Question:
Can someone who had DS Surgery gain their weight back like a Rny ?

I really don't understand the difference in DS, and Rny surgery, can you gain all your weight back when you have had the DS, from their point of view they seem to know alot of folks who have had rny who have gained their wieght back, just curious, rny Oct 01 278/140ish Nancy Suzie Meriwether    — lostitall (posted on April 16, 2004)


April 15, 2004
ANY surgery can have weight regain, over the years they have all appered here:( If ANYONE constantly grazes on too much junk food, with no exercise it can defeat any surgery. Having the actual surgery is a matter of a couple hours. The changes we MUST make is a lifetime commitment! Eating right, EXERCISING, and being vigilant all go hand in hand to success. The question each one of us should ask ourselves BEFORE surgery, are we ready to do all of this? ALL SURGERIES ARE A TOOL TO LOOSE WEIGHT! Missuse the tool and gain some or all of it back.
   — bob-haller

April 16, 2004
I had the DS going on 3 years ago and I have had a bounce back weight of 10 pounds, which is normal by the way. But I have not had any trouble with real weight regain. I have a group of DS friends in my area who are between 2 and 3 years out and they haven't gained their weight back either. One gal in particular eats about 3000 calories a day, doesn't exercise, and has no weight gain. I average between 2000 - 2500 calories a day, but I exercise 5 days a week during my lunch hour.<p>I have to respectfully disagree with Bob in that I don't believe the DS is a "tool" for morbid obesity. It is a cure. It is also a cure for Type 2 Diabetes. The DS is currently being performed on patients who are not MO, but are suffering from diabetes by Dr. Baltazar in Spain. It doesn't just put diabetes in remission--It cures diabetes because it forces the body to handle insulin differently after the surgery. This is the biggest reason I don't understand why bariatric surgeons are not informing their patients of this and giving the patients the option to choose the DS for the purpose of ridding them of this killer disease once and forever. They cannot plead ignorance. I think it amounts more to greed on the part of the physician who is not trained to do the DS. They don't want to lose money by referring a patient to a DS surgeon who can actually cure the both diseases (obesity and diabetes). <p>Granted, there are a small percentage of failed DS's, but those are usually due to a botched operation such as not making the common channel short enough. The common channel should be between 65cm and 100cm (no longer than approximately 3 feet) in length. Some surgeons are so afraid of the malabsorption that they sabotage the surgery by making the common channel too long, thereby rendering the DS ineffective. The short common channel is what helps the patient to lose weight and more importantly to KEEP IT OFF. The weight doesn't come back in 2 years, 5 years because the post-op body just can't compensate for that drastic bypass of ingested calories. <p>Personally, I love my DS. I feel normal and eat normally for the first time in my life. I don't worry and obsess about every bite of food I take. I eat what I want and whenever I want. Life is good. NO, actually--Life is GREAT! So--RESEARCH--RESEARCH--RESEARCH! Your surgeon is not God. Make sure you check all your options and go with your instinct and follow your heart.
   — artistmama

April 16, 2004
I've been in the DS community for 5 years now, communicated with hundreds and hundreds of post-ops, and never heard of a single DS post-op who regained all of their weight. Worst case I heard was a 40-pound regain, and that person admitted to going nutso on the sugared sodas and stuff. When this patient cut out sugars, she lost 20 pounds very quickly. The norm is for DS post-ops to regain 10-15%, and it's unusual, though not unheard of, to see more than that. That doesn't mean we shouldn't eat right and exercise -- these things definitely maximize results! Over the years, I have heard story after story of RNY post-ops who have regained significant amounts of weight -- some regaining it all plus more and ended up revising to DS or distal RNY to get the weight off again.
   — mmagruder

April 16, 2004
Brenda, on your comment of the D/S curing diabetes on people who arent MO. My surgeon who does primaily LAP RNY reports the same thing for the RNY. He mentioned it at a support group meetig a couple months ago. Dr Schauer has a world know reputation for bariatric surgery. He hopes this will clear the way for lighter weight people to get surgery. My PERSONAL OPINION, smaller lighter folks require less insulin and thats why people are cured, but I am no medical professional at all.
   — bob-haller

April 16, 2004
Hi Bob. Thank you so much for the update. I have heard other WLS patients say that their surgeon said RNY doesn't cure diabetes, but it does put it into remission. It is good to hear that a surgeon actually believes it does cure diabetes, and I hope it really does. But I have read on this site from a few postops who have come down with Type 2 Diabetes after they had a RNY. I don't understand why this would happen, but unfortunately it has. I wish I had written their names down so I could give that information here.
   — artistmama

April 16, 2004
I forgot to mention that Dr. Baltasar is doing the DS on diabetics who are not obese or even overweight. The only difference between the surgery he performs on a diabetic vs. an obese patient is that he does not does not do a sleeve gastrectomy (change the size of the stomach). The stomach is left completely alone. Only the intestines are rerouted for the diabetic. Thus, the diabetic patient is still able to eat the same amount of food as a pre-op, only the food is processed differently in the intestines to alter the insulin reaction.
   — artistmama

April 16, 2004
The bottom line on this issue, it seems to me, is that many insurance companies are still balking at approving the DS. So my question is, why are they still approving the RNY weight regain is so significant with that (and I believe that it is), and basically not a problem with the DS (not so sure about that, but don't really know)? Could be they are behind the times (that'd be my guess, actually), and could be, there are more fears of nutritional deficiencies with the DS, whether well-founded or not. You would think that by now, if it was *the* true cure for obesity, it would have become the new "gold standard." Perhaps one day it will be, but it's not there yet, and I have to wonder why. Though I'd agree weight regain is a problem for many RNYers, I still think it's the rare case when someone literally regains *all* of what they lost (though it does happen). I sometimes wish I had considered the DS, but my insurance company would not have paid for it even if I'd asked.
   — Suzy C.

April 16, 2004
It takes time to wrap your mind around the fact that with the DS, weight loss occurs primarily because of malabsorption. The DS is not a tool as much as its a cure with a need for vigilant after testing to monitor proteins and vitamin and mineral levels. i.e. eat 300 calories of fat and the body does not process it. In a post op DS person, fats are almost 100% mal absorbed . We do not metabolize fat so we can eat french fries, fried chicken, doughnuts, oily salad dressings, gravy and other fat laden foods without fear of regaining weight from the fat. We do metabolize and absorb protein, sugar and other carbohydrates to a greater degree, but still mal absorb much of those calories too. We need lots of protein and vitamin supplementation to stay healthy. Fat soluable vitamins have to be exchanged for water based products. Both the DS and RNY are cures for DiabetesII and it is not associated with weight loss. There are JAMA reports explaining this phenomena and a Dr. in Spain is performing the DS procedure as a diabetes cure only on non obese patients. A sucessful DS procedure assures the patient of a pemanent weight loss of 75% or more after 5 years.
   — Pat H.

April 16, 2004
Suzi, I hear what you're saying about insurance companies and the "golden standard" but I think the issue here is that there the major groups who are responsible for gastric bypass surgery standards and acceptability are a bit behind. The last time I researched it the latest NIH study on WLS was the one they did about 10 years ago and there was very little study done on the DS. Since then though the American Bariatric Society has finally adopted the DS into their list of acceptable bariatric surgeries, until they did so (last spring I believe?) it was considered experimental with them. As for insurance, you can see with this how it would be easy for them to list it as "experimental" themselves. I've heard that even with it being accepted in the bariatric community as a whole now, that because of the limited number of doctors who perform the surgery that insurance is using that to keep it listed as "experimental" still. Though some DSers would disagree with me, I think the biggest benefit with the DS is the diabetes "cure". People come out of the surgery as immediate post ops without any measurable weight loss yet and are no longer diabetic. It is not a pounds issue as one would suspect. From my experience in talking with both RNY & DS patience, most RNYers lose the diabetes as they lose weight while a very good percentage of those who lose their diabetes with the DS do so instantly from the surgery itself. I, as a diabetic myself, am very interested in the work of Dr. Baltasar in Spain doing the bypass portion only of the DS on non-obese people. I think his ground-breaking work is cutting edge and has the potential for changing the way current medicine views diabetes and diabetic treatment. I can only speculate that the reason the DS as it stands now as a WLS isn't widely announced for its diabetic curing property is that currently it only can be performed on type II diabetics who can lose 40% of their weight through the surgery. The trials being performed in Spain could change all that and open up the surgery to millions of people worldwide.
   — Shelly S.

April 17, 2004
I had Lap DS on 3/17/04 and honestly chose this method of WLS was because mt blood test results preop I was headed down the road to type II Diabetes by the end of '04 had I not had the DS. Of course after 1 yr of research I believe it is the superior surgery to all others but that is my personal opinion.
   — Shayla527




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