Gastric lap band is recommended for:

To be indicated for gastric lap band you should be between 18 and 55 years old and must have failed to lose weight on diet and weight loss plans for more than a year.

Gastric band surgery is NOT recommended for:

Gastric banding is not recommended for people suffering from inflammatory diseases of the gastrointestinal tract such as ulcers, esophagitis or Crohn’s disease, or are allergic to the materials contained in the band.

The gastric band itself is an inflatable silicone prosthetic device which is placed around the top portion of the stomach through laparoscopic surgery.

How the gastric banding works?

After the gastric band surgery the band creates a small pouch at the top of the stomach which can hold about 50 ml. This small pouch ‘fills’ with food very rapidly and the passing of food from the top part to the lower part of the stomach is slowed.

As soon as the upper part of the stomach fills with food, a message to the brain is sent that the stomach is full and your appetite is curbed, so you eat less in smaller portions, and hence you lose weight over time.

Gastric lap band – an alternative to the other weight loss surgeries

• The laparoscopic gastric banding is fully reversible – the stomach returns to its normal size if the band is removed
• There is no cutting or stapling of the stomach
• Gastric band surgery is preferred because of its lower mortality rate (only 1 in 2000) against the Roux-en-Y gastric bypass surgery (1 in 200)
• You won’t spend days in hospital stay and will have very quick post surgical recovery
• You won’t have any malabsorption problems because intestines are not bypassed in any way

Gastric band surgery has fewer complications

• Band slippage or pouch dilation
• Erosion of the band into the gastric lumen
• Mechanical malfunctions
• Port site pain or displacement
• You may also feel nausea or vomiting
• Gastroesophageal reflux
• Stoma obstruction
• Constipation, Dysphagia, Diarrhea

I know all these sound scary, but there’s nothing to worry about if you visit your gastro specialist regularly. These complications happen very rarely and they just need to be mentioned, even if they happen once in a blue moon.

Gastric Bypass diet is generally divided into four phases, which I will describe in short. You should also know that the last phase of the diet will actually turn into your regular diet for the rest of your life.  

Gastric Bypass Diet Restrictions

You may not know but your stomach can normally hold about 6 cups of fluid at a time, and after a gastric bypass surgery, your new stomach pouch will only be able to hold only about ½ cup. That is 12 times less capacity, which sounds to me like you will need a major change in your eating habits.

To make sure you are eating right after the surgery, you should consult a nutritionist about the gastric bypass diet before starting it on your own. Here you will get only a briefly overview of what the gastric bypass diet consists of and what it recommends:

Vitamins and minerals – that’s what the gastric bypass diet recommends on the first place – taking multivitamins and minerals every day for the rest of your life. It sounds scary but these are the facts – you’ll need them.

Because of you won’t be able to eat enough and the certain level of malabsorption after the surgery you won’t be able to meet your daily requirement of vitamins and minerals from your food. It is strongly advisable to take vitamin and mineral supplements. If you usually don’t drink milk then 500 mg of calcium citrate twice a day is enough meet your daily needs.

Proteins – are very important part of your gastric bypass diet because they aid in your muscles growth and skin repair after the surgery. The recommended daily intake of proteins should be about 60-70 grams. The greatest source of proteins after a gastric bypass surgery is the protein supplements. I know one very popular protein supplement that contains no fats and is very tasty, you can check it here if you like.

Foods high in proteins and low in fat (that automatically excludes fried foods from your gastric bypass diet – fast foods and most snacks) – your meals should be low in fat because fat will be difficult to digest after the gastric bypass surgery.

The only fat you can eat is from lean meats and fish and low fat dairy products –tuna canned in water, crab, salmon, lean beef, lean pork, white meat from chicken or turkey; as well as egg whites, low fat milk and milk products. Cooking techniques are simple – baking, broiling or grilling.

Foods low in added sugars – it is important to avoid foods high in refined sugars because of the “dumping syndrome” that most post gastric bypass surgery patients experience after eating sugar and sweets.

“Dumping syndrome” is not pleasant because it can cause urgent diarrhea, nausea, lightheadedness, flushing, and stomach cramps, which are results of the rapid “dumping” of the food into the small intestine and the intestine is not used to concentrated sugar foods.

I advise you start reading food labels and avoid products which contents list includes sugar, maple syrup, honey, molasses, corn syrup, corn sweeteners, glucose, lactose, maltose, dextrose, sorghum, sorbitol or mannitol. Instead you can use artificial sweeteners.

Let’s start with – you will eat less, and even if you want, you just won’t be able to eat more than your upper small stomach pouch allows you.

Let’s go on with – your caloric intake will be far less, because after the Roux-en Y gastric bypass, the food you eat bypasses a part of your small intestine and digestion actually occurs in the lower part of the small intestine. That in turn rapidly reduces the amount of calories your body absorbs, because your food skips part the small intestine length.

Roux en-Y gastric bypass complications

Well, there is one common complication after a laparoscopic gastric bypass surgery and it’s called the Dumping Syndrome – your body doesn’t feel very well when you consume foods high in refined sugars.

It occurs because the food you consume moves too quickly through your stomach and the small intestine. The symptoms are sweating, nausea, dizziness and weakness, and they get worse when you eat high sugar sweets and carbohydrates.

To be optimistic, I can say it’s not such a bad gastric bypass complication after all. Think of that you won’t be able to overeat with sweets, as you may have used to and you’ll lose weight forever.

How exactly the Biliopancreatic diversion surgery helps you lose weight?

The main mechanism of weight loss and maintenance with this weight loss surgery is malabsoprtion. Actually it’s a combination of restrictive and malabsorptive procedures, but mainly malabsoprtion.

Biliopancreatic diversion gastric bypass complications

Although this gastric bypass surgery successfully helps you lose weight, it is not very commonly used, as the Roux en-Y gastric bypass surgery for instance. That’s because of some gastric bypass complications that the biliopancreatic diversion develops sometimes, such as the risk for nutritional deficiencies for your body.

How exactly the Mini-Gastric Bypass surgery helps you lose weight?

It’s a combination of smaller volume stomach and decreased absorption of nutrients, meaning the amount of food you eat is decreased and bypassing the first part of the small intestine decreases the absorption of calories and fats from food.

In the more than 2,500 patients has lost in an average weight of about 140 pounds in one year.

Mini-Gastric Bypass complications

Although it wasn’t originally called like that, this weight loss surgery was the first gastric bypass ever done and is a very simple one. Unfortunately, because of its imperfection and some gastric bypass complications, it’s been abandoned for some time.

Some of the gastric bypass complications were – entering of corrosive juices from the small intestine into the gastric pouch and causing severe inflammation and ulceration of either the stomach, or the lower esophagus.

Until later when it’s been improved to a simple and less troublesome laparoscopic mini gastric bypass surgery. Although the mini-gastric bypass surgery has a low complication rate nowadays, there are still reports of serious long-term complications with this technique that require a revision surgery.

Gastric Bypass surgery can be either an open procedure (with a large incision in the abdomen) or laparoscopic gastric bypass surgery (also called limited access surgery because of the limitation on handling and feeling tissues, and the limited two-dimensional video screen).

Laparoscopic gastric bypass surgery is an advanced surgical technique performed by using several small incisions, or also called ports. One of the ports guides a surgical telescope connected to a video camera, and others permit access of the specialized operating instruments. The surgeon actually views the operation on a video screen.

As you already know from my previous post, the gastric bypass surgery includes dividing of the stomach into two pouches – a small upper pouch and a larger lower pouch, as well as re-arrangement and re-connection of the small intestines.

According to the method used to re-connect intestines, there are several variations of the laparoscopic gastric bypass surgery:

Roux en-Y gastric bypass

This is the most common laparoscopic gastric bypass surgery performed in the U.S. The good news about it is that you won’t have any nutritional difficulties afterwards, except for the sweets.

First, the upper small pouch of stomach is made by stapling part of the stomach together.

Second, the small intestine is divided about 45 cm (18 in) below the lower stomach outlet, and is re-arranged into a Y-configuration, to enable food to bypass the duodenum and the first part of the jejunum, via a Roux limb (that’s why it is called Roux en-Y).

The Roux limb is 80 to 150 cm long (30 to 60 inches), and preserves most of the small intestine to absorb the nutrients from food. The patient will automatically feel very rapid onset of a sense of stomach-fullness and growing satiety almost immediately after the start of a meal.

Biliopancreatic diversion

Biliopancreatic diversion is an extensive and more complicated gastric bypass surgery. Still there is a small upper pouch directly connected to the lower part of the small intestine, but the lower part of your stomach is completely removed.

Mini-Gastric Bypass

The Mini Gastric Bypass is a Laparoscopic Gastric Bypass surgery, which is minimally invasive. It partitions your stomach into two parts – a small, long and narrow part and a separate larger one. The smaller stomach is attached in the small intestine about 6 feet down its length. The larger stomach is sealed and left unattached.

This way the amount of food you eat and the absorption of calories and fat in your body are decreased, because of the bypass of the first part of the small intestine.

Bariatric surgery

Bariatrics is a branch of medicine that deals with the causes, prevention, and treatment of obesity. Bariatric surgery is the surgical treatment of morbid obesity. It includes several classes and types of operations and one of them is the gastric bypass surgery for weight loss.

Gastric Bypass surgery

Gastric bypass surgery is a type of bariatric surgery that makes your stomach smaller and the food literally bypasses the larger part of your stomach and a smaller part of your small intestines. This way you’ll feel full faster, which will lead to reduction of your food and caloric intake. That in turn will eventually lead to significant weight loss.

The gastric bypass features dividing the stomach into a small upper pouch and a much larger, lower part. The surgery also includes re-arrangement of the small intestines so that the both parts of the stomach are still connected.

In case you don’t know what a morbid obesity is, I’ll tell you – it’s nothing you would like.

Morbid obesity

Morbid obesity is a very serious overweight condition, which arises from extremely severe accumulation of excess weight in the form of fatty tissue. This may result in occurrence of much more and serious health problems and complications, called co-morbidities.

Most common co-morbidities:

• Atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease
• Type 2 Diabetes
• High blood pressure
• Gastroesophageal Reflux Disease
• Gall-Bladder Disease
• Liver Disease
• Osteoarthritis

Why would you need a weight loss surgery anyway?

Well, to be diagnosed with morbid obesity, I will tell you that you should either weight greater than 100 pounds over your ideal body weight, which means body mass index (BMI) greater than 40, or you have BMI between 35 and 40 plus any of the co-morbidities.

No offence, but if you have any of these, then you are potentially qualifying as a candidate for a weight loss surgery, such as gastric bypass.