MacMadame

Oh, I can comprehend it. Some people will do anything to lose weight especially if they don't have to change their eating very much.

Removing ghrelin doesn't slow your metabolism. People with sleeves lose weight at the same rate and about the same amount as people with bypasses. Lap banders lose slower (on average). It's also not true that you are still hungry after you eat with a band. The Lap Band is designed to mimic the pouch of the bypass without actually removing anything. The nerves that respond to the stretching of the stomach respond when you fill the pouch or, as it's technically called, the pre-stomach. Then the food slowly trickles into the main stomach in order to be digested. But the full signal should have been sent by then. The big problem I see with the band and hunger is that you need proper restriction to get that "full" signal. Sometimes it takes a while to get it. Some people never get it. Some people get it and then lose it. So they are hungry. This is something I couldn't take. To go through all that -- pre-op testing, surgery, having to chew my food into mush -- and still be hungry? I would have gone mad! Another issue is that there is not as much ghrelin reduction with a band as with a sleeve. With a sleeve, you get almost no ghrelin at first and eventually you get normal ghrelin. With a band, there is no impact on ghrelin. This also sucks because ghrelin stimulates the appetite. Here's a study comparing ghrelin levels with sleeves vs. bands: http://www.bernhard-ludvik.at/download/pub/2005_ref61.pdf

There is also something called BLIS which is a form of insurance that you can buy that will pay for complications. However, it's not something a lot of surgeons belong to unfortunately. But it's worth checking out if you are a self-pay.

It's different when you get hunger control though. OTOH, the surgery is only on your stomach, not your head. So you may have to do some head work too. It depends on what your food issues mostly are.

If you are exercising, you might be replacing fat with muscle too. Have you taken your measurements to see if you are losing inches even if you aren't losing pounds.

No and I'd report him.

You idiot! Everyone knows "The Other One" is better! :crying:

Btw, I read somewhere else that Lap Band is performed with only 1 surgeon and can be done that way so maybe it's not as big a deal as I first thought.

It depends on what the thousands covered. Some docs have a program fee to cover costs of aftercare that aren't covered by most insurances. My surgeon does. I was self-pay so I didn't have to decide if I was going to pay it. :crying:

I'm going to move this to Rants and Raves since it's not about Lap Band Support.

If you are doing the 6 month diet for insurance, they just want you to do it, they don't really care if you lose or gain. OTOH, if it's a requirement of your surgeon, you might want to find one that doesn't have such a requirement.

It's really not that bad AThinnerDenise. I have friends who have it who aren't obsessed with their bowels like some of the OH people are. Also, a lot of surgeons do it differently now -- they do a smaller stomach and less bypassing of the intestines. That cuts out most of the problems. I find RnY to be a stranger surgery. You end up with a remnant of your stomach floating around in your body. It can get ulcers and stomach cancer but it can't be scoped. I think that's SCARY stuff!

You owe it to yourself to research ALL the surgery options. They are going to cut into your body and make some big changes. You need to be sure you picked the right surgery type for you. Yeah, they cut off the greater curvature which is designed to stretch when you put food into it. The stuff that remains does stretch out a *tiny* bit over the first year from the size at surgery time. It goes from 3-4 oz. to about 4-5 oz. (Though in the beginning when everything is swollen, you are lucky to get in 1-2 oz.) In the 5 year data that LapSF has been going around presenting to various groups, they have found that regain happens to about 10% of patients with a BMI under 55 and 15% for the higher BMI patients. Compared to about 25% with RnY.

I'm sorry, but that's simply not true and it's a matter of biological fact. The greater curvature of the stomach is the big stretchy part. It is designed to expand when food is put into it. The part that remains after a sleeve is a very tough muscle Fiber and is extremely hard to stretch. Bypass pouches (which are made out of the fundus) typically start out holding 1-2 oz immediately post-op as they are swollen. So do the sleeves. Then over time the swelling goes down and by one year out, many bypass patients can eat as much as a cup of food at time even hard Protein, while at the end of the first year a sleeve patient's sleeve typically holds 4-5 oz. of food only and never gets bigger. Stretching of the pouch is an issue with bypass and that's why regain is an issue. Over a period of time, average EWL for bypass and band approach each other. This is largely due to regain on the part of bypass patients. Generally 25% of bypass patients experience regain compared to 10% of sleeve patients. Btw, LapSF publishes their results in respected peer-reviewed journals. To imply that their data is biased is laughable. They do a lot of sleeves because they've seen how well they work.

I had my surgery at a Sutter hospital but I didn't go through PAMF, my normal medical group (they are owned by Sutter now). I went out on my own as a) my insurance allows that and :thumbup: I ended up self-pay. Did you know you can appeal the 6 month diet and the DMHC (a group that oversees HMOs) will uphold your appeal. There is no peer-reviewed study that supports the 6 month physician supervised diet as improving outcomes. Here is a link to their site: Home

Hi Jamie- I am not a massage therapist and I didn't get banded, but I noticed no one has answered your question so I thought I'd throw in my two cents. A lot of bandsters go back after 1 week. Some even go back sooner. But they have desk jobs. My surgery has a slightly longer recovery time and I had a hiatal hernia repaired which adds even more to the recovery time. I went back at 1.5 weeks to my desk job and found I was exhausted. I was okay by Wed. which also was my 2 week point. So in retrospect, I think 2 weeks would have worked better for me. For you, having to be on your feet more, you probably need more than the average bandster though. If that's not feasible, maybe you could start back part-time at first and see how it goes? Hopefully someone else who does a job like yours will chime in now.

My Vitamin requirements are similar to those of bandsters: 2x adult dose of a complete multi-vitamin, 1 dose in AM, 1 in PM 1500 mg of Calcium citrate in 500mg doses 3x a day. Then, since my calcium citrate doesn't have Vitamin D in it, I also take 1 Vitamin D tablet (700 IU) along with the Calcium to help it absorb better. I also was taking something for hair, Skin & Nails to help with hair loss -- this tends to happen around the 3 month mark. But right now I'm too early out to swallow it easily (even crushed) so I've stopped taking it for a while.

You might want to post this in the Post-op Support or General Support section. Way more of the old-timers hang out there than in here. Also, I recommend putting "Stall" somewhere in the title. That appears to the be WLS slang term for not losing weight when you are following all the rules. :thumbup: I can tell you that scales lie. They lie like dogs. But I'm not that far out so I haven't had my first stall yet and so can't offer any practical advice for what to do.

Everyone should. Well, except when you are first researching to get an idea what kind of complications are possible. But after that... That's why people who have them bring them up. It's one thing to look into it and say "that's not for me", but it's another to find out *afterwards* that there are more surgery types than RnY and Lap Band. That really sucks.

Welcome to the site!

Welcome to LapBandTalk, kmonson. And congrats on already having a date!

Wow, I hadn't thought of that. The web site is one of the advantages of that particular brand too. Where are you going to get your fills? If it's in the US, maybe they have a practice id?

Nope. your ass forms a gasket. :thumbup:

I knew it was going to happen but was still shocked to see how much. (10 lbs.) Plus it took me more like 5 days to drop it all. I was an unhappy puppy for a while there.