Certified Surgeon. Check to see their qualifications, affiliations, number of times they have performed the procedures, how many deaths have occurred and why. Also what are the possible complications and what you can do to avoid the ones that you can avoid. And let me stress more than anything, once you commit to a procedure you must follow all of your doctors directives. You do not know better than he does.

Gastric Bypass is an excellent surgery for the morbidly obese. When directed by their physician towards this procedure many are successful at keeping off weight in excess of 100 plus pounds. You can also lose this amount of weight with a Lapband but it requires more work and dedication. Gastric bypass is a procedure that literally is a surgery to reconstruct your bowel and stomach to allow food to bypass. Your body is no longer able to absorb certain nutrients, fats, etc. The food sort of washes through you. After the surgery there are serious health concerns about your ability to take in the proper nutrients that you need. Also my friend would throw up over lunch because she ingested too much fat in the meal (no more than a few tablespoons). It made it unappealing. But she was over 400 lbs prior to her surgery and was under 200 lbs when I met her.

Another friend had the first part of the "banana "procedure done which was the first part of a two part bypass surgery. Her stomach was encased and decreased. She was morbidly obese, over 200 lbs over weight. She was over 400 lbs prior to her surgery. She had sleep apnea, used a cpap machine to breathe at night. Her weight put her at risk and her breathing problems increased the risks that come with any surgery that requires anesthesia. She ended up in a coma for 11 days which is not the norm. She lost over 100 pounds with just the first half of the procedure. Because of her personal ordeal she was not willing to submit to the second part of the surgery which would involve a reconnection of her bowel. It would have allowed her to lose another 100 plus pounds.

After thoroughly reading all I could about both procedures I chose what I felt was the least invasive and yet more difficult. In order to have the procedure you have to get psychological counseling, a nutritional consultation, gastric testing, an endoscopy examination, heart stress testing and examination, bloodwork and to lose 10% of your weight.

The psychological exam was to find out why you wanted the procedure. Many people aren't eligible for the surgery because they aren't going to follow the necessary processes for it to be successful. They are hoping to screen those individuals out. I personally was looking at being borderline diabetic. My grandmother was the same weight at that age and became diabetic. I had the same sugar addiction. I was also borderline hypertensive after not having an issue with it for over ten years. That was another medical issue in my family. Because I had sucessfully lost over 75 pounds after the birth of my second child and had kept if off for two years until I got pregnant again worked in my favor. It showed I was prepared to do the work and had the ability to be dedicated to my cause.

You also have to attend a support group. In the meetings I met individuals like me who were considering the procedure, individuals who had recently had the surgery and those who had it performed a while ago. Some of the returnees were battling the two to three year stage where they were able to put weight back on. They had wandered away from the program and had come back to reinforce the tools they needed to lose the excess weight they had now put on. My physician now has open meetings in his office at no additional cost. Hearing all of the different stories helped me to make a decision about having the surgery.

The nutritional counselor added to my already vast knowledge of food and nutrition. I was a consumate dieter and knew more about food than the average adult. But now I had to learn about what this change was gonna do to my body and how I was gonna maintain my weight loss. She had had the procedure and it was good to see and hear her success story. The leader of the support group worked for the surgeon and she also had successfully maintained her weight loss after the procedure.

The exams and bloodwork were all precautionary. After passing all of them you get to the difficult part, losing 10%. At 400 lbs that would be 40 lbs. Lets just say I had to lose a little less than half of that and it was hell! I kept asking the doctor why did he think I was there. If losing weight was a simple process I wouldn't be getting this procedure to help me. But I cheated with diet pills and put my health at risk to get what I wanted and knew was so very important for me. I had been going to "Curves" in my neighborhood for two years a local gym for women. I went down two dress sizes from exercising but I hadn't lost a pound. When I went to "weight watchers" I was slowly losing weight which was good, but after a while I started having anxiety attacks when I had to weigh in. But I was on the road to learning much better eating habits.

The following is a grahic video of what may have led you to also consider having this proedure done.

 I hope that this information has helped you on your journey to gather information on the lap band procedure.  Of course this is just my personal journey and each individual has different obstacles to overcome.  Let me end by saying that you can never take any surgical procedure lightly so investigate all of your options and be sure that this would be best for you, your life and your health.