Obesity Lap Bands Cause More Complications than Weight Loss

Thinking of gastric banding surgery? Recent studies may change your mind on this.

Over the past couple years, as more studies have been conducted, it was found that gastric banding caused more complications than weight loss with almost half of patients undergoing this treatment for obesity needing to have the device removed after 6-7 years, often because of erosion and inadequate weight loss. 

Now you may be asking yourself, what is a lap band? According to an article on uclahealth.org, “The Lap Band, also known as the adjustable gastric band, involves an inflatable silicone band that is placed around the upper portion of the stomach to achieve weight loss. This creates a small stomach pouch above the band, leaving the rest of the stomach intact below it. Adjustments made to the band will increase or decrease the size of the passageway between the two parts of the stomach. The purpose is to slow down and limit how much food you can eat at any given time.” 

Even though this procedure is introduced as a way to assist in weight loss, it unfortunately comes with many complications such as 

1. Heartburn
2. Band Slippage 
3. Food Intolerance 
4. Band Erosion/Port Infection 
5. Esophageal Dilation

Since the procedures peaked in 2008, there has been a massive decrease in popularity within the United States because of its high chance of complications. Since then, there have been many other types of weight loss surgeries that have been known to cause little to no complications such as Gastric Sleeve, Gastric Bypass, Gastric Balloon and more. 

An article from uclahealth.org mentions, “Nowadays, the Lap band constitutes less than 10% of all bariatric procedures and the number of lap band procedures nationwide continues to go down every year. According to the American Society of Metabolic and Surgery (ASMBS), about 35.4% of all bariatric procedures were Lap band in 2011. This number has decreased to 20.2% in 2012, 14% in 2013, 9.5% in 2014 and 5.7% in 2015.”

Small changes in your everyday diet can make a huge impact on your lifestyle. Before making the decision to move along with surgery, it’s important to consider safer and healthier alternatives to controlling your hunger. With supplements such as the Smart for Life Hunger Blocker or BurnCor with Lepticore®, you can suppress your appetite in a quick and easy way without any of the risk factors.

It’s always important to go about these decisions the SMART way, because in the long run it’s your body and your life to live.