Industry Giants Push Gastric Banding Obesity Surgery
Once dismissed by some surgeons as a gimmick, gastric banding — in which a silicone band is wrapped around the upper stomach to restrict food intake — is now the focus of a fierce competition pitting consumer-products giant Johnson & Johnson against Botox maker Allergan Inc. Venture-capital-backed outpatient centers are popping up to implant the bands. Growing ranks of surgeons are touting the procedure at free public seminars. All see a vast market in a country where diet and exercise programs have failed to slow an obesity epidemic.
Like any major surgery, gastric banding carries risks of infection and even death. The silicone device can shift after surgery, causing it to lose effectiveness. No one knows how long it will last inside the body, so patients may eventually need another surgery to replace or remove it. And some surgeons say the weight loss achieved through banding isn’t as much as other weight-loss procedures. “There’s no question that advertising and the commercialization of the band is what’s driving it,” says J.K. Champion, a bariatric surgeon in Atlanta. Bariatric is a medical term derived from the Greek word “baros” meaning “weight.”
TheStateOf. . . Obesity. What do you guys think of gastric banding and bypass? Would you have either of these surgeries if you were obese? Or are these people just too lazy to lose the weight on their own?
Filed under: health
Hm… OTC Tylenol can cause death… not sure how wise it would be to focus on the kinds of harsh side effects without actual numbers. I’m guilty of that many times.
Just like a narcotic addition, promiscuity, depression, and staying in unhealthy relationships… obesity is a physical display of some mental illness.
“I can’t control it, so control ‘it’ for me”
I’m not a fan of it nor do I think I would recommend it to loved ones. More than anything, it makes me sad. It’s much more than just eating w/ little exercise.
Mental illness indeed KJ.
This is perfect for a society addicted to convenience and the chance to get something for nothing. Getting rich quick, zapping our food in a microwave, fast food as a staple, so this is the SOS.
Untill people reject these options this stuff will keep coming.
This push is directly correlated to the type of thinking Maceo subscribes to. Perfection is exhaulted as the goal and folks start selling/buying the fastest means to the destination.
Yet another way all the industries work together to keep you stupid and drug-addicted. Corporate food puts things like nitrates, aspartame and free glutamates (MSG) in food, all of which make you fat and sick. Big Pharma gives you drugs that supposedly address the illnesses/symptoms that result from eating toxic food and, when that doesn’t work (because it never does), plastic surgeons — who wouldn’t have jobs if the foregoing didn’t exist — swoop in and gut you like a pig to make you thinner.
And then a person has the surgery and is back at square one because nowhere in there was a lifestyle change; a change of mentality; a love for one’s self and a consciousness about what we put in our bodies.
If people ate real food, not processed crap made in factories, this wouldn’t even be an issue.
Nice jab RJEsq. Contrary to your hate filled thoughts (don’t be afraid to seek professional help for those), I don’t support this. I support a healthy diet and a trip to the gym for those battling stuff like the person in the photo above.
Trust me dear, the type of lady who would consider this type of surgery wouldn’t even catch my eye.
No hate Maceo, That one was just too easy.
I think this surgery should be mandatory for 6′2″ black men knocking on 300 pounds who think they are cute because “a white woman at work rubbed up against their arm”.
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Yall need to step down of those high horses. This isn’t for your “kinda chunky” cousin trying to get her sexy back. Its for the morbidly obese. Like your 5′1 290 pound aunt that doesn’t go anywhere but to the corner store and doesn’t wear much more than a nightgown (in the daytime) or a robe. (Not really my aunt but I’ve seen patients like that many a time!)
Now maybe she shouldn’t drink red pop and grape kool aid all day, but thats what unfortunately thats what some people do. The example may be extreme, but there are people out there (and lots of em) that fit the bill.
Some folks are beyond the point of reasonably helping themselves. There are also genetic mutations that can make someone be predisposed to being morbidly obese.
Get your weight up (or down in this case)
http://care.diabetesjournals.org/cgi/content/full/28/11/2703
I knew Rod got off too easy with that one. I was patiently waiting….
That should read 5′1″ 290#
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with this surgery for the morbidly obese. Everybody else needs to train for a marathon.
And my opinion is not swayed by the fact that my client has patents on this technology. I know one of the guys who wrote some of them and he says that this surgery was meant for those dreadfully obese people JP talks about. It’s who they study when they come up with this stuff and who the inventors have in mind. This is also a very invasive surgery and should not be likened to facelifts or implants.
The people who typically get this surgery are told by their doctor and are very desperate. People who would elect to get it are probably desperate in the head.
Denmark Vesey: I think this surgery should be mandatory for 6′2″ black men knocking on 300 pounds who think they are cute because “a white woman at work rubbed up against their arm”.
Roderick: You are truely obsessed with me.
I can always lose the weight but at least l don’t look like Flava Flav. That you can’t lose…unless you go to a plastic surgeon.*smile*
RJEsq: I knew Rod got off too easy with that one. I was patiently waiting….
You were waiting for what?
I know I look damn good so I don’t have to have my coworker to let me know that.
I lift five to six times a week so I know everything is in the right place. *smile*
” I can always lose the weight but at least I don’t look like Flava Flav. That you cannot lose….unless you go to a plastic surgeon. *smile* ” -Rod
Lol! Rod don’t put that “*smile*” at the end to soften the blow. Fawk it, you said it stick by it.
It’s about to be ON and crackin!
Who are you, anonymous?
I think this surgery is okay for, as others have said, the morbidly obsese. The person who is bedridden and hasn’t left their house in 2 years. The person who is at immediate risk of death because they can’t take 2 steps without wheezing. I think the surgery is a useful tool to get the ball rolling. A foundation. So, the person stilll has to do their part afterwards by making the necessary lifestyle changes. Diet, exercise, mental committment, etc. Trying to lose 5 pounds the good old fashioned way is damn hard. I couldn’t imagine trying to lose 400.
Rod, I am Anonymous.
Thats why it says “Anonymous”.
You don’t go asking blind guys for driving directions do you?
Are you feeling a little anxious about DV’s response to your Flava Flav dig? LOL!
You know he’s not gonna let that one slide.
Perhaps if the focus was on promoting health, instead of just on “losing weight”, there would be a more sane approach to body size. While there may be a tiny minority of people with thyroid disorder or something similar, one must wonder how someone becomes the size of a piano.
http://www.msgmyth.com/brochure.pdf
What’s remarkable to me is that the same doctors and secularists who stubbornly believe in evolution, refuse to let Darwinian natural selection take its course in situations such as these. They can’t have it both ways.
I am not scared of DV. I am sure he will come up with some of his tired old lines that he has used a thousand times.
I only asked because I have had to re-enter my information a couple of times because wordpress won’t save my info from one thread to the other.
These options were designed for the morbidly obese but thats not how its applied. A laypersons perception of morbidly obese is much different than what it takes to be classified as such. I know two women, a mother and daughter, who both had gastric bypass and neither were morbidly obese. This is back in 2003-2004.
Doctors will sell this product to almost anyone defined as overweight thats willing to sign on the dotted line.
Dina, I agree with this…
“Perhaps if the focus was on promoting health, instead of just on “losing weight”, there would be a more sane approach to body size.”
That was well said and IMO sums up the current state of affairs.
And LMAO about someone being the size of the piano! Hilarious.
To the physicians and their lawyer (Rich), isnt this the procedure that a person can “eat right through?” You know, where they just stretch out the part of the stomach that’s not in the band.
Ain’t that the truth Robyn? Someone can be thin and horribly unhealthy and a little bit chunky and fine.
What this bypass nonsense is about is what all the other vanity issues are about - creating industries that make money by making people feel imperfect. There would probably be 5 (if that) fully employed plastic surgeons in every major city if they were relegated to reconstructive surgeries after accidents.
But to help the thousands of them that infest Beverly Hills afford the house, new BMW and student loans and to save them from obsolescence, they have to create more and more “procedures”. To sell those “procedures”, people have to be convinced that a) they are imperfect and b) that they are woefully impotent to address such perfect and it is only the high priests of the medical profession that can redeem them for that sin of imperfection.
If someone cared about these obese people, they’d get them some help for their mental issues, send them for colonics and bar them from doing their own grocery shopping.
…..And call folks like Ma…, and call folks out when they make proclamations that do nothing but continue and facilitate the madness.
Bah!
“You are truely obsessed with me.” “I am not scared of DV.”
Roderick
Calm down Bra. I’m just messing with you man. If you want to look like Eddie Murphy in The Nutty Professor, that’s your business. But your argument that 280 is healthy is simply … stupid. With black people dying of diet related diseases faster than flies, I find your attitude … dangerous.
Not in the least bit obsessed, I find you odd. But other than that, you aight with me. Your actually one of the more entertaining and informed posters.
Yet I must confess I do have beef with educated, intelligent, supposedly heterosexual black men who don’t like girls (always have an excuse not to be with one), yet who go out of their way to mock marriage and family while subscribing to every arrogantly ignorant secular meme distributed by the establishment media as if it were the gospel.
You come off as the spokesman for “I don’t need no woman, I got a left hand” Negros, so I’m going to be grabbing you in your digital collar every chance I get.
Dina. “one must wonder how someone becomes the size of a piano.”
That’s hilarious. Your point regarding the commercialization of vanity and the corruption of the medical industry is brilliant.
The fact is the Standard American Diet (SAD) is designed to make people obese and sick. Sick people are good for business.
If educated black people were as vocal about eating healthy food as some of us are about the evils of HIp Hop, our people would be in a better place.
(Just in case. Jasai this is not a condemnation of “obese people”. It’s a condemnation of eating until your guts explode)
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The laparascopic gastric band which is like taking a mechanical silicone belt that goes around the stomach and can be tightened to decrease the stomach volume(actually less invasive but has a higher failure rate) and the gastric bypass(…they re-route the stomach and… yeah you don’t even want to know) can both be f@cked up if you drink enough milkshakes. The good guys doing this surgery on people screen them for months and do try alternative means of “lifestyle modification” before deciding to do a procedure. There’s all sorts of screening and counseling that goes into the decision. Alot of the time they don’t even get paid for the work.
DV cleaning out his closet!!
No one left standing!!
The problem is that they are running ads on TV promoting this surgery. The entire article is long but interesting. It shows how much they push this and other medical treatments on people that probably don’t need them.
Yeah J, those ads are designed to play on insecurities and make people feel imperfect.
The other day, I saw an ad for Lasix that said “two eyes for the price of one”. Although I can’t articulate why, that is incredibly perverse. I thought, “I’ll keep my contact lenses, thanks”.
Now that I’m home during the day, it’s amazing how many weight loss commercials come on in the course of an hour. No doubt those ads speak to lots of women who don’t feel particularly sexy after having a baby.
It would be funny if it weren’t so sad that those ads work.
LMAO @ anonymous!
yes this surgery is aimed at morbidly obese people, but i think it will soon be marketed as a ‘quick fix’ for those not necessarily fitting into that category. no pun intended.
I just finished my 7th (and last) day of the 10 day ‘Master Cleanse’ detox (also called the Beyonce diet).
Since last Tuesday I have had not had any solid food, subsisting on the lemon juice, maple syrup, cayenne pepper concoction you have to drink. Losing weight is a byproduct of the cleanse. And you WILL lose weight.
(It is also a bit disconcerting to still have BMs a week after you have not eaten any food.)