BariatricPal Newsletter - October 2014

[Alex Brecher 10,512]

Hey, BariatricPal Members!

This is a beautiful time of year, with gorgeous days and crisp nights. Everything’s back to normal after the summer lull, and it’s time to take advantage! You’re more likely to be able to lose weight when you fit a healthy diet and exercise into your regular schedule, so take a few minutes to rearrange your schedule if you haven’t already. First, though, here’s what we have for you in this month’s newsletter.

• Member Poll: How Did You Find and Choose Your Surgeon?
• Member Spotlight – Meet Georgia!
• In the News: Can Weight Loss Surgery Make You Smarter?
• Need a surgeon? Take Advantage of BariatricPal’s Surgeon Directory!

We hope you enjoy the newsletter and find some inspiration in it. For a lot more inspiration, log on to BariatricPal and join the discussions. See you on the boards!

Sincerely,

Alex Brecher

Founder, BariatricPal

Member Poll: How Did You Find and Choose Your Surgeon?

Choosing a surgeon is one of the most important parts of weight loss surgery. You want a surgeon who is skilled and who is someone you can trust. How did you find and choose your surgeon when you decided to get weight loss surgery

• You had no choice. For example, you’re covered under an HMO and you went with the surgeon whom you were referred to.
• You used BariatricPal’s surgeon director or another online directory to find the surgeons or bariatric centers in your area and then chose one based on their reviews and your initial experience with them.
• You used Google (or another search engine) to find surgeons in your area.
• You saw advertisements online or on television and contacted the bariatric center or surgeon.
• Your primary care or other regular doctor recommended a surgeon to you.
• A friend or family member got weight loss surgery and recommended his or her surgeon to you.
• You couldn’t afford weight loss surgery in the U.S., so you got a friend’s recommendation or used an online search to find a surgeon in Mexico or another country.
• Other – tell us about it in the discussion below!

Mark your answer and let us know in the conversation on the boards how you found your surgeon and why you chose the one you did! This information can help BariatricPal members who are considering surgery to find a great surgeon.

Insure Nutrition

We are always thrilled to welcome a new newsletter sponsor into the BariatricPal family, and this month, Insure Nutrition is giving us the pleasure of doing just that. Our latest sponsor, Insure Nutrition, is an online company that specializes in getting health insurance coverage for nutritional supplements. Its Post-Bariatric Surgery Nutrition products includes Premier Protein shakes in chocolate, vanilla, and strawberry flavors and OptiSource High Protein drinks in caramel and strawberry flavors. Checking if you are eligible is easy. Insure Nutrition encourages you to use its online form to find out if you qualify.

Our sponsors help make BariatricPal newsletters and other services possible. We encourage you show your thanks by considering them first for your bariatric needs.

Exciting News – We're welcoming unjury and opurity to BariatricPal!

BariatricPal is proud and excited to announce two new sponsors for our newsletters. The new sponsors are Unjury, a supplier of wonderful tasting, highest quality protein supplements, and Opurity (from the makers of UNJURY), highest purity Vitamin supplements for bariatric surgery patients. Their support lets us keep BariatricPal newsletters coming to you each month.

Unjury was founded by a master’s degree dietitian who has been helping patients since 1974. It is committed your health. You know the importance of getting enough protein after weight loss surgery, but you also know that meeting your protein goals can be challenging. Unjury makes your task not just easier but actually enjoyable. Product flavors include chocolate Splendor, Chocolate Classic, Vanilla, Strawberry Sorbet, chicken Soup Flavor, Unflavored, Protein’d cheese Sauce (seasonal, October through May). These ready-to-use protein powders come in single-serve and multi-serve containers, and contain high-quality whey protein to keep you full and nourished.

Launched in 2007, Opurity is dedicated to using the purest ingredients in its supplements. Opurity Bariatric Multivitamins have two unique big advantages:

First, each Multivitamin requires only one tablet per day*. Second, Opurity is so dedicated to quality that it is unique in using no ingredients from China.

Choose from chewable orange-berry multivitamins for gastric bypass and gastric sleeve patients or for lap-band patients.Opurity also sells chewable Calcium, Vitamin D and folic acid/vitamin B-12 chewables. All supplements come with a 100% satisfaction guaranteed. They return policy is: “Yes you can return it.”

Support from Unjury and Opurity helps us continue to bring you the services you enjoy on BariatricPal, so please support these two brands! When looking for your bariatric surgery supplements, first visit Unjury.com and Opurity.com. Purchasing from these companies helps support BariatricPal. Thanks to Unjury and Opurity for your generous sponsorship, and thanks to BariatricPal members who support our partnership!

*You still need calcium and sublingual B-12.

Member Spotlight – Meet Georgia!

This month, we are pleased to feature Georgia from Conway, Arkansas. She had struggled with her weight for most of her life, and gradually put on the pounds as the years passed. She thought about weight loss surgery for years, and made her decision on Christmas Day, 2009. That was the day she found her mother on the floor at home after a fatal stroke.

Georgia knew she’d be next if she didn’t act. She carefully researched her options and signed up for a seminar in March of 2010. Though she had thought she would get the lap-band, she changed her mind when she learned about a new procedure vertical sleeve gastrectomy. It sounded perfect for her, and she got the surgery in June of 2010. Her weight was 250 pounds.

Georgia’s life improved immediately. Within months, she got off of her blood pressure medications and stopped using her C-PAP machine for sleep apnea. She lost 100 pounds, or 100 percent of her excess weight, in the first eight months! She loves shopping wherever she wants for clothes and hearing her granddaughter say, “Nannie, you are sooo skinny!” People tell her she doesn’t look or act anywhere near her age of 60.

It wasn’t all easy, though. When she hit her goal weight, Georgia learned that maintenance is tough. Little slip-ups in her diet added up to a gain of 27 pounds by June of 2013, and she knew she needed to act. She and some BariatricPal friends tried the 5:2 Diet, which involves eating without much restriction for five days, then cutting way back on the other two days. She got down to a lifetime low of 140 pounds, and then slowly gained some back. Now, she’s realizing that everyone, even slim people, need to struggle with maintenance, and she’s learning how to succeed in her own personal way.

Georgia found VerticalSleeveTalk (now BariatricPal) early on, and continues to use the boards one or more times a day. She suggests finding a group of members whom you “can trust and bare your soul to.” Georgia helps out everyone on the boards by being a Forum Host.

Her advice to others is to “connect, connect, connect with BariatricPal members.” Log your food using a convenient program or app, and she also suggests using a Fitbit or other fitness device. You’re more likely to succeed when you know what you’re doing. For members who are approaching or at goal weight, she says to make sure you figure out how to keep the pounds off in a way that works for you.

Georgia, thanks for being a Forum Host and for sharing your story with us. Congratulations on your weight loss! For members who want to see how great Georgia looks, you can check out her photos on her profile!

Is there someone you want to see featured in the BariatricPal newsletter? Nominate yourself or someone else in the Member Spotlight Forum, or send Alex Brecher a private message. We love hearing from you!

In the News: Can Weight Loss Surgery Make You Smarter?

What benefits do you think of when you think about weight loss surgery? Looking better? Getting off your medications? Keeping up with the grandchildren? Fitting into “regular” clothes? What about getting smarter?

It turns out that weight loss surgery may support brain health, too. A study published in August in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism looked at the effects of Roux-en-Y gastric bypass on the brain. They tested the brain function and used MRI to look at brain activity and metabolism before and after surgery in 17 women with an average BMI of 50 kg/m². What they found was striking.

Before surgery, the test group had lower scores in neuropsychological tests compared to normal-weight women. However, they had higher levels of activity in an area of the brain responsible for higher-level thinking. 24 weeks after surgery, the gastric bypass patients had an average BMI of 37 kg/m². Remarkably, their brain function and metabolism was similar to that of the normal-weight women!

That means that obesity can make the brain work harder without performing as well. It’s also known that obesity is a risk factor for dementia and Alzheimer’s disease. Is it time to start taking care of your brain?

Need a Surgeon? Take Advantage of BariatricPal’s Surgeon Directory!

A good bariatric surgeon can make the difference in your success with weight loss surgery. The right one:

• Works with you to decide on the best type of surgery for you.
• Is skilled at the surgical procedure.
• Provides the care and support you need before and after surgery.

It’s not always easy to find the right bariatric surgeon, since you may not know many other weight loss surgery patients and online reviews aren’t always trustworthy. That’s not a problem with BariatricPal’s weight loss surgeon directory.

• Search for surgeons in your area.
• Narrow your search by location, surgery type, accepted insurance, and hospital type.
• Read member reviews from BariatricPal users who are patients.

It’s an important decision, and you want to make the right one. You can be sure to get credible information when you use BariatricPal’s surgeon directory.

That’s it for this month’s newsletter! Come talk about it on the boards, or feel free to drop a line through private messaging. We love hearing from members!

[Rovobay 920]

I love this site. it make me choose to make a new beginning, a life changing, life saving choice. Thank you.

[Rovobay 920]

if I can add one more thing. to those pre-op folks reading this and considering the insure nutrition route. please sign up ASAP. they experience up to a 1 month or more response time to get approval from insurance.... It is a great opportunity to use them. they are very helpful, but please make haste and submit papers early.

[RiskyGirl21 19]

I am going to The Community Health Center in Indiana and when they were telling us about the surgeries at the seminar they gave us a packet that gave in it a choice of two surgeons. One was a female and the other was male. Our first choice was the female since I am female too, but her availability was in contrast with my mom's work schedule, so we went with the male surgeon. Here is a picture of the surgeon and his name.