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
Click Here to Return