Gastric Surgery -- Is It All It's Cut Out To Be?

A new study proclaims that gastric banding pays for itself in approximately two years for patients with diabetes. A systematic review of gastric surgery effects on diabetes found that both gastric banding and laparoscopic Roux-en-Y gastric bypass surgery are capable of improving or even curing type 2 diabetes, but the mechanisms may differ. Sounds like the answer to a prayer, or is it?

Using gastric surgery for obesity seems to give impressive results. Does that mean I'm jumping on the bandwagon? No. Call it "clinical judgment" -- the experience of decades in the business. I've seen too many horror stores. I've helped people struggle through bad outcomes even when the surgery went according to plan.

I've had many patients who came to me after the fact, who did not address the mind-set issues associated with obesity. They "cheated the band", and stayed morbidly obese. The surgery was not an effective fix because it did not address the underlying problem. In fact, this seems to be a new specialty...helping people make peace with their gastric band so it can do what it's designed to do.

In the hospital setting I've seen horrible effects from poor surgical outcomes. In two cases, fistulas -- an abnormal connection -- opened up between the gut and the belly surface. The only way these women could survive was to live on TPN, full nutrition through their veins, never to eat food again. I've known two people who have died from malnutrition secondary to gastric by-pass. It hurts to think about it -- to completely devastate your health or die because of failing at weight loss. Using the right approach may have been able to save these people... only if we had been able to start earlier.

If you have not put the mindset -- mental nutrition -- the Think Fit component into action, then you have not "tried everything". The most powerful tool you have for creating health is not the scalpel... it's your mind. So before you sign up for surgery, check out my program instead. It's different. Its strategies have worked well with many others. It was too late to help Faye, or Joan, or Carole. But maybe I can help you?

Message for Today: The most powerful tool we have for creating health is the one between our ears. Use it!