deletedsally

It's frustrating to have problems with hair loss. My hair started thinning drastically when I was around 19 years old, and it has remained very thin. My oldest daughter (26) has hair that is so thin that her scalp is very visible. We've never had any clear explanation. It has been suggested that ours is male pattern baldness associated with PCOS. There is also a very strong family tendency toward baldness--my younger brother was completely bald by the time he was 20. I hope your doctor will be able to help you find a solution. The surgery may exacerbate the problem, but it sounds like there are other underlying causes too. Hope you get to feeling better soon!

Figure that the average daily caloric requirement for females to maintain weight is around 2000 calories a day. You have to burn the equivalent of 3500 calories of fat to lose one pound. So without vigorous exercise to increase calorie burning, you aren't going to lose more than about 2 1/2 pounds of fat in a five day period. A 20 pound loss would probably be a small amount of fat, some muscle, and a lot of water.

There have been some people who have developed dumping syndrome post VSG--just as there are some people who can develop dumping syndrome without having had any bariatric surgery at all. In many of these cases, stress can be a primary trigger and you reported high levels of stress prior to your surgery. Dumping syndrome as a side-effect of VSG is "unlikely" (not impossible) according to most doctors because the pyloric valve is supposed to be left intact. There can be exceptions, and there is always room for medical error. At this point, you are only one week out from surgery and given all the emotional and physiological stressors, I think it's way too soon to assume that this is anything permanent. The best thing you can do is to try to relax and let your body heal. The hairloss could be related in part to the trauma of major surgery--but that doesn't usually happen until around the third month. What tends to make me think that it may be unrelated to the surgery is the fact that you had reported a significant amount of hairloss in the weeks prior to your surgery. Given the large amounts of broccoli you were eating to avoid eating other foods, is it possible that you had a Protein deficiency long before the surgery? If not, it may be important to consult a doctor to evaluate why you were losing hair before the surgery, since this is not just a post-surgical problem.

Hi Jillian, Sorry to hear that you are having some problems. The first week was rough for me too. I took Zophran every 8 hours for the first few days, then was able to cut back to taking it only at bedtime. When I tried to discontinue the Zophran at 1 week, I still had nausea, so I reduced it to 1/2 tab at bedtime. I continued taking the 1/2 tab at bedtime for about 3-4 weeks because if I skipped it I woke up feeling lousy during the night. As far as the protein: I could not tolerate any shakes that were thick or sweet tasting. I ordered the unflavored unjury. It is whey Protein, but it is pure whey protein isolate. This is much easier to digest than anything that contains whey protein concentrate, and it contains no lactose. When I needed more calories right after surgery because of limited intake, I mixed it with 1/2 Water, 1/2 fruit juice. (Then I switched to water with crystal light pure fitness--no artificial sweetners). If you do an internet search on protein supplements and diarrhea, you will find that body builders using protein often have diarrhea as well. I had severe (and I mean explosive) diarrhea during the preop phase until I switched to the Unjury). I still had some diarrhea for about the first week after surgery--but I have had that almost anytime I have gone from a regular diet to low carb, because cutting back on carbs causes most people to eliminate water. Diarrhea can be one of the ways that our body gets rid of Fluid. My mouth was unusually "dry" and had a bad taste for about a week after surgery. Sometimes you are given medications during surgery to dry secretions, and those can have a lingering effect, so having a dry mouth would not be the best way to watch for signs of dehydration. If your urine output is greatly reduced or it becomes dark in color, you need to head to the ER for some IV fluids. If you are still seeing the boyfriend that is in the medical profession, he should be able to help you monitor your skin for other signs of dehydrations as well. I was told to stay with Clear Liquids for 4 days after surgery. The next 4 weeks were full liquids only, and I was told that nothing should be thicker than yogurt and should have no small pieces. If your stomach isn't tolerating things that are thicker, then you go back to clears. As far as the fudgecicles--you said you had "a couple" plus yogurt before bed. That sounds like too much food over a short period of time for the first week--or even the first month. I could only tolerate about 2 oz at one time every 4 hours. Also, did the yogurt have any fruit in it? Another thing to consider is that Splenda/sucralose can cause severe GI problems. I did not use it at all after my surgery because I learned several years ago that it caused me to have nausea and stomach cramps. Do an internet search on "sucralose toxicity" and this will give you more information. I don't think you have dumping syndrome, but you need to advance your diet very slowly and concentrate on getting fluids and some form of protein that you can digest. Take care. It does get easier.

This diet has been around for years. My mother lost weight on this diet and then paid for me to be on the same program through our family physician's office in 1974. I ate 500 calories a day--and the food choices were strictly dictated. I got injections and weighed at the doctor's office 5 days a week. Supposedly, the HCG helps to mobilize fat stores, and this allegedly helps to reduce muscle loss and reduce hunger. As someone with many years of dieting experience, I would say that this diet is not any better than any other diet that's available in terms of long term success. I did lose--but who wouldn't on 500 calories a day? I lost about 30 pounds in 6 weeks (165 to 135) and regained about 12 pounds in 2 weeks. I asked to do the program again and lost down to about 125. I was 18 years old at the time and maintained this weight loss for about 3 years through a combination of fasting, eating nothing but lettuce, vigilent calorie counting, and lots of exercise. Even with all that my weight began to creep back up. This diet did not reduce my appetite..I was hungry the entire time. Even though your friend may feel like this is helping her lose weight, I don't think there is any reason to believe that she will be anymore successful at maintaining her loss than are the other 95% of people who lose weight through dieting. If you want more details on the diet itself, it's easy to find information on the web. Also, there are plenty of other diets that don't involve the medical risks of being injected with the hormones from a cow's or mare's urine.

I ordered that book when I ordered the first one! We should be having some fun with our new cooking. I made some incredible grilled shrimp last week with a ginger/chili dip.

You are one step closer. I'm glad the testing went well!

It took me a little while to find my way around too. Don't get discouraged, just ask for help it you can't figute it out. When I had trouble posting comments/replies, I finally figured out it was because I wasn't logged in with my user name and password. You won't be able to get into chat unless you are logged in either. Try that and see if it helps, if not send me a message if you can.

Congratulations! I had the same kind of discomfort when I swallowed anything immediately after surgery. It wasn't a burning pain (like with a sore throat), it was more a pressure pain between my breast as the food went down. It was a little scary because I worried about whether or not it would really go away. For me it has gradually resolved and I started to feel much better after the first month. I still feel something similar if I drink too quickly. I also start to feel discomfort in the same area if I eat too much or too quickly--but not like right after surgery, and not all the time.

WhooHooo...Good for you!

May you loose all your fat... May your tummy get flat... May you not need a hat... Just a blessing from Katt

Oh DeeDee...I feel so sad that this has happened to you. I hope and pray that your leak will heal very quickly and that you can get on with building the positive future that you planned when you had this surgery. Even though this has been the hardest time of your life, I still believe that you can have a good outcome. Take care and keep us updated on your progress!

Of course we will support you!! Welcome aboard.

Thanks. Ordered and on the way!

The other night I was chatting with some VST folks when I got a call that my 4 yr. old grandson was being taken to the ER. I take care of him several days a week, so I am very attached, and I immediately headed down to the ER. As I was leaving, I grabbed a box of Nutrigrain bars in case we were there for a while and anyone got hungry. As we waited, and waited...my mind kept drifting to those NG bars because I just wanted to eat something even though I knew I wasn't hungry. But here's the good part: Everytime I thought about eating, I automatically thought of YOU and the urge to eat would pass. Since that night I've really been giving this some thought. More than before, I'm coming to realize that this surgery is such a life altering experience...I can't imagine how isolated and afraid I might have felt going through all these changes by myself. I'm grateful to each one of you for taking the time to post your experiences (good and bad), to respond to questions (that you've probably responded to a lot of other times), to offer suggestions, and to be a source of encouragement and inspiration! This has been an unexpected gift that caught me by surprise!

Medical research supports the fact that WLS does cure diabetes for a high percentage of people. Doctors are using the word "cure." http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22787261/#storyContinued Does Weight Loss Surgery Cure Diabetes? More than 30 studies say yes, according to the ASMBS. One recent study in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) found that 73 percent of people with diabetes who underwent gastric banding combined with conventional therapy achieved remission, which is defined as normal blood sugar levels and no need for diabetes medication. By contrast, just 13 percent of those people who received only conventional therapy went into remission. In this study, conventional therapy comprised lifestyle modificatons such as diet and increased physical activity, along with medication. The people in the nonsurgical group lost just 1.7 percent of their body weight, compared with almost 21 percent among those who underwent gastric banding. A landmark 2004 study in JAMA of more than 22,000 people who underwent bariatric surgery showed that type 2 diabetes was completely resolved in 76.8 percent of people, and it improved in 86 percent of people. The bariatric surgery procedures performed in this study included gastric banding, gastric bypass, gastroplasty, biliopancreatic diversion or duodenal switch, and others (such as jejunoileal bypass, a bypass of a section of the small intestine). What's more, a study in the Annals of Surgery showed that 83 percent of 240 people who underwent gastric bypass were cured of their diabetes. Two studies in the New England Journal of Medicine found that bariatric surgery reduces the long-term mortality associated with obesity. In one of the two studies, the researchers found that long-term total mortality after gastric bypass surgery was significantly reduced, particularly deaths from diabetes. Hutcher thinks the surgeries may benefit even people with diabetes who are not overweight or obese. "We can do a diabetes-reversing operation without producing weight loss and without altering the stomach," he says. Currently the National Institutes of Health guidelines recommend weight loss surgery for patients with a body mass index (BMI) over 40 and for people with diabetes or other obesity-related diseases whose BMI is over 35. But many a bariatric surgeon including ASMBS president John W. Baker, MD, the medical director for Baptist Medical Center's Baptist Health Weight Loss Center in Little Rock, Arkansas, feel this cut-off is arbitrary and should be changed. "There is no clear rationale for it," says Baker, also the co- director of the Baptist Medical Center Bariatric Surgery Program. This sentiment is echoed in a new consensus statement from the first International Diabetes Surgery Summit that will appear in the January 2010 edition of Annals of Surgery. Setting the bar at 35 may do more harm than good for people with diabetes because it will allow their disease to progress to end-organ damage, Baker says. This may be more important than ever as the latest study shows that as many as 44 million Americans will have diabetes by 2034. That's up from 23 million today. "We need trials that look at these surgeries in people with diabetes who have a BMI of 30 to 35," he says. If the studies are positive, bariatric surgeons can perform weight loss procedures on people with diabetes with lower BMI and ultimately save more lives. "Surgery may resolve diabetes and when trials come out, it may give us impetus to lower the bar," he says. Bariatric Surgery for Diabetes Saves Money It's also much more cost-effective to treat diabetes with weight loss surgery than with conventional medical therapy, Hutcher says. "Non-surgical therapies can cost up to $33,000 per year for the entire life of the patient. Does the weight loss surgery cost that much? Heck no," he says. "The cost of weight loss surgery is usually less than the cost of one year's worth of diabetes treatment." [Read more about bariatric surgery cost.] How Does Bariatric Surgery Cure Diabetes? Doctors know that bariatric surgery works at reversing diabetes; but what they don't know is how it works. "We have to do retrograde research to find out why this works, and in 20 years, this retrograde research and drug development may turn diabetes back into a nonsurgical disease," Hutcher says. "Finding out the why will turn diabetes back to a nonsurgical problem." Some theories do exist, including the idea that shunting food directly to the lower intestine stimulates a substance called glucagon-like peptide 1, which can increase insulin production. Another theory suggests that hormones that prompt hunger may be dulled by rearranging the anatomy, so if they crave less sugar, people may be able to manage their blood sugar levels better. Other questions remain regarding the role that weight loss surgery can play in treating, and potentially curing, diabetes. For starters, the ideal type of bariatric surgery for treating diabetes is not yet known. All of the studies have looked at different types of surgeries. To help answer this question once and for all, The Cleveland Clinic Foundation is now recruiting for a five-year study of 150 men and women with type 2 diabetes aged 20 to 60 with BMIs between 30 and 40. The study will compare advanced medical therapy alone or advanced medical therapy combined with either Roux-en-Y gastric bypass or gastric sleeve surgery. Another question that remains is when the surgery should be performed ? that is, when diabetes is first diagnosed or down the road, when complications have already begun to arise. Should Everyone with Diabetes Undergo Bariatric Surgery? Not necessarily, says Hutcher. "This decision is up to the patient and the physician, but no obese patient with diabetes should be denied access to this surgery," he adds. The bottom line is that bariatric surgery can play a big role in treating diabetes, according to Ren. "If you lose weight, your diabetes will go away, and when you regain the weight, the diabetes will come back," she says. "Diabetes is always lurking, and remission lasts as long as the weight loss lasts."

WHooHooo! I'm so glad to hear that your surgery went well and that you are on the road to recovery and weight loss! I didn't have a lot of incisional or muscle pain, but I did have what felt like intense hunger pains for a while. I think that I may have been having some stomach spasms. For me, the feeling usually passed if I would eat something--even just a little yogurt or Soup would help. I'm almost at 8 weeks now, and occasionally when I'm going to bed I may still have a milder version of the feeling, but for the most part, I'm not feeling hungry at all. I would say the stomach discomfort gradually subsided over the first month. Congratulations!

Hahaha...Congratulations on the BIG achievement! I too was waiting for the day I crossed out of the morbidly obese zone. The day I reached that milestone, I sent out an crowing email to some close friends...stuff like that just makes you feel GOOD.

I am a foodie too, so I know how hard it is to make a decision that will permanently restrict your ability to eat. It's been almost 8 weeks since I had my surgery, and I can tell you that the 1st month after surgery was a challenge. Since then, this has been so easy. As far as cooking goes: Before my surgery, I had gotten so heavy that my feet hurt all the time, and I couldn't enjoy cooking anymore anyway. I'm feeling much better, and I'm actually taking the time to cook more for family. I'm enjoying smaller portions, and not feeling cheated at all. Would you send me the name of the cookbook you found?

I'm excited for you! This is definitely a life changing decision, and it sounds like you have be doing your research. It won't be long before you have your date!

YEEEHAAA! Sounds like your surgery went very well, and here you are on the bench. Congratulations!

Donna, thank you for sharing what information you are able to at this point. I hope what you have been able to reveal gives surgical candidates more information to help them in the process of making careful choices. I'm very sad about Linda's experience, and I hope she is improving. I am relieved to hear that some of these issues may be addressed in court, and I hope that this will result in more surgical facilities being required to meet minimum standards for patient care and being closely monitored in an effort to reduce medical errors.

I'm not sure why anyone would assume that I haven't read the threads. Let's try to be more polite in our posts. I have read the threads, and based on the fact that we have the Patient Coordinator for a particular facility alleging that legal action is being taking against people for spreading false information via the internet, and based on the fact that this same person is attempting to minimize and discredit legitimate concerns by suggesting that individuals are only expressing their "opinions" or "misrepresenting" the truth, or spreading "heresay", I think it is reasonable to begin asking people to state the source of their information. Being the sister of a patient does not necessarily provide anyone with detailed information about people's credentials/training or lack thereof. Being the sister of a patient whose family may have acquired background information through legitimate sources in the process of taking legal action might. I am not attempting to defend this facility, on the contrary, I am horrified by the reports I have heard. Also, I am not questioning the veracity of Stoongal's statements. I am asking her to state her source of information. If there is no room for debate about the credentials of the persons mentioned, then let's make that entirely clear and begin closing ranks in a responsible manner.

14 pounds in 15 days? WOW! Posting that on this thread could trigger an uprising...

Stoongal, I am appalled by many of the experiences being described in this thread. I'm not questioning the accuracy of your statements about the training/lack of training of the various individuals that you mentioned, but for the sake of those who might think that this information you are providing is merely heresay, could you tell us how/where you got the information you are reporting? Establishing some solid groundwork for the facts may help others who are considering their surgical options make informed decisions. Thanks.