7 Habits of Weight Loss

Lap Band Surgery Basics

Here are the Lap Band surgery basics...

Lap Band surgery is another form of bariatric surgery, which essentially creates a smaller stomach, causing you to eat less.

Now, of course, we all know that eating less, while eating proper foods, causes you to decrease calorie intake, leading to weight loss.

Now of course, the above is an over simplification. But it does cover the lap band surgery basics.

What is Lap Band Surgery?
Lap Band Surgery takes its name from the type of surgery (laproscopic), and from what is being done (gastric banding).  Now, there is actually a Lap-Band device, which is Patented in the US as the only approved device for Lap Band Surgery by the FDA.
Lap Band Surgery basically is the process of using multiple small incisions, instead of a large one, to place a band around the stomach which can be expanded, causing the diameter of the passage between the now bisected stomach parts to decrease or increase in size.
Safety of Lap Band Surgery
Well, so far as surgeries go...
The safety of stomach band surgery over the short life span that it has had so far seems to be pretty good. Statistics show issues in between 1/3 of a percent and 1 percent. A lot of the variability in the safety of lap band surgery comes from the quality of the doctor and hospital doing the work, as well as the after care taken by the patient. If you go to a quality doctor, and follow the post surgery treatment and diet, the chances of problems with your lap band surgery are lower than the chance that you will have obesity related issues if you don't lose the weight.
Lap Band Horror Stories
Of course, as with any type of major surgery, there are going to be Lap Band Horror Stories.
If you go looking for them, you will find stories of infections that got out of control, lapband slippage, lapband failures.
ANY Major surgery has the chance of something going Horribly wrong.
These are the reasons that any reasonable doctor will pre-qualify you before doing this surgery. If your doctor doesn't require the lap band surgery basics of being morbidly obese, having a psych evaluation, and some pre surgery consultations or presentations, you should run in the other direction and look to another Doctor if you feel that you must have this surgery.
Living with Lap Band
After stomach band surgery, you will be on a very restrictive diet, which is all part of the lap band surgery basics.
Besides being on a liquid only diet for a week or two, followed by pureed foods only for another week or two. You will begin to start introducing solid foods into your eating schedule once again.
Now that you have put a constricting band around your stomach, there are 2 chambers to your stomach. The first one is separated from the second one by a passage, roughly the size of a dime.
Which can be expanded or contracted by a doctor injecting or removing liquid from the band.

Living with lap band means that you will only be eating about half a cup of food at any one sitting, and spending at least 30 minutes making sure you properly chew that food to make sure that you don't get anything stuck in that new passage between stomach partitions.
It also means that you should no longer be consuming liquids right before, during, or right after each of these small meals. Because doing so, causes too much food to slip past the hole, and leads to over consumption, negating the effects of having this surgery in the first place.

Cost of Lap Band Surgery
The cost of Lap Band Surgery basics starts at 8 to 11 Thousand dollars and goes up from there. There is the cost of the doctors to do the lap band surgery, as well as the hospital in which the procedure is done.
Add onto those, the services of a nutritionist and a psychologist who will help make sure that you are prepared to deal with what is going to happen to your body, and help you eat properly after the surgery so that you don't have complications from not eating the right foods.
It's funny when I read articles that say the cost of lap band surgery is not really that great when you take into consideration that you will be spending less money on food. I would estimate the change in cost of food to be a wash, once you figure in the increased costs of taking vitamins and supplements to allow you to get proper nutrition without eating very much actual food at all.
Lap Band Surgery Failure
Lap Band Surgery failure could be caused by a number of things.
The most risky of which would be by shoddy work by the doctor implanting the device. This type of stomach band surgery failure can be mitigated by using a quality surgeon and hospital to have the procedure done.
Failure to follow lap band surgery basic post care instructions is the biggest cause of lap band surgery failure.
If you don't follow the procedures outlined for you during recouperation time, you can increase your chances of major complications from the surgery.
Some people consider lap band surgery failure if you don't continue to lose weight. Well, the reality is, that if the procedure and healing goes off as it should. The only way this will fail to produce lasting results is if the patient does not follow the prescribed diet, and takes in high calorie foods and liquids, which will cause weight gain instead of loss.
Lapband Versus Gastric Bypass
Trying to compare LapBand versus Gastric Bypass, is kind of like trying to compare Bananas versus Apples.
LapBand is a reversible procedure, where as Gastric Bypass generally is not (though some can be).
LapBand surgery merely creates a small pouch at the top of the stomach causing you to feel full and satiated quickly and easily. Gastric Bypass actually decreases the size of the stomach, but also literally bypasses a portion of your intestines as well so that you don't absorb as much from the food either.
LapBand does not have the incredibly unpleasant side effects when you go off the proscribed diet that Gastric Bypass does.

The post lap band diet is incredibly restrictive in terms of what you can eat. Foods that are hard to digest normally, must be very carefully considered and thoroughly broken down before being swallowed after surgery. The post lap band diet is very similar to the Gastric Bypass Diet in what you will be able to eat, and how much of it.

After lap band surgery you will have to practice most of the 7 habits of weight loss, minus eating more often, in order to maintain the weight loss.
After lap band surgery, steak and other hard to digest foods may no longer even be an option for you.

The lap band surgery basics, is just that...
An over view of what lap band surgery is going to do to you.

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