Lap Band Side Effects

Whilst lap band surgery may seem like the solution to a generation of an obesite nation, it is a very expensive operation and there are some lap band side effects. Here is an interview with Dr. Fielding from the NYU Program for Surgical Weight Loss in Australia who discusses lap band side effects in relation to diet and nutrition.

Here is transcript of the interview...

Dr Fielding: 'I think the side effects are that you just cant eat some things that you used to eat. The most common would be steak and cold white chicken out of the fridge and some breads.

Now if you take the average punter in the street and tell him, listen mate there's no more steak for you it's over and he didn't have a band in him, he'd look at you like you were nuts. But the difference is once the bands in there and working, you just don't care.

But I think that's what most people are anxious about long term is how am I going to be if i can't eat a steak.

I used to like steak as much as the next Aussie, we're meat eaters and I really was anxious about it but I just don't care and I can go to Peter Lugers or Sparks or Ruth's Chris and they'll be there eating those huge steaks and I'll just have piece of salmon or a piece of trout, something like that and I'll be as happy as Larry, you know. So that fear doesn't translate in to reality long term once you have the band in place.

We don't see malnutrition, ever, we never see it. We occasionally see iron deficiency anemia in heavily menstruating women because they just don't eat as much red meat, we probably would advise a woman in her forties to take a multivitamin with iron.

There is no evidence that younger people need to take that, but there's no harm in taking a multivitamin a day with some iron, that's really the only nutritional thing.

One great benefit of this for the long term point of view is that women can have babies with this band in, very, very safely and both Paul O'Brien in Melbourne and I have both published a big series of women who had bands in place who had babies and we've looked at how they've gone, how this pregnancy compared with previous pregnancies they've had when they were obese, checked the co-morbities attached to the pregnancy and how the babies were and we found the mothers had the same weight babies as before.

The mothers did not get blood pressure or diabetes and they had very happy, safe pregnancies, so we're really comfortable using this device in women who are going to have babies and I'm very comfortable to leave it inflated during the pregnancy as long as the mothers are having no problems.'

End of interview.

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So it appears that there are no major lap band side effects other than the types of foods you choose to eat. There does have to be some adjustments and for hardy meat eaters there may need to be some

sacrifices, but as Dr Fielding states, once the patient is feeling and seeing the benefits of the band in place and is beginning to lose weight, it generally is not a big problem, the advantages outweigh the disadvantages.

Also some patients complain of trapped wind or excessive burping after eating as some other lap band side effects, but generally these are not major when you consider the overall long term health benefits of losing weight.