Bariatric surgery slashes cancer risk?

Latest news - front page for several days - has been that having a gastric bypass can cut cancer risks.

Bariatric surgeons at McGill University compared the records of 1000 patients mostly gastric bypass to 5700 people matched by age, weight and sex who did not have the surgery.

In the surgical group, 2 percent developed cancer and in the non surgical group, 8.5 percent developed cancer.

Although the study is yet unpublished, these bariatric surgeons presented their preliminary findings at the latest meeting of bariatric surgeons of the ASBMS recently. (talk about preaching to the choir).

And isn't it amazing that an unpublished study has made such headlines for several days now?

What is even more amazing is that while Dr Glenn Gaesser found in his metastudy that obese people were 40 percent less likely to develop cancer, how these surgeons found the opposite. Of course 6 percent more cancer isn't really that great although you can express it to sound amazing as MSNBC did .... saying 80 percent greater chance of cancer in the non surgical group.

One of the objections to this study was actually brought up by another bariatric surgeon. Edward Phillips, a bariatric surgeon at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center told the LA Times that patients who have weight loss surgery, are often screened for cancer before surgery. "We may be selecting patients who don't have cancer for surgery, thus biasing the study", he said.

It's hard to judge without seeing the study. For example, a lot of very obese people are yo yo dieters and that weight cycling raises all health risks. Also I am wondering why they had to pick so many obese people to compare. Why not select 1000 fat people to match up with the 1000 WLS patients? Because I bet in 1000 fat people you might not get any cancer at all and that wasn't what they wanted to prove with their study.

The study only ran for 5 years and critics of the study have pointed out that it often takes a cancer many more years to develop than that and that had the study been taken out longer, the results might have been different.

Breast cancer was one of the cancers which they saw less of in the bariatric patients. Could it be that after a gastric bypass, patients were unable to take birth control medication (a major risk factor for breast cancer - that is medications work differently in gastric bypass patients because of the malabsorption issues)? Or that the gastric bypass patients were unable to eat or digest foods with transfat in them (another cancer activator). Also most weight loss surgery surgeons require their patients to quit smoking whereas the fat controls were not necessarily non smokers. Another thing is that most gastric bypass patients can no longer drink alcohol especially the newer ops as they would have been looking at, if the study only ran 5 years - alcohol can be another risk factor for cancer.

There are just too many other factors which could be operational in all of this to assume that it was the surgery and weight loss which explained the 6 percent less cancer in the surgical group.

For example, most gastric bypass patients are told to exercise often in order to help keep off the weight. Exercising can knock the risk of cancer (in anyone of any size) down, 40 percent. Most of the obese controls were probably not exercising regularly.

Ideally the fat controls should have also been matched for exercise, not smoking and dietary modifiations (like the elimination of trans fat in the diet) if the scientists wanted to really see if it was the surgery or the weight loss which explained the less cancer in the surgical group.

A non randomized study always raises red flags. The fat people could have been picked for their cancer risk (i.e. cancer in the family etc).

I guess the thing which rather annoys me about this whole deal (besides the news media making it a headline for the last week or more) is that all the research I've done comes out the opposite...

• Cancer is seen 40 percent less in fat people than in slim people - it has been considered a disease of the slim and yet now they are trying to link it like everything else to obesity.
• Two oncologists have told me that fat people if they get cancer, are much more likely to survive than slimmer people.

So unlike the media is trying to tell us, the "link between obesity and cancer" has not been well proven at all. On the contrary. The American Cancer society has stated that lifestyle (not girth) is a factor in 85 percent of cancers.

Even the release form for gastric bypass used by many surgeons and usually attributed to Kaiser Permanante warns:

Keep In Mind: Slender individuals have adult diabetes. Slender individuals have heart attacks. Slender individuals develop arthritis and have joint problems. Slender individuals have strokes and develop cancer. If obese individuals have these problems more commonly than the slender, it is because the same bad health habits just don't happen to cause obesity in some individuals "fortunate" enough to be slender no matter what they eat. They may be slender but they could very likely die just as early in life as someone who is overweight.****

And obviously those who wrote this release form do believe in bariatric surgery.

Additionally, I have seen many get cancer who were very slim. Some of them were very fit like a 53 year old family member. She ran marathons and I'm sure the last time she visited her doctor before she came down with the cancer which was to kill her 3 years later, her doctor proclaimed her totally healthy, at her perfect weight with low risk numbers.

So much for the risk numbers and perfect weight predicting protection against cancer!

I would not take this one to the bank. Many gastric bypass patients can develop a condition called "leaky bowel" wherein bacteria, not killed in stomach acid, enter the small gut and are absorbed along with the food. With this condition causing in many, auto immune disorder like RA and lupus, it is suspected that the immune system of a gastric bypass patient might been impaired by the surgery and not strengthened as these McGill bariatric surgeons would like us to believe.

Brooke Bates revisited

If you remember Brooke Bates, she's the 12 year old who had a lap band put in after having 35 lbs of fat removed by liposuction and dieting (since the age of 3 years old) did not produce the desired results. I, at the time, followed the attitude of the media, which blamed the parents. Frankly my blog was horribly judgmental as I re-read it.

Recently Brooke Bates' mother wrote a feedback to one of my blogs and I feel that it's important enough for her to have a voice in all of this that I decided to reprint her feedback letter here:

BROOKE BATES IS MY DAUGHTER. I WANTED TO LET EVERYONE KNOW THAT WE LOVE HER AND WOULD NEVER DO ANYTHING TO HARM OUR CHILD! WE SAVED HER FROM FUTURE PROBLEMS THAT ARISE FROM BEING OBESE! OBESITY IS NO DIFFERENT THAN A HEART CONDITION OR ANY OTHER ILLNESS! SHE IS HEALTHY AND HAPPY NOW!! DR. ERSEK SAVED HER LIFE PEOPLE! CANT YOU SEE THIS! WE ONLY TOOK HER TO GET THE LAP BAND TO PREVENT FUTURE WEIGHT GAIN. HOW MANY PEOPLE DO YOU KNOW THAT HAVE LOST WEIGHT AND GAINED IT BACK???? IF IT WASNT YOU, THEN I,M SURE YOU KNOW SOMEONE THAT THIS HAS HAPPENED TO! WAKE UP ! MODERN TECHNOLOGY HAS BROUGHT US ALONG WAY AND ITS HIGH TIME PARENTS TRY TO HELP THE CHILDREN AND SCREW EVERYONE ELSE AND WHAT THEY THINK! SINCERELY, CINDY BATES

This of course, argues that the media (and myself) were way too harsh on Brooke's parents for as Cindy pointed out, she loves her daughter deeply and wants the best for her.

First I would like to formally apologize to Mr and Mrs Bates for my judgmental attitudes toward them. Cindy is right... she just had the best in mind for her daughter and was likely, following her medical provider's advice or at least, acting with her medical provider's blessings.

But secondly, I think we all perhaps missed the point and that is that Brooke's parents were as much a victim of an out-of-control diet industry as Brooke herself. And that is sad.

I'm sure that neither Brooke NOR her parents were told that 34 percent of even the more invasive gastric bypass patients regain all or most of the weight loss according to a 2006 study.
(Annals of Surgery. 244(5):734-740, November 2006.
Christou, Nicolas V. MD, PhD; Look, Didier MD; MacLean, Lloyd D. MD, PhD)

I'm sure they were not told that in years to come, the lap band can grow into the stomach, causing the necessity for a partial gastrectomy or removal of a part of Brooke's stomach. Even in the most non invasive form (and the lap band is a wonderful improvement over the other WLS procedures available), ANY gastric surgery can upset mother nature in a way that can have repercussions later on.

And doubly sure the Bates family was NOT given the only long term statistics we have on the lap band (and gastric bypass) i.e. the Swedish Obesity study in which it was found at the 10 year post op point, the average amount of weight kept off was only 16 percent of the original weight.
(New England Journal of Medicine: Volume 351:2683-2693 December 23, 2004 Number 26
Lifestyle, Diabetes, and Cardiovascular Risk Factors 10 Years after Bariatric Surgery
Lars Sjostrom, M.D., Ph.D et al)

Brooke's high weight was 220 so that means at 10 years post op, if she is average, she will have kept off 35 pounds after having her band in for 10 years and this she could have done with Weight Watchers or something non invasive.

Recently I read on one of the groups, a new WLS patient who lamented "I cannot eat normally now!" WLS patients must observe rules some of which I also observe because I have a stricture of the esophagus from GERD and a medical procedure which was a bad idea. Some of those rules include 'eat bites the size of a pea', "take time between each bite and chew each bite until it's liquid". But unwritten rules say "no pizza or steak", and "if you want to not get around the surgery, you must find things which are soft but not caloric and that takes a lot of creativity." I frankly find the stricture even at the age of 63, quite a hit on the quality of life and I cannot imagine a 12 year old having to worry about these things and never being able to "have a party in her mouth" as Dr Phil has put it.

Additionally, I know most folks do not know (and many medical providers do not tell us either) that kids who diet, tend to really mess up their metabolisms and that comes back to bite later on. I know - I WAS one of those kids and I kept slim in High School (well normal sized) by severe calorie restriction. But most of my adult life I have weighed well over 200 lbs and if I don't calorie restrict now I keep on gaining (which I did very nicely after my last dieting attempt at the age of 60). Working out daily which I have done for 14 years does in NO WAY prevent me from gaining weight.

I am deeply sorry for any hurt I might have caused Mr and Mrs Bates and Brooke.

However, I do hope that people reading this will realize that in this confusing, complex world, more than good intentions are needed. We need to become informed ourselves as we may not hear the best advice from the news media (which is an advertising platform), or even from our medical providers when it comes to weight control and healthy lifestyle. For example, if an overweight person goes to the medical provider, they invariably hear "lose weight" but if they smoke cigarettes, they might hear "well you should give up smoking" ** wink wink ** but that's it. Strange considering they have a ton of studies out there suggesting smoking not only is a major cause of heart disease but also, hastens the onset of diabetes and many other ailments, whereas obesity alone has never yet been proven deadly.

Obesity is not a killer. In the release form used by many WLS surgeons and usually attributed to the insurance company, "Kaiser Permanante", they say up front that obesity is NOT a killer but rather, it is bad health habits which can raise the risks for both fat and slim folks. This being said, it should be noted that the increased risk of even fat couch potatoes is minimal according to several studies including those of the Cooper Institute and the bottom line is, heart attacks, strokes and diabetes happen in individuals of all weights:

****Keep In Mind: Slender individuals have adult diabetes. Slender individuals have heart attacks. Slender individuals develop arthritis and have joint problems. Slender individuals have strokes and develop cancer. If obese individuals have these problems more commonly than the slender, it is because the same bad health habits just don't happen to cause obesity in some individuals "fortunate" enough to be slender no matter what they eat. They may be slender but they could very likely die just as early in life as someone who is overweight.****

(Kaiser Permanante Release form for WLS)

And....

*** If you believe this surgery will restore you to complete and normal health you are mistaken. You are trading one nutrition problem for another problem. Obesity alone, does not necessarily kill you...Do not think you know better because you had a friend who had the surgery and did well despite eating whatever they wanted. This is an exception. Given enough time, they will probably put most of the weight back on.

Kaiser permanante release form for gastric bypass/duodenal switch

I plan to delete my earlier blog about Brooke Bates because it is overly judgmental and I did not mean to do that and I absolutely did put the blame in the wrong place. Brooke Bates is healthy today and we applaud her for her hard work for as a WLS surgeon put it, "success with WLS is 10 percent the surgery and 90 percent the patient!" Brooke obviously has put in the work and deserves the credit, however, we cannot help but observe that with better medical advice, she could have avoided disturbing her digestive system and her quality of life.

V-Bloc - new hope or old spin?

Several years ago, they did a study on a device developed, I believe, in Switzerland called the "gastric pacer". Several US Weight loss surgery surgeons jumped on the bandwagon. What this device (implanted in the back - and similar in function to a heart pacemaker) did was send electrical impulses to the vagus nerve of the stomach. No intestines were rearranged, the stomach was not otherwise disturbed and it seemed a really great idea. One surgeon wrote to a listserve "I am testing a device now which will outdate all weight loss surgery in five years!"

I followed the studies on gastric pacing and even interviewed some patients. Unfortunately the results, weightloss-wise, were extremely poor. One patient out of the three studies in one area, lost 70 lbs. One patient lost 100 lbs but became very ill from several things including cancer, partially from the side effects of the device and had to have it removed. The rest in the three studies, either lost very little weight or no weight at all. All of the patients except the two previously mentioned, ended up getting other procedures, either gastric bypass or lap band which they all, down to the man, found not only far more effective with weight loss but also, far more comfortable than the gastric pacer.

But worse yet, this "totally non invasive device" (as it was _heavily_ advertised) had a set of co morbidities of its own, some of which I understand are also true of the heart pacemaker but to a lesser degree.

First, it could travel around in the body causing problems getting where it didn't belong (like heavily inflaming surrounding tissue). The one patient who had to have it removed in an emergency situation, had it travel halfway down her back.

Secondly, the amount of current required to block the vagus nerve turned out to be about 10 times the amount of current required in a heart pacemaker. When the device was working, many patients complained of tingling uncomfortable feelings in their arms.

Third, patients were told it stopped the appetite. But the way it stopped the appetite was to keep the stomach from emptying into the small intestine, a condition well known to GERD patients. What they didn't tell the patients was that if the food just sits in the stomach, it starts to rot and can cause a horrendous case of upset stomach (and burping up, rotten food - I know because I have GERD myself). It can also cause too much stomach acid which splashes into the esophagus and can cause not only heartburn but also a condition of ulcers and sores in the esophagus called "Barrett's Esophagus" which can lead to esophageal cancer - a rather distressing type of cancer.

Fourth, patients were told the battery on the gastric pacer would require changing every 2-9 years which are the statistics on heart pacemakers. But what patients found out was that, because the amount of electrical current required for blocking the vagus nerve, was about 10 times what a heart requires, gastric pacer batteries generally had to be changed every 9 months to a year and that required a small surgery.

And finally, for many patients, disturbing the emptying of the stomach did not cause a great deal of weight loss just like the discomfort (and even stricture) associated with GERD doesn't necessarily cause weight loss either. (Again I can attest to that one - I easily managed a BMI of 44 for years until I found Weight Watchers, even with GERD, and a stricture of the esophagus).

Needless to say, the gastric pacing listserve was closed, the studies of this "utterly hopeful" device having been ended but not without a few lawsuits from sick or upset patients.

But ........

As they say in "infomercials"... but wait! Because the gastric pacer came back in 2005, with a new name, new studies and more heavy advertising! That's right.

In 2005, a small company named EnteroMedics in Minnesota announced that they were working on a type of gastric pacer. The press release included the following:

The company says cutting off the nerve supply may slow down digestion because the stomach doesn't register the food and start the digestive process.

Well, apparently they had begun trials of this device in several cities and like the gastric pacer, they claimed it's totally non invasive. Interestingly enough, the TV blurb on it used a gastric bypass patient to show how great losing weight is and claimed the new gastric pacer (the V-Bloc) "may" work just as well as the gastric bypass.  (Which they soon found out to be not as true - in some studies the weight loss in the controls equaled or exceeded that of the people using the v-Bloc.

So you'd think the second time around, they would have gotten the message.  But apparently they didn't because in Jan 2015, guess what's back!

None other but the V-bloc dolled up with a new name but it's the same old, same old.  They opened a new website for it at: http://www.enteromedics.com/vbloc/

Look quickly because after two or three go-arounds with this device, I suspect the website will be as long lived as the last websites were.  But not until they've sold patients with huge promises of its success.  People cannot remember as far back as 2005, I guess they are reasoning (or hoping?)

The following is from my research in 2005 - I'm quite certain this device has the same issues despite the new name! :)

It was difficult to research the V-bloc. Both the EnteroMedics website and the research study website were very vague about how the device works.

So I called a phone number which stated: "For more information about VBLOC Therapy and the EMPOWER clinical research study, please call the nurse-staffed information line at ......"

I spoke to 2 nurses, one of whom got short with me when I was apparently asking too many questions. She said "really this phone number is merely to identify and qualify patients for the study". To which I answered "well that's NOT what you stated on the website" and I quoted the above. Then I reminded her that as soon as they have advertised the device on TV, then the public has a right to know the details. By the time I spoke to the second nurse (a different lady from the first nurse so they apparently are paying no small fee for having nurses to answer phones!), I had a specific question and was prepared with an answer when she told me the line was just to qualify patients.

I did find out that the chest belt part of V-bloc is the battery pack so apparently one improvement V-Bloc has over the gastric pacer is that to change the battery you don't need the small surgery.

But something else on the EnteroMedics website about what the V-Bloc really does (and this website is not given on the Empower study website either - I had to google it) is a bit unsettling. They admitted that they don't really know how the Vagus nerve interfaces with the appetite but listed the functions of the vagus nerve and it's more than just stopping the peristalsis (the muscular action of the stomach to digest the food and send it to the small bowel). Here is the list of vagus nerve functions which the V-Bloc supposedly stops (from their website) :

The mechanisms responsible for obesity and the role played by the vagal nerves are not yet fully understood. Vagus nerve function appears to play a significant role in enabling multiple mechanisms including:

• Expansion of the stomach as food enters.
• Stomach contractions that break food into smaller particles.
• Release of gastric acid to continue food processing.
• Emptying of the stomach contents into the small intestine.
• Secretion of digestive pancreatic enzymes that enable absorption of calories.
• Sensations of hunger, satisfaction or fullness

In plain terms, the V-bloc not only gives you a horrendous case of indigestion but also can induce a  simulation of "gastroparesis" (stomach not emptying due to partial paralysis), and can interfere with the pancreatic enzymes as well as with stomach acid which will not only affect fat digestion but also protein digestion and vitamin digestion!

In another place on the same website, it stated that the idea for the V-bloc (and probably the gastric pacer also) was that before they had the medication to stop the stomach acid for ulcers, the so called PPIs, they would go in and cut the vagus nerve to help ulcers.

Before the availability of proton pump inhibitors (drugs that reduce the amount of gastric acid released into the stomach for persons with ulcers), surgeons routinely cut the vagus nerves near the stomach to treat ulcers. This procedure is called a "vagotomy." For a period of time following surgery, many of the people who underwent this procedure absorbed fewer calories from fat, lost weight and had decreased appetite.

Notice for a "period of time after surgery". That is, it did not work indefinitely to stop the appetite.

Other than the battery pack (it's carried on a case the size of a compact disc, one nurse told me) worn around the chest (which I suspect might be inconvenient at times) which is an improvement over surgery every nine months to change the battery, it seems the V-bloc is pretty much the "same dog, different fleas" as the devastatingly unsuccessful and risky in its own way, gastric pacer. And something which the TV said has been added i.e. wires in the esophagus (I don't know how accurate the TV report is but since the Enteromedics folks are not giving much information, it's all we have).

The new device might have a smaller battery....

"He who does not study history, is doomed to repeat it" and "doing the same thing repeatedly hoping for a different result is insanity" (said Albert Einstein) so take a tip from those who struggled and suffered with the gastric pacer a few years ago, and consider waiting on the V-Bloc! Its predecessors interfered with digestion as much as the gastric bypass but did not even produce good weight loss results for most people.

At best scenario, the weight loss promised is 15-20 percent of the bodyweight in the first year. Doing the math, 15 percent of 300 lbs is 45 lbs. And likely the real results will be more like 10 percent or less. (as they were with all trials on the gastric pacer).

Surely a horrendous case of indigestion, food rotting in the stomach, heartburn and nausea may slow the appetite but at what price? You can do that without expensive electrical devices and multiple wires implanted in your body.

If you did not come here from the new blog - it's been re-introduced in 2015 ... click here to see the new blog on it...

bogus claims in the news - gastric bypass extends life?

Today I was chatting with some friends and someone brought up that some media column writer said you didn't have to put mayonnaise in the fridge. Mayonnaise has eggs in it for one and in my experience, gets rancid fast if not refrigerated. Everyone in the discussion did feel that it _should_ be refrigerated and since a media person said it didn't have to be, everyone seemed to feel that must be right.

Media is seldom if ever right. If they are not selling something, they often do poor research (this is partially because of tight deadlines which precludes doing careful research so they often look up the subject in other media articles which are just as poorly researched - a case of the blind leading the blind?). But the fact remains that too many people actually believe what the media prints regardless of how "over the top" it is!

Case in question. Here is a paragraph I found in one of the blog searches:

A Gastric Bypass Really Can Extend Your Life

If you are contemplating having a gastric bypass then a recent US study might just help you to make up your mind. The study looked at no fewer than 16,000 obese people and found that when people in the study group opted for gastric bypass surgery their long-term mortality rate dropped by as much as 40%. This should not really be a surprise since weight loss surgery also cures, or at least improves, a host of other conditions such as high blood pressure and diabetes and the change in diet and increase in exercise which follows surgery has got to be a good thing. Nevertheless, it is always nice to see what we already know put down in black and white as confirmation.

Of course the study is not cited and it all sounds good - if you don't think about it. A gastric bypass provides for the stomach to be cut into two pieces - one tiny piece which becomes the "pouch" and the rest of it (about 90 percent or more) which is bypassed along with the attached first segment of small bowel. The bowel is cut into pieces and rearranged in a way very different from the way nature made it. All this causes a quick weight loss during the first year or so and lifelong problems including vitamin deficiencies, osteoporosis, anemia, protein deficiencies and much more.

As Dr Terry Simpson put it:

***The RNY [gastric bypass] trades one disease for another: it trades obesity for malabsorption. By re-arranging your guts you sometimes have severe side effects, and can have long-term problems such as iron deficiency anemia, calcium deficiency leading to osteoporosis. (Dr Terry Simpson, MD, WLS surgeon)

So how would this extend your life? Well, the idea here is that fatness is so deadly that any way to slim down regardless of unhealthy it is, is better than being fat. But there are no real studies which prove fatness in itself is deadly! And when they mention all these ills which are supposedly exacerbated by fat, does anyone question that slim people have the same ills i.e. high blood pressure, diabetes etc? I think the problem is people don't question something they read in the media. And that is where the problem starts.

But let's take a closer look at the study they referred to. It was one led by a WLS surgeon, Dr David Flum and he found in the study (which the media happily ignores) that the first month after a gastric bypass, 2 percent die and that another 5-7 percent of patients die within the first year (these were older patients so had bodies less tolerant to the extreme internal rearrangement done in the gastric bypass).

So how does he conclude that gastric bypass extends life? He compared these 16000 healthy fat people in for gastric bypass to 2000 seriously ill fat people in the hospital for other reasons and observed that since there were a small number of more deaths among the seriously ill fat people than the gastric bypass patients, that meant that the gastric bypass must have extended the lives of those who got it.

What he hoped the public would not realize is that had he compared the gastric bypass patients to 2000 seriously ill slim people in the hospital for other reasons, he would have also found that the healthy fat people who had gastric bypass survived better than the seriously ill slim folks. So would that mean that slim people should have a gastric bypass to "extend" their lives?

In another blog article
A nice looking couple is pictured. They are fat but not terribly so - they are both having gastric bypass surgery. The lady, it said, has high blood pressure even with being on 4 medications and the man has bad knees ("worn out from carrying all that weight").

Here's another which should be questioned. Most of the people I know with really bad knees are not fat. Some have never been fat in their lives - so how did their knees get bad without the "great weight" weighing down on them? And if a person's blood pressure is that high with 4 meds, did they really think a gastric bypass is going to bring it down that much? Again I know several slim people with very high blood pressure. The bottom line is, will introducing a surgical disease into their digestive tract make their health better? Perhaps or perhaps not - it all depends on whether their present comorbidities are greater than the comorbidities added by the bypass. But the media tells us that the bypass is some kind of magic bullet which fixes all ills and no one questions this and that is what is of concern.

***** "By doing this surgery, you're creating a medical disease in the body. Before you expose someone to that risk, you have to be absolutely sure that you are treating an illness which is equal to or greater than the one you are creating."
(Dr Edward Livingston, bariatric surgeon in Self Magazine, 4-2001) *****

Today I saw an ad for something about diabetes featuring as a poster kid, Randy Jackson. I did a double take. Jackson had a gastric bypass a year or two ago and that was supposed to have cured his diabetes (if you believe what the media tells us). I read the ad carefully. It said he was taking less diabetes meds now after his bypass but that is a totally different story than his diabetes getting "cured".

Fact remains, we are suffering from many old age diseases including worn out knees and high blood pressure because now we are living to the age where people start wearing out, fat or slim.

I commented on the widespread practice of smoking in Indonesia. "Doesn't that shorten their lifespan," I asked my hubby. He answered, "They don't live long enough to die from the repercussions of smoking."

I have known countless people who had gastric bypass to fix their knees only to find that the malnutrition and vitamin deficiencies made things worse if anything.

We need to start questioning seriously what we read in the media. If we follow their advice to not refrigerate our mayonnaise, we might get an upset stomach. But if we follow their advice to get a gastric bypass, the repercussions can be much more devastating.

Dr Oz sells out to the Weight loss surgery industry!

I looked forward to Dr Oz's new program "The Oz Files" on Discovery Health. This week's episode was entitled "Defeating Obesity". Dr Oz is a cardiac surgeon and although some of the things he has said about obesity are questionable, I felt he was basically mainstream health conscious.

But the Oz Files was a great disappointment. Interestingly enough, Dr Roizen, his partner who has joined him on most other shows was missing. As the show wore on, I had to wonder whether Dr Roizen didn't approve of the slant of the show which was doing anything but advocating health!

The scenario of the show was that four fat people were picked to lose a lot of weight in 6 months. Located all over the country, they were given little guidance on how to do this - just cameos with Dr Oz cooking a healthy food or telling them they should exercise. Instead of guidance in a more healthy lifestyle, the people were told things like their bodies were dying from the obesity (untrue) and if they didn't lose weight immediately, they would get diabetes (untrue - how does Dr Oz explain the 33 percent of type II diabetics who have never been fat in their lives?) and that the "omentum" was "poisoning" their livers and kidneys.

The "Omentum" has been a favorite of Dr Oz's. If you look it up on the web, it appears a sort of sheathing for the abdominal cavity but beyond that, no one knows what it really does so Dr Oz declaring that it somehow poisons the organs in a fat person, is more than a bit over the top since this is NOT based on science.

Bottom line, the four people were made to feel terrible about their weight, and their future but only told to "eat less and exercise more" (wow, what a revelation! NOT).

One of them had a gastric bypass. She was 5'6" and not even 300 lbs.

One of them was "lagging" on her weight loss after a couple of months so was put on the diabetic medication, Metformin to help kill her appetite. To put a healthy person on a diabetic specific medication is very questionable.

And the two other people, battled it alone. It was emphasized throughout the show that they were not doing their part in losing the weight. Also the husband of the gastric bypass patient was taken to task for "not keeping up with his wife", Dr Oz, totally ignoring that the quick weight loss period in a gastric bypass patient is NOT from living healthy but simply from fasting because they cannot eat due to the massive surgical changes made to their digestive tracts.

At the end of 6 months, the results were predictable and Dr Oz announced them with glee.

The gastric bypass patient had lost 70 lbs (but remember, less than 30 lbs of that was likely fat because gastric bypass patients are on a fasting diet the first few months after surgery as their bodies heal - their bodies can only get sugar out of body fat and must cannibalize muscle and bone and organs for the rest, a fact totally ignored by Dr Oz who gleefully pointed out how the gastric bypass patient lost that weight through "changing her lifestyle to diet and exercise" and how he applauded her because she did what she needed to do and "partnered with science".

The person on metformin lost 45 lbs and Oz "lauded" her also saying she was now a slim person (she wasn't really). But the fact is, without medication that her body did not need, she would _not_ have lost that much weight and when the medication is discontinued she will likely gain back.

The other two people did not do well on their weight loss, but Oz patronizingly said they learned a lot from participation.

The content message of the show was clearly, the only way a person can lose a large amount of weight is having a gastric bypass!

Where is the "healthy lifestyle" here? Vitamin deficiencies on the long term which made the inventor of the gastric bypass stop doing the surgery he invented, in 1980? 40 percent serious complications within five years of surgery? And worse yet, we now have two studies which found that the weight loss at the 10 year point after a gastric bypass was somewhat unimpressive. 16 percent of the original weight? (Swedish Obesity Study).

I am confused. Is Dr Oz really deluding himself that the gastric bypass is a healthy and effective way to lose weight? Perhaps but if that is so, he's in for a rude awakening when he finds out the dark side of the surgery, how few people can stay healthy and keep off the weight.

Or is it as Dr Ernsberger once wrote:

"In my experience, most physicians, especially academic physicians, disapprove of these operations. However, they will only admit this in private, because of an unwritten law in medicine that forbids one to speak ill of another's procedure. Thus, there is no one with an MD after their name who will appear on camera and criticize the operation."

Paul Ernsberger, PhD, Department of Nutrition,
Case Western Reserve School of Medicine, 10900 Euclid Ave., Cleveland, OH 44106-4906

In any case, I am very disappointed in Dr Oz that he could make a show which only had a thin veneer of teaching health and actually was just- yet another- infomercial for gastric bypass.

Can you be fat and fit? Latest spin says "No"

Based on a "data dredge" study (meaning they took existent data which was not designed for THAT study so is outdated and also doesn't usually have the right information), some of those in the diet industry are now telling us that we cannot be fat and fit.

The study, like other epidemiological studies boasted big numbers, 39,000 women classified as normal weight, overweight or obese (BMI 30 or over). It was published in the Archives of Internal Medicine, April 28, 2008 issue.

I looked up the article, because the news service headlines read "Fitness does not reduce risk if you are fat". The media told us that people who were obese had a 50 percent greater rate of heart attack even if they exercised than people who were not obese.

If the study had really suggested this, it would be very questionable ... the exercise habits were self reported and people often exaggerated their level of fitness (mostly exaggerate it!). Also overweight and obese women are often weight cycling (popularly called "yo yo dieting") because the body produces all kinds of hormones to force weight gain if it thinks your weight is too low (and too low varies for every different body). And of course, several CLINICAL studies have suggested that any kind of dieting increases heart disease risk by 50 percent.

However, in looking up the abstract, the study did NOT suggest that there was no benefit for an obese person to be fit. On the contrary, the last line of the abstract reads:

The risk of CHD associated with elevated body mass index is considerably reduced by increased physical activity levels.

The media ignored this statement and picked up the next line in the conclusion:

However, the risk is not completely eliminated, reinforcing the importance of being lean and physically active.

Ok, that's fine except it is a meaningless statement because a reduction in risk doesn't mean no risk... regardless of weight. However, it made a great statement for the media to base yet another article of misinformation on.

Now if we look at the study further, we find that although researchers wanted the expenditure of 1000 calories in exercise a week (which isn't very much... about 3 x a week, 40-60 minutes each time), the average expenditure in calories in exercise for those considered "active" (remember this is self reported) was 550 calories a week which isn't for most people, even twice a week. And even that small amount, said the researchers, reduced the risk of CHD significantly regardless of weight (34 percent, they stated).

It should be remembered that many people feel NON cardio is exercise to be counted like gardening and likely reported that as "activity" even if it didn't fit in the categories which were basically cardio exercise (I guess gardening could be reported in the "walking" category if you stretched it).

So although this wasn't the best designed study (to put it mildly) the results were not what the news media reported them to be. Exercise does significantly reduce the heart disease risk... regardless of weight.

Rudy Leibel, obesity researcher said "there probably is a benefit to being of 'normal weight' but there is no proof that people forcing their weight down below their set point enjoy that advantage". This is kind of a no brainer and I have no problems with it. Although right now, according to CDC statistics, people in the BMI category of 25-35 are living longer than those in the so called "normal weight" category.

Another strange thing in our society is that although most of us have had friends who exercise a lot of cardio, are lean but smoke cigarettes, drop dead rather early in life, I have not noticed any studies suggesting what we already know to be true - that smoking may cancel out the good effects of exercise in some individuals (regardless of weight or fitness level).

And in fact, many people who smoke, are doing so to keep their weight down because they are under the false conclusion that doing anything unhealthy is better than being fat. And of course, where do they learn that but from our media.

The Cooper Institute studies of 50,000 people over the last 30 years or so, suggested that people who were obese and fit had only a 00.08 greater risk of heart disease than those who were normal weight and fit. And those studies also suggested that being lean (under normal weight) was at the highest risk even if fit. But of course you will never see that in the media which is, bottom line, hard selling a diet.

One more comment about this study. Most people do not keep up a fitness program more than a year or two but in a self reported study, those people may not have reflected the change (stopping exercising) in their surveys.

Exercise greatly cuts risk of illness regardless of what people weigh but cutting risks doesn't mean no risk, of course. And to enjoy that reduction of risk, people must make cardio at least 3 times a week (and 5 times a week is way better) a part of their lives FOR life.

And it seems the greatest risk to our health may be believing the media which when not lying, is incorrectly reporting health topics.

60 minutes LIES about gastric bypass

Apparently, some surgeons are getting worried about the lap band taking over the top spot in bariatric surgery (why ever would that be? Because it's ten times safer than the gastric bypass and equally effective?).

So the media is blitzing us with gastric bypass propaganda.

The latest was on the TV show, "60 Minutes". This show presented more than misinformation. In some places they out and out -lied!

Here are some of the more outrageous claims:

Claim: that gastric bypass "cured" diabetes. To "prove" this they had 8 newly post op patients on (the longest out post op was 1 year). "How many of you had diabetes before surgery?" the news anchor asked. And they all raised their hands. "How many of you have diabetes now?" she asked and none of them raised their hands. "Wow!" she said, hoping the audience would be just as impressed.

Reality: The few studies which have looked at longer term gastric bypass patients are more sobering. For example, the Swedish Obesity Study which studied patients 10 years post op, found that at that point, only 35 percent of the weight loss surgery patients were "diabetes free". That's a long way from "curing" diabetes especially as they are trying to push gastric bypass on normal weight people with diabetes now. (SOURCE: New England Journal of Medicine: Volume 351:2683-2693 December 23, 2004 Number 26 Lifestyle, Diabetes, and Cardiovascular Risk Factors 10 Years after Bariatric Surgery Lars Sjostrom, M.D., Ph.D et al)


Claim: Then they showed doctors wheeling someone out of surgery and stated that before any weight was lost, in a gastric bypass patient, the blood sugar levels were down to normal.

Reality: This claim is true - the sugar levels immediately do go down in many gastric bypass patients right after surgery but their explanation - something about a gut hormone being affected was bogus. Truth is, anyone who is fasting, has low sugar levels. In fact, many who go on the Weight Watchers program which is a sensible diet (as diets go) also see their sugar levels go down. Mystery solved and nothing really to do with the gastric bypass. The bottom line is that diabetics who have been diagnosed less than 10-14 years ago, can fairly easily get normal sugar levels using diet and exercise, and might not need medication. Diabetics diagnosed more than 10-14 years ago will probably need medication, gastric bypass or not.

They did say that 80 percent (not 100 percent) of the new ops have low sugar levels - those are likely the more recently diagnosed.

Claim: Having finished with diabetes they moved on to cancer. In one of the segments, the news lady asked how many cancers were associated with obesity and the guest, an epidemiologist gave her a laundry list. "I guess it would be easier to ask how many cancers were NOT associated with obesity!" the news anchor says, dramatically.

Reality: In the next sentence, however, the epidemiologist tells us that obesity is a factor in 100,000 deaths from cancer each year. There is really no hard proof for this but if you do the math, deaths from cancer each year according to the CDC, are 550,000 individuals. So what percentage of those deaths, according to the epidemiologist, have a factor of obesity in them? Not even 20 percent... 18 percent. That means that 82 percent of cancer deaths do not have a factor of obesity involved. This would seem to suggest that obesity is not a really "important" factor in cancer, wouldn't it?

It should be mentioned that Glenn Gaesser found in his metastudy of obesity studies that obese people are 40 percent less likely to get cancer than non obese people. (BIG FAT LIES by Glenn Glaesser, CA, 2002) And I have heard from 2 oncologists that fat people are 50 percent more likely to survive cancer than slim people (that's one of those - what is it now - 15 obesity paradoxes?).

Also any study I've ever looked at which named obesity as a factor in cancer in the conclusion of the study, talked about lifestyle (and not obesity) in the body of the study... the conclusion assumed that all people who have unhealthy lifestyles must be obese.

The biggest whopper was yet to come. Neil Hutcher, former president of the ASBMS was asked about early mortality rate with gastric bypass. "Well," he said, "a couple of years ago, it used to be 1 in 100 but now it's about 1 in 1000".

Of course we've heard all kinds of statistics from the ASBMS so I'm not sure where Dr Hutcher was getting his information. Six or seven years ago, the ASBMS claimed the early death statistic on gastric bypass was 1 in 1000 and continued that claim even after no doctor or peer reviewed study stated this! So was Hutcher saying by his statement that 2 or 3 years ago when early gastric bypass deaths were 1 in 100 that the ASBMS was um... misrepresenting the truth when they claimed it was 1 in 1000?

Whatever the case, there is absolutely no foundation in peer reviewed studies that the early death statistics with the gastric bypass are 1 death in 1000 surgeries.

For example, the David Flum Studies of 2003 which is one of the most accurate studies because Flum actually studied 62,000 hospital records of gastric bypass patients, found that 2 in 100 died within 30 days of gastric bypass surgery and another 2-4 percent of patients died during the first year after gastric bypass surgery. (SOURCE: report delivered to the College of surgeons in Oct 21, 2003.[Study title: The Impact of Bariatric Surgery on Patient Survival: A Population-Based Study] )

Most surgeons who had a low death statistic, claimed 1 death in 200 surgeries but that was before the Flum studies.

Moving on, Hutcher said that 1 death in 1000 was about the same risk level as gall bladder surgery. I'm sure gastroenterologists will not love him for this statement which is entirely incorrect! Gall bladder surgery carries a death risk of 1 death every 7000 surgeries and is about the same risk level as the adjustable lap band.

The only good thing I can say about this show is they admitted that patients tend to lose only 30 percent of their weight so "few patients end up thin". This was noticed by some WLS afficionados who were not happy about those percentages.

I'm sorry to say this, but for the news about a risky medical procedure which is rapidly becoming out dated, to be that inaccurate, is more that ethically challenged. It's morally bankrupt because people may go and have this surgery based on the misinformation in that show and many will die or get sick.

What are we doing to our teens?

Most teens I talk to, feel they are fat, even though they are not.

Several teens I know personally, started smoking to control their weight.

Somehow we are _not_ getting across the message that smoking has been _proven_ health threatening and are concentrating on giving folks the message that obesity is _extremely_ health threatening even though there is virtually NO scientific evidence that obesity alone is health threatening at all.

How much of a problem are eating disorders among teens and pre-teens? If you look at youtube.com, there are huge numbers of videos which advertise themselves as "thinspiration". These videos either show slim young women squeezing what small amount of fat they have on their bodies in disgust or else, are slide shows of super slim fashion models and actresses. Often the songs which accompany the videos give mixed messages. One song begs "SOS me - rescue me" while another song states that no one notices that her body is falling apart.

One young woman who is 21 years old, and said her latest dieting effort began with her wanting to "get her body back" after having her son, started uploading videos in August 2007. Her first video made while she was smoking a cigarette, had her talking a lot about how she cared for her skin. But in the end of the video, she admitted that she had a problem with eating and also showed us a piece of tape covering a scar she made on herself when she was 16 ("S" for sinner, she said) and how she covered it all the time now. "Smoking is bad" she admitted but then added that she smoked a lot during her 'fasts'.

Another video made in early late 2007 by the same woman, was all text. It told how she had been in a mental hospital because of a suicide attempt. How from the age of 16 and on, she had tried all kinds of drugs in a desperate attempt to lose weight. And how she was going to rehab and get well now (but not take any prescription drugs). "I want to get my son back" she wrote, "he's 3 years old!". Another video showed a visit with a bright eyed 3 year old boy, her son. The video was entitled "I miss my son".

Sadly her rehab didn't work- a recent video talked about her 40 day fast which would end April 11, 2008. Two body shots showed that she had lost quite a bit of weight since she uploaded her first video - she looks like the typical anorexic in those shots. But this fast is not about her eating disorder, she tells us - it's to "gain control". She is allowing herself 1 glass of juice a day and the rest, non calorie drinks like coffee, tea and water. She is continuing this for 40 days, during which she will exercise and get control and save up the money (if she can get a job) to get a pole and start pole dancing. "Weight doesn't matter" she keeps saying adding how she discarded her scale.

One of the comments to this video states:

binges are bad! i was doing well, eating at the most, 300 calories a day, but, then i tried to fast and the binge monster came to me and i ate until i exploded although some people say it wasn't that much food. but all you have to do when you want to binge, is look in the mirror and tell yourself how it will ruin this progress! and then eat an apple or whatever and then wait. tell yourself if you're still hungry in 10 min that you will eat. chances are, you can control your binge better. but you are lucky if you can purge after. it doesn't work for me :(

NOTE: what she suggests in the above quote is a version of what Weight Watchers calls "the 20 minute rule". How much of this comes from our general obsession with dieting and a diet industry which makes a larger profit than even the pharmaceutical companies?

Several feel that anorexia and bulimia are more widespread than we'd like to think. It is usually blamed on fashion models and slim actresses however, most people who are dieting or restricting calories mention health as their first concern. An article in a London newspaper, suggests that there are many internet sites which encourage young women to starve themselves to be very slim:

The UK article suggested that 1 percent of teens have an eating disorder but an estimate from an Australian newspaper stated that 1 in 8 teens has some kind of disordered eating.

What is confusing is that most teens who are restricting (and often over exercising, will not admit it. On the contrary, they say they "eat a lot" while getting slimmer and slimmer. And instead of a cause for concern, slimmer teens are often rewarded with getting more clothing and perks from their family, as well as compliments from their classmates and often, a lack of concern from their medical providers while the fat teen is teased, often not rewarded by the parents and constantly battered by the media as well as medical providers to "lose weight or die". And we wonder why these teens start smoking to "control their weight"? They are following what _we_ are telling them... that _anything_ is more healthy than being overweight!

Ironically, it's the fat teen who is often much more well nourished than those trying to keep what is considered an "ideal weight" (which the CDC has said may be underweight for most people).

And again I ask - will the insanity ever end?

Carnie Wilson - failed WLS? I don't think so...

I watched a video this morning, of an interview with Carnie where even with a body suit she admitted to wearing (full length girdle) she looks like she's regained quite a bit of weight. The video introduces her as a "failed gastric bypass". The interesting thing is it was put up by Provider who does - gastric bypass - (but a version of the older form) which like all the other WLS's LIKELY, has the same failure rate (about 34 percent of those with starting BMI of over 50, regain significant amounts of weight according to a 2006 study which followed patients for 10 years) cite: Annals of Surgery. 244(5):734-740, November 2006.Christou, Nicolas V. MD, PhD; Look, Didier MD; MacLean, Lloyd D. MD, PhD Abstract: Objective: To complete a long-term (>10 years) follow-up of patients undergoing isolated roux-en-Y gastric bypass for severe obesity.

However, we are not sure if Carnie would be counted as "failed" because she lost from 299 to 154 so that's a loss of 145 lbs. If she's regained 50 percent of that loss which is approx 73 lbs she would STILL be considered a success, weighing in at 227, which is probably pretty close to what she weighs.

Thus, she may NOT BE a failed gastric bypass. She may be, in fact, in the 70 percent who have and are expected to have, a rebound weight gain of up to 50 percent of what they originally lost.

So then, when in all the medical papers, they state that a 50 percent rebound gain after gastric bypass is EXPECTED and happens in MOST people, why do they call Carnie, failed?

First, most folks can keep off 50 percent of their excess weight WITHOUT surgery and WITHOUT taking the risks associated with gastric bypass especially if they work as hard as Carnie does.

And second, there seems a push among some providers to "discard" healthy gastric bypass patients who are in the 70 percent who have a rebound gain and sometimes in favor of ill patients who had "kept it all off".

For example, a few years back, the now defunct BARIX clinics ran an ad which talked glowingly about an individual's new life. The reality was, according to her own messages before she was picked for the ad, that she had reactive hypoglycemia and was more and more disabled by it and filing for disability. "I find it more and more difficult to talk up this surgery, " she commented in a message shortly before BARIX picked her as a poster kid. The ad suggesting she was slim and healthy appeared in several magazines like "Woman's Circle" and the like.

I also remember a lady who started out over 520 lbs, lost down to 170 and then regained up to 270 or so. She was STILL keeping off over 240 lbs which is way more than 50 percent of what she initially lost, making her a super success story, but she was dismissed from the provider's office in which she worked and told her weight gain was giving prospective patients the wrong message. Last I heard, she was seeking revision which is highly risky and not particularly effective.

Thus, bottom line, Carnie who is more like the AVERAGE gastric bypass patient, may be considered bad publicity for those selling this surgery as something after which, you "will be normal" and "will keep all your weight off" and will " suddenly look like a model with not much work" and will "suddenly be normal and be able to eat what you want without a regain".

A gastric bypass is, we are told done for HEALTH. Carnie was healthy before but she had some fat issues including sleep apnea, all of which, she has told us, have gone away. The only issue she has now is a hernia (she's had that for a while and apparently doesn't want to or hasn't gotten a chance to, get it fixed). She can keep off about 60 to 70 lbs which she never could do previously.

Carnie is NOT a failure, she is a SUCCESS and I feel that pressuring her like that could be endangering her life if she goes for revisions etc.

Gastric bypass is NOT cosmetic surgery. It will not make you thin if you are MOST people. It only makes 7 percent of patients slim and some of those have gotten very ill and cannot eat and others just work hard and never weighed that much to begin with.

It's really important when making this decision to realize that.

I am glad to see this video up on YOUTUBE - not because Carnie's surgery failed but because it can show patients a REALISTIC picture of what can be expected (in MOST patients) from a gastric bypass (of any variety).

Here's the video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ad_U8IPsde8

Big Medicine - Big Problems?

The TV show we all love to hate, "Big Medicine" which details two surgeons in Texas, father and son, who "practice Weight Loss surgery together" seems to have run into some problems.

First, in the last episode I watched, they heavily - shall we say - misrepresented a weight loss that is, how much weight was lost as a result of a gastric bypass.

I've seem them do this previously but perhaps not as much as an exaggeration as with this patient.

That is, when she came to see Dr Davis, she weighed in at 335. She told Dr D that her high weight had been 360 but she had apparently been losing some weight on her own. Dr D, as is his protocol with patients to be, put her on a liquid diet to lose some more weight. He states that this liquid diet usually takes care of any fatty liver present and makes the gastric bypass surgery less risky.

"What we are doing, " said "Big D" the dad surgeon candidly in one show, "is creating a situation of malnutrition in our patients!"

So on the day of surgery, after being very conpliant to her liquid diet, she had lost another 17 lbs and weighed in at 318.

They showed her a month later for her follow up visit and at that time, she weighed in at 290, a loss of 28 lbs, 4 weeks after her gastric bypass. While that isn't a bad weight loss, apparently those in charge of the show felt that was not the huge number on the scale which tends to sell the surgery better.

No problem - this is TV so they can change it. They flashed on the screen a before and after photo - The after photo was the usual type cover-up because with a 28 lb weight loss, she didn't look that different (especially considering that most of the weight lost after a gastric bypass because of the low amount of caloric intake, is muscle and bone mass - muscle is compact tissue which does not show much when it's lost). That is, more slimming clothing and a more flattering angle in her "after" photo.

But they openly misrepresented the numbers. They listed her beginning weight as 267 and her weight, 1 month after surgery as 290, with a total weight loss of 70 lbs which they claimed happened in 4 weeks after the gastric bypass. Yes, I stopped the DVR and made sure that was the claim.

This was going one step further than the usual - claiming the high weight and then the current weight and hinting the surgery had been totally responsible when in fact, it never was. I sat staring at the stopped video in amazement about how they could openly misrepresent things when folks' lives were at stake.

After every show, they give a promo of what's on the next show and the show after this one looked interesting. It promised to show us a 20 year gastric bypass patient who had regained all her weight. This is not surprising considering one of the few 10 year studies on gastric bypass done in 2006 suggested a 34 percent failure rate - weight wise with gastric bypass in patients who had BMI's over 50 - that describes most patients seeking gastric bypass! That failure rate is true even though the surgeons generously count a maintained loss of 50 percent of the initial loss as "success" (as small as 40 or 50 lbs kept off in many patients) and keep in mind most patients have the surgery to keep off 100 percent of their excess weight because they can keep off a percentage of excess weight by themselves without surgery! (cite: Annals of Surgery. 244(5):734-740, November 2006. Christou, Nicolas V. MD, PhD; Look, Didier MD; MacLean, Lloyd D. MD, PhD Abstract: Objective: To complete a long-term (>10 years) follow-up of patients undergoing isolated roux-en-Y gastric bypass for severe obesity.)

I thought that show was going to be interesting and looked forward to it. Revisions on Gastric bypasses are highly risky and quite ineffective i.e. either the patient loses only another 20 lbs or so or worse yet, the patient loses too much weight and may require take down.

But my wait was in vain. That show never was aired. In its place, a re-run was shown and the following week, "Big Medicine" had been replaced by another show.

"Big Medicine" has been pulled suddenly from the air with no explanation.

I wrote to TLC asking about it and got a polite form letter back explaining that they received so many letters they just can't answer each one but thanks for writing. TLC has left their area on "Big Medicine" up only when you click to "get the schedule" (when the shows are aired) you get a blank screen. No plans to air it in the near future, it suggests.

Several are asking on the TLC forums, places which are moderated and usually receive a quick response but in this case, no one is talking. No one has answered the questions about where the show disappeared to.

Finally in desperation, I called the Surgeon's offices in Houston. They were polite and friendly - and totally evasive. They didn't know why the show was pulled - "Just probably some scheduling changes" the nice young female voice suggested and they could not say when it would come back on the air. "Probably in a couple of weeks," the lady assured me but when I asked her for a date, she didn't have that. "They don't tell us when the shows will air," she said. I asked her whether there had been a problem with the revision patient in the show which never aired and she said "Oh no! Everything is fine!". I asked her about one of the larger patients who had had his gastric bypass a year ago and who was not walking at the 7 month point post op, opined Dr Garth Davis, because his breasts were weighing him down so they scheduled him for a mastectomy which was done in August 2007. To date, he has lost down to 300 some lbs. "is he walking yet?" I asked. She lowered her voice a bit and mumbled, "n-no." Obviously the reason he was bedfast was not his weight which begs the question whether they should have operated on him at all.

"Perhaps they are faced with a lawsuit," suggested my engineer husband whose cleverness I really enjoy. I had not even considered that possibility but now as I think of it, that's a rather good possibility. Gastric bypass surgeons often weather many lawsuits because the gastric bypass has a high failure rate and a high complication rate combined with less than inpressive results especially in the longer term (more than 3 years post op). One study of 10 year gastric bypass patients found that only 7 percent were able to keep off all the weight they lost. This isn't much better than diets and at least you can walk away from a diet. (cite: (Dept. of Surgery C, Soroka Medical Center, Beer Sheba (Israel study) Harefuah 1993 Feb 15;124(4):185-7, 248 (article is in Hebrew))

I googled "Big Medicine" this morning and found that on one site, people were asking some questions about it and the gastric bypass in general. One letter suggested that some of the plastic surgery patients looked less than great after surgery and that one lady might have had a reason for a lawsuit - her implants had ended up in the wrong place. This writer went on to say that one of the patients, a man, looked like death warmed over after his gastric bypass.

So people are asking questions about it.

It remains a mystery for now.

There are many mysteries connected with this surgery. Dr Paul Ernsberger, PhD and associate professor of nutrition at Case Western medical school, detailed one of those most baffling mysteries on the Donahue show a few years back. He stated:

Well, the gold standard in medicine is the controlled clinical trial. We don't go subjecting 100,000 people to a surgical procedure without doing a controlled clinical trial or dozens of clinical trials, and then looking at the results. Do you know how many clinical trials have been published on weight-loss surgery or gastric bypass? Zero. None of them have compared it to clinical conservative treatment and found it to be superior for life expectancy or for anything else other than, you know, risk factors.
A number of trials have been started, and the final results have never been reported. We have to ask, you know, why haven't we seen the final results? I think it's because it's bad news.

Perhaps what we think is a mystery about the gastric bypass or the sudden and unexplained disappearance of "Big Medicine" (in addition to a couple of the new shows never being aired) is really also, bad news.

The cost of obesity and other spin

It's good to know how to interpret spin - that's the newspaper word for what Orwell called "Newspeak".

For example, we are told that obesity contributes to 100,000 deaths each year. Now that sounds like a lot except it's only a drop in the bucket in the total yearly deaths.

In 2002, in the USA, the death toll was 2,400,300. Since obesity apparently contributed to 100,000 of these, that means obesity _did not_ contribute to 2,300,300 deaths. Expressed in percentages, that's 4 percent of the deaths per year, obesity had a part in! Which means obesity did not have a part in 96 percent of the deaths per year!

Looks a bit different if we look at the whole picture, doesn't it? Why do we even think obesity is any kind of "problem"? Maybe the real problem are those who wish to sell us obesity solutions?

Even if we take the older figure of obesity contributes to 300,000 deaths a year, that's still 2.1 million deaths that obesity doesn't contribute to, isn't it.

The latest spin we are hearing is how expensive obesity is and how if we just lose 10 lbs we will save the health care system, millions.

The only way obesity can get expensive is with weight loss surgery. The average weight loss surgery costs 15,000 and they can cost as much as $50,000 and guess who pays for it.

Especially considering that in folks with BMI's over 50 (which most people seeking weight loss surgeries are), there is a 34 percent failure rate according to several studies.

Here's the cite for one of these studies - this is not available on the web (we wouldn't want folks seeking weight loss surgery to see stuff like this, would we?)

Annals of Surgery. 244(5):734-740, November 2006.
Christou, Nicolas V. MD, PhD; Look, Didier MD; MacLean, Lloyd D. MD, PhD

Abstract:
Objective: To complete a long-term (>10 years) follow-up of patients undergoing isolated roux-en-Y gastric bypass for severe obesity.

As you can see, this was a study on gastric bypass which is supposed to be so powerful in keeping off weight!

Actually, the longer a person lives, the more expensive their health care costs so if people of size really don't live as long as slim folks, then they would cost less, says an AP story which circulated recently.

LONDON - Preventing obesity and smoking can save lives, but it doesn’t save money, researchers reported Monday.

It costs more to care for healthy people who live years longer, according to a Dutch study that counters the common perception that preventing obesity would save governments millions of dollars.

“It was a small surprise,” said Pieter van Baal, an economist at the Netherlands’ National Institute for Public Health and the Environment, who led the study. “But it also makes sense. If you live longer, then you cost the health system more.”

Doing the math, thin people if they do live the longest, are going to cost us the most money!

Smoking contributes to 400,000 deaths a year... that's still over 2 million deaths than neither smoking nor obesity contribute to.

Back to the gastric bypass, it kills off 2 percent of those who have it, within 30 days of surgery so would that outweigh the outrageous cost per surgery, most of which is paid for by insurance and premiums are passed down to other insured? (cite: death rate 2 percent within 30 days of surgery from 62,000 patients: report delivered to the College of surgeons in Oct 21, 2003.[Study title: The Impact of Bariatric Surgery on Patient Survival: A Population-Based Study])

Wait, I'm getting more and more confused here. If living longer costs the system more money and obesity contributes to only 4 percent of the 2.4 millions deaths a year, why are people even worried about obesity?

It's the people who live the longest who are going to cost the health care system the most.

Bottom line. The news media is not gospel. Look at the big picture and spin quickly falls apart.

And for heavens sake, don't base a surgical decision on media spin!

If the RNY is so risky, why do they keep doing it?

I recently received a very thoughtful comment by someone researching WLS and decided that since many other folks may have similar questions, I would try to address the issues this individual raised.

First, Daisy asks:

If RNY is so harmful to the organism why do doctors still continue to indicate it?

The answer here is not a simple one so bear with me.

First, those who advocate the RNY are often those who are not involved in the long term follow up of their patients (most RNY follow up is done by Emergency Rooms, hospitalists and gastroenterologists). These individuals are impressed by the early results and may not be aware of the long term results (which admittedly are hard to ferrit out due to the lack of long term studies and the unavailability, for whatever reason, of many patients after 5 or 10 years). They also may feel that even though the vitamin deficiencies which cannot be supplemented, may shorten the lives of RNY patients, that untreated obesity, may shorten their lives even more.

Many surgeons answer the longevity question (i.e. how long you live after a gastric bypass) as Dr Wittgrove of the Alvarado Clinic did in the online interviews at the time of Carnie Wilson's gastric bypass:

Question: Dr. Wittgrove, I really need to know about how this surgery will effect me when I am old (70, 80 and 90's)

Dr. Alan Wittgrove: Hopefully you will live that long..... People who are morbidly obese don't have long life spans... Ideal body weight tables were based on actuarial data.... It is commonly known that people who are morbidly obese die earlier than those who are not morbidly obese.

One study by Dr David Flum which was delivered before a group of obesity surgeons but for some reason, never published in peer reviewed journals, which carefully examined 62,000 hospital records of RNY patients, did find an alarmingly high death rate in these patients. The researchers found that 1 in 50 RNY patients die within 30 days of surgery. And another 3-9 percent (depending on age and other factors) die within the first year. But when Flum and associates compared this to a group of 2000 obese patients who had been hospitalized for other reasons, they found a slightly higher death rate in the obese patients than in the RNY and concluded that, risky as the RNY was, the risk may be higher for untreated obesity.

The problem with that conclusion, as having been pointed out by several other researchers, was that comparing the RNY patients to any critically ill patients, even slim ones, would have yielded a similar result that is, it is predictable that among critically ill patients of any weight, the death rate will be higher than among healthy fat people who are in the hospital to have WLS. (report delivered to the College of surgeons in Oct 21, 2003.[Study title: The Impact of Bariatric Surgery on Patient Survival: A Population-Based Study]

It is unknown whether obesity really shortens your life or not, although lifestyle factors i.e. amount of exercise, quality of diet, stress factors may have an effect on health and even how long you live regardless of what you weigh.

For as many epidemiological studies which are available which suggest that obesity does effect longevity, there are an equal number of epidemiological studies which suggest that obesity alone does not affect your lifespan.

And the few clinical studies we have available, suggest that lifestyle alone is what seems to affect lifespan and health regardless of what someone weighs and also that obesity alone doesn't seem to have that much effect, one way or another on lifespan or even health.

This story of what science really says about obesity is not seen in the media because, perhaps the media is more "marketing oriented".

The second reason why some surgeons continue to advocate the RNY may be because the public is demanding quick weight loss at any cost. It is true that some patients, even those who are very ill from the repercussions of the RNY, are still happy to not be fat anymore due to the societal pressures on the overweight population. It is also a fact that because of the massive healing internally after the digestive tract has been so drastically (and yes, permanently) rearranged, takes about a year and during that year, that, and also that patients find it somewhat uncomfortable to eat at all (food getting stuck, vomiting etc), often causes early post op RNY patients to lose their appetites - these end up eating very few calories a day i.e. 300-500 and some of what they eat is not absorbed. This is why some surgeons called the RNY "surgically induced anorexia" The idea of not having an appetite and the weight dropping off quickly and easily, is of course, highly attractive to folks who have struggled with diets for many years. However, those RNY patients in the 3rd and 4th year often end up on the same diets which didn't work before only the years of fasting and semi fasting have greatly lowered their metabolism.

Many people can read the informed consent information, can read the testimonies of patients who are extremely ill for life from WLS and still request WLS. I personally know of cases where family members have died and the sibs still go ahead with the surgery. This may be a simple case of human nature - what drives many who choose to use tobacco also - the idea that "if it's bad, it won't happen to me."

In this scenario, a better way to make a decision would be to consider all the possibilities and ask if this would be ok with you. That is 'reactive hypoglycemia' - would you be ok if that happened to you? etc.

People want to believe the dream that a surgery can change a fat person into a slim one. However, any surgeon will tell you that the RNY is for making very fat people, somewhat less fat because after the first or second year, most patients experience a rebound gain of 50 percent or more of what they originally lost. Keep in mind that the medical profession considers even a small weight loss as something which will lower health risks.

And the underlying reason why most folks do something about obesity remains "improving looks" although we cover our quest for looks with a thin veneer of "health".

Often the medical profession has advocated unhealthy practices, especially in a field where there is not much research. Classic was the cover of a Journal of the American Medical Association in the 1930's, which featured a photo of a group of doctors smoking cigarettes! Cigarette ads in the 1950's were still featuring medical advocacy of smoking like "more doctors recommend Camels than any other cigarette!"

Even today, many medical providers do not aggressively attack the smoking habit as they do, obesity, despite the fact that the proofs for the dangers of smoking are now, well documented and the proofs for obesity risks are not well documented at all.

Your second question:

have you ever assisted a patient who had complications due to the RNY surgery? And if yes, were these complications caused just because of the procedure itself or did the patients have some previous condition, such as diabetes or high blood pressure or high cholesterol level?

Yes, I have assisted many ill longer term patients and in most cases, their problems were strictly due to the repercussions of their weight loss surgery. Things like "Leaky gut" causing auto immune disorder, bowel obstructions and ulcers in the small bowel due from the leakage of stomach acid (the small bowel does not have a protective covering against acid from the stomach) and those vitamins like calcium which cannot be successfully supplemented resulting in maladies such as osteoporosis etc.

Problems like this are predictable because of the nature of the surgery and are not unknown in the medical profession because there is a long history with a similar surgery done to treat ulcers in the first segment of small bowel. This surgery upon which the RNY was based, is called the "Billroth II" and the mere mention of this procedure causes many medical providers to pale due to the various illnesses resulting from it, however, the surgery was considered preferable to the death which an ulcer in the small bowel would have caused.

It's a no brainer that when a major organ system is so greatly re-arranged as done in the RNY, that there will be serious repercussions from the surgery itself. Those who claim "no repercussions" are never the medical providers but rather those early term patients who are still somewhat concepting the surgery as a "magic bullet".

You further commented:

the floor for sick WLS patients... Why is it such a difficult floor? It takes me a lot to believe that it can be more difficult than a floor crowded with patients who have terminal diseases.

This is hard to understand from the outside but severely modifying such an important organ system so that it works differently can cause painful, terrible suffering. The best way you can get a feel for some of this, is to read the messages on the "gone wrong" group suggested by one of those who commented:

ossg-gone_wrong

This group is rapidly approaching a membership of 2000, many of whom have had dreadful experiences with the RNY.

Another comment of yours:

your campaign against RNY made me think that it is a totally irreversible process and those who submit themselves to it are condemned to live ill for the rest of their life, when this is not true. Complications exist in all kinds of surgeries.

First, can you see where not all surgeries are the same? For instance, the death rate in gall bladder surgery is about 1 in 7000 people - the same as one finds with the lap band.

Secondly, the RNY is irreversible and if you carefully research you will find this to be true. The only procedure they can do with a "gastric bypass gone bad" (as medical providers call it) is to reconnect the small bowel and arrange the organs in a manner similar to the VBG or stomach stapling only. It's kind of a no brainer that you cannot remove 300 staples from a stomach which has been resectioned into 2 pieces.

Third, as for living ill for the rest of their lives, this also is true. Here is a quote from a WLS surgeon who is still doing the RNY:

"By doing this surgery, you're creating a medical disease in the body. Before you expose someone to that risk, you have to be absolutely sure that you are treating an illness which is equal to or greater than the one you are creating."
(Dr Edward Livingston, bariatric surgeon in Self Magazine, 4-2001)

Note his terminology... "medical disease" etc.

it takes me a lot to believe that a doctor would recommend it if he/she was aware that it wouldn't bring any benefits in the future.

You have to realize the manner of thinking in the medical profession and that is, for the moment, not necessarily for the future, for many reasons, one of which is that if a questionable procedure is done now, it is possible that problems occurring in the future will be able to be handled by newer treatments. (and it is true that treatments are being developed daily which are changing the face of medicine).

There is a whole body of research which suggests that people never have to lose weight for health and that any type of losing weight program, even one which seeks a healthy lifestyle, poses some pretty serious risks, especially if done again and again as is the case with 95 percent of the public.

The following blog presents a summary of that research and does provide the cites:

the case against dieting

I hope this has, in part, answered some of your questions and I do invite you to research those websites I have provided.

Further research can be done at:

obesitysurgery-info.com