This is a sponsored guest post that was approved by Women and Their Pretties
Will You Qualify for Weight Loss Surgery?
Bariatric surgery is a surgery designed to stop a person from having as much food as possible. Operations like the lap band, for instance, reduces the size of the stomach, ensuring that people can’t eat as much. Roux-en-Y procedures, by contrast, reduce both the size of the stomach and the length of the small intestine. This is a more permanent, irreversible procedure and means that patients won’t be able to cheat either. Those are just two bariatric procedures, however, and there are six more, but they are becoming less popular.
Do You Qualify for Surgery?
The National Institutes of Health have released the Clinical Guidelines on the Identification, Evaluation, and Treatment of Overweight and Obesity in Adults. In that, they have highlighted two criteria qualifying people for surgery:
- People who are at least 100 pounds overweight and have a BMI of 40 or above.
- Those who have a BMI of between 35 and 40 and also suffer from a comorbid disorder such as high cholesterol, hypertension, heart disease, type 2 diabetes, or apnea.
However, just because you fit into one of those two categories does not mean you will automatically get surgery. Instead, you will have to meet the screening policy of the surgery you have chosen and demonstrate to them that:
- You are motivated to make lifestyle changes.
- You are happy to be under lifelong consultation with a physician.
The Types of Bariatric Surgery
The two most popular types of bariatric surgery available today are the gastric bypass and the gastric band. Both can be completed through open surgery, but most physicians now prefer to use laparoscopic techniques as these lead to less scarring, fewer complications, less pain, and a shorter recovery period. Open surgery usually means a hospital stay of around five days, whereas patients can go home after about two days with laparoscopic procedures. Similarly, open surgery patients usually have to stay off work for about five weeks, which is reduced to just two for those with a laparoscopic procedure.
A gastric band is restrictive. This means that it only stops your body from taking in as many calories. The size of the stomach is reduced using a silicone band. The band can be tightened, relaxed, and even taken out completely. They do not make any permanent changes to the body and its anatomy, therefore. However, this procedure is not as suitable for people who aren’t 100% committed, as ‘cheating’ is quite easy to do. This is also seen in how much weight people actually lose, which is generally less with this procedure.
The gastric bypass, by contrast, is malabsorptive in nature. This means that the stomach can hold less food, but also that the intestines can absorb fewer nutrients. The stomach is reduced in size, and a piece of the intestine is bypassed, which means food goes through the tract much quicker and less calories are absorbed. This usually leads to greater weight loss, but the chance of complications is also greater.
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