Gastric Bypass Surgery for Weight Loss

Gastric Bypass surgery refers to a group of surgical procedures used to treat morbid obesity. Gastric Bypass surgery is a very popular weight loss surgery that makes your stomach smaller and you consume less food and your body absorbs fewer calories.

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.