Weight Loss Surgery
Learn how surgery changed one woman's life and what you should know if you are considering this radical approach to weight loss.
By Donna Rae Siegfried
Last holiday season, Paige Elliott, 42, Arthritis Today’s advertising coordinator, had a wish come true: She was approved for bariatric, or weight-loss, surgery. Like so many of us, Paige has struggled for years to lose weight. As she saw it, her situation was dire and called for a drastic solution. As her weight went up, her health went down. Obesity was no longer an insult just to her vanity; it was causing grinding knee pain, escalating blood pressure and pre-diabetes, all of which she knew would get worse if she didn’t lose weight – a lot of weight.
So while most of us were ringing in the New Year, Paige was recovering from surgery, and now, not quite a year later, she is 65 pounds lighter, much healthier and feeling just flat-out happy, she says.
Amazing. Impressive. Appealing. A means of weight loss that seems to work? But, hmmm, surgery? We wanted to know more. Who wouldn’t? So we, her supportive yet skeptical coworkers, decided to investigate.
If you’re severely overweight, like Paige, weary from failed diets and scared for your health, you might want to know more, too. As we dug in, our eyes were opened to the fact that there’s nothing easy about bariatric surgery. It takes courage and commitment – more than any diet we’ve ever heard of – and it’s clearly not for everyone.
The Epidemic
How many people would like the idea of losing 65 pounds in a year, with the realistic prospect of losing even more as time goes on? A lot. Obesity is pervasive in America. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta has been tracking its rise: In 1990, 11.6 percent of people in this country were obese, and by 2002, an astounding 22.1 percent were.
What’s so alarming about this escalation is that nothing contributes to health risks like obesity. Excess weight raises the risk of arthritis – lower-body joints can’t endure the physical stress – plus a host of other serious and life-threatening diseases: cancer, type 2 diabetes, gallstones, heart disease and sleep disorders. And the risks for these diseases get worse as weight goes up.
As a result, weight loss has become a legitimate and prominent concern in the medical arena. Doctors are increasingly telling their patients to lose weight and backing that up with referrals for nutrition counseling, prescriptions for weight-loss medications and, now, recommendations for bariatric surgery, which is where Paige ended up.
For 15 years Paige’s weight has been a problem. Through high school, college and a few years beyond, her weight was normal – she had a very healthy body mass index (BMI) of 19 when she was 25 – then her weight started to creep up at a rate of five to 10 pounds per year when she took a desk job. Over 10 years, she gained 100 pounds, and by 2004, her health was in serious decline because her weight wasn’t.
Paige knew her health depended on losing weight, but she, like many people, had never been able to achieve permanent weight loss.
Within one year of losing weight, say experts, 30 to 35 percent of people regain it; and five years after losing, 50 percent or more are likely to have bumped back up to their starting weight. There’s no one answer to explain why that is, but research is showing that in some people, the complex interplay among genes, hormones and metabolism can make the body fight back against even the strictest weight-loss efforts. That means, according to the latest theories, making lifestyle changes – even appropriate calorie restriction and intense, regular exercise – will not be effective for some people, even though it is for others.
Paige tried what seemed like everything – eating less, eating only certain foods, joining support groups and weight-loss programs, following specialty diets, taking prescription weight-loss medications and exercising. “I’d lose and regain, again and again,” she says. She started to feel obesity was her destiny.
In 2004, when Paige regained the weight she had recently lost and then some after stopping a prescription weight-loss medication, she gave up and entered a downward spiral. With her weight up to 256 and her body mass index at 39, the pain in her knees was excruciating when she walked up or down steps; osteoarthritis (OA) surely was developing. Walking to a nearby restaurant for lunch left her winded, and she had chronic heartburn. She developed sleep apnea: Sleep studies showed her breathing stopped an average of 15 times per hour every night. Eventually, her cholesterol level and blood pressure got so high her doctor wanted her on medications to reduce her risk of heart attack and stroke, and warned her she was in a pre-diabetic state. Because diabetes and heart disease run in her family, Paige knew she had to do something serious.
