good evening T2’s (and everybody else for that matter 
SO… i talked to my Dr.after last weeks labs were done… woo-hoo, my last A1C was 6.9, while not great, i’m excited to be this under control… i asked him his opinion “lap-band” VS. gastric bypass. Now don’t get me wrong, i’m not a person to run to surgery. Nearing 50 years old, i had one emergency procedure done as a teenager.
being a somewhat older family guy with two young boys, i just can’t find the time or energy anymore to make it to the gym. Gastric Bypass i don’t think is an option for me as the potential side effects and problems that accompany this procedure just isn’t worth it. On the other hand, Lap-Band is less evasive and i’ve heard alot of good things, but now it’s time for the realistic side of life and I figured I’d reach out to the community here on TuDiabetes regarding the “cons” of the lap-band procedure. It’s been hard to find the “true” facts about lap-band.
I’m curious if there is any of my TuDiabetes (T2’s) that have had this procedure done or if you guys know anybody who has had this procedure performed. If so, I’d love to hear from you… I want to hear the good (and particularly bad alike).
My Dr. told me that my pancreas, for the most part, does not create insulin anymore… if i do this procedure, while my diabetes will never go away, he said I would be able to greatly reduce my current insulin intake, and i might likely go off my cholesterol and blood pressure oral meds.
i weigh about 220lbs and could stand to lose 50lbs which would take me to my goal weight.
thanks for reading everybody and i (hope) to chat with many of you!!
Ross
I think you’re supposed to be at least 100 lbs overweight, and a BMI of 41% or higher to be able to qualify for these types of operations… but I can’t say for sure.
I just low carbed, instead, and went from 248 lbs to 186 lbs (that I currently weigh), in about 5 months. My insulin production has gone down really drastically, and I’ve gone from an A1C of 10.5% to 5.5%. I take no meds, and my hypertension went away. I don’t even low carb as much as Atkins or Bernstein recommends! I consume just enough carbs not go over my blood glucose goal levels.
While I won’t say ‘don’t do it,’ I will say leading a healthy lifestyle is less time consuming than dealing with life after these kinds of operations and their potential complications… and you will really not be able to eat much of what you like or enjoy, ever again. It’s a very drastic thing.
I know this a little bit off topic but I think at 220 you are not that bad as far as weight goes and I think as a type 2 you would still need some excercise in your life even if you got the procedure done. If you have two young boys dont you want to get them moving too. I am so scared that my son is going to wind up with diabetes that I make sure that we all get excercise at least 30 minutes to an hour a day. It does not take long and you dont have to go to the gym to get moving. I have a 7 year old and every since he was 4 I had him on a bike following me. He tells me one day he will ride his bike further than me and I hope so so he can keep the type 2 monster out. I sometimes wind up working out at 9 pm because of work on all the normal running around. I have a treadmill at home and If i cant make it on the bike i’ll get my 30 to 45 minutes even if its late.
I know its hard to get motivated with life happening but I think if you try even 30 minutes a day of excercise you would be surprisingly delighted at the results.
Believe it or not I am 40lbs off my ideal weight and I am going to hammer it out one way or another.
take care and good luck on the decision
I know 2 people who had the lap band (non diabetics bt the way).
its been 10 years.
they go through phases where they lose the weight, but soon put it back on.
how do they put the weight back on?
well it works by being ale to adjust the ‘band’ by getting the doctor to inject water into the band (or take water out of the band) to adjust the pouch size of your new stomach - this in turn determines how much food they can eat.
So after all the surgery, cost, effort…at the moment they have both enalrgened their ‘pouch’ so they can eat more…more…more…and its just scary to watch them devour chocolates and sweets as they can put these down easily. So they both initially lost half of their bodyweight in about 2 years, but over the last eight years put a quarter of that weight lost back on.
Point is, its not fool proof.
Try your hardest for alternatives before you go down this road.
Tthing is, doctors always explain procedures with a nice smile…or…“come into the parlour said the spider to the fly”…
My reaction to this post is… I’d skip a surgical procedure. Here’s my thinking behind it. If you don’t have the habits or patterns or time to exercise off the weight, yes, the surgery will help, but what happens after? If you don’t change the behavior that got you there in the first place, wouldn’t you just eventually end up back there?
I’m very anti surgery unless medically necessary. And even if it were necessary to save your life, the habits have to change or nothing else will. I’m sorry, but I don’t think it’s a good idea. A friend of my mother recently (well, about 2 years ago) had the Lap-band procedure, and while she did lose weight initially, over time she has regained it all. Her habits and patterns didn’t change so she went through the expense, the time, and the complications to wind up exactly where she started.
I understand not having the time, energy or inclination to exercise, but in truth, we have to take some steps towards our own health. I hope that you get the information you are looking for here. Good luck, but my advice is to start with the mundane. Find a way. We all have to. Good luck again.
Just my two cents, but a lap band procedure seems drastic for 50 lbs. You have a beautiful family!
Agree with the other suggestions to go low carb. You won’t be hungry & it’s not a starvation diet. Lots of low carb followers here to help you. In addition to losing weight, you’ll be using less insulin to cover lower carb meals & that also keeps weight down. My lipid profile improved greatly when I ditched the ADA diet in favor of far fewer carbs. Recent research points to carbs, not dietary fat, being largely responsible for unhealthy lipids.
Whether to lose weight or not, exercise is important for health. I’m not a gym person, but I walk a lot (very hilly where I live) & use weights at home. How about biking with your sons?
Oh, John, awful what your sister-in-law has been through from this.
“being a somewhat older family guy with two young boys, i just can’t find the time or energy anymore to make it to the gym.”
I’m sure it’s hard. But this statement shows there is more you can do to make your situation better. There is always time if you want to find it. You don’t have to go to the gym. Maybe get up 15 min. earlier and run in place while watching the news. Get some cheap weights to use also. My brother doesn’t make it to the gym. He has a few basic things and does the get up slightly earlier in the am thing.
I don’t know much about that surgery but if your doctor is saying those values will come down then I suspect that your food does not get digested properly. That’s a huge problem that may not show up for years.
You need to do some more research on this. The Roux-en-Y gastric bypass (RYGB) and bilio-pancreatic diversion (BPD) surgeries have been noted to help type 2 diabetics. The lap band is different. A lap band is useful to reduce stomach size and affect weight loss.
You have to understand, it is thought that these surgeries work because of changes that they make in the triggering of hormones in the digestive tract. Look at the “anti-incretin” theory (http://care.diabetesjournals.org/content/31/Supplement_2/S290.full). The idea is that in type 2 diabetics, part of the problem is a signaling malfunction and that
If you are actually markedly insulin deficient, you would be a poor candidate for these procedures. No amount of improved signaling will result in a pooped out pancreas producing more insulin.
It is still a research question about whether syndrome X (elevated BS, cholesterol, and BP) is cause solely by elevated blood sugars. If you reduce your blood sugar to normal levels, you may normalize your cholesterol and BP. I am not aware of any results that suggest that bypass surgery does anything for cholesterol and BP independent of normalizing blood sugar levels.
Byetta and Januvia are drugs that affect the same signaling. If you want to explore whether your signaling may be playing a factor in your diabetes, you would be better served by talking to your doctor about Byetta.
And in the long-term, you need to rethink the whole gym thing. There are no easy fixes. If you want to be healthy and fit, you are going to have to exercise. In fact, if you want to be in top condition, you will have to exercise in ways that are going to be uncomfortable, painful, and hard. You “will” hurt your self and you will often not want to do it. But if your priority is to be in the best shape possible, then you “have to do it.” If it means getting a home gym, fine. If it means making some compromises, then do it.
I agree with wil being 220 is not too bad of a weight problem to consider this procedure. which is temp by the way without changes in eating habits and diet it will only result in a yo yo effect.
Let those kids be more of a motivator than a burden, take them walking with you, all you need is 30 min’s a day.
I’ve been researching Victoza injection…which luckily is how I came upon this wonderful TuDiabetes site!
I am - T1-D - multi-pen shots since 14, so…34 years now…no complications as yet…knock on wood.Other than recent weight gain, as getting into menopausal years soon. I’m trying to research how this may help. I came across Dr. Richard Bernstein…not to be confused with The DR.BDiet 
!!
Dr.Richard Bernstein has some interesting research being a T1 himself since 9 years old and believes all Type2’s and 1’s should be on Victoza shots.Has anyone tried this? It might be the thing for the minor weight loss and BL balance as many site it has amazing results, once getting over the issue of nausea/vomitting in the initial couple of weeks. I’m going to the endo on Monday to get the prescription and her advice but will keep you posted if I go ahead.Thoughts anyone…
I believe that extreme diet, bariatric surgery/bypass, lap band are pointing out something is hapenning when you
haul back on the constant daily calorie barrage against a hunter gatherer’s old gene super efficient digestive track and system.
Yes some folks argue for hormone signalling change but I believe that hauling back on calorie load gives body chance to get rolling again and get body’s own insulin back working. There is too much of this and results.
Not cure but stops body rot and issues but must maintain the same diet and calorie restrictions.
Newcastle report attached.
Like diabetic Welfare Queen, here you have to be at least 100 lbs overweight, go through a battery of tests medical, physical and emotional and pass before they will consider lap band or bypass.
That said, I have two friends who have had lap band…it wasn’t the easy road that it sounds like. You still have to watch your intake, measure, weigh whatever…and you eat 6 - 8 very small meals a day. There will be foods you can’t eat or your system can’t take, and those will make you sick to your very small stomach. Both friends were diabetics and went off their meds for about a year, and now, slowly, they are creeping back into new meds, and without their whole stomach, are having a very hard time digesting those enough so that they will be used to control their diabetes. They both expect to be on insulin sometime in the coming year. If you don’t have time for exercise now, will you have time after lapband…because in order to be healthy with any surgery, you should be exercising after your doc clears you. One of these people does no exercise, and her losing is stalled because her metabolism is so low. The other exercisies three times a week, swimming and she is still losing.
It’s a “crap” shoot no matter which one you chose, losing weight is not easy…or more people would be doing it and sticking to it. My suggestion to you is to visit with people who have done the surgery in your area…pros and cons…and then really think about whether the cons that they told you, you can live with for the rest of your life…
Jims, if you read the Newcastle report carefully, you will see that the extreme 600 calorie diet was tested out on patients who had normal C-peptide levels, i.e. they were already producing good amounts of insulin on their own. The diet helped by improving their insulin sensitivity. It is useless for anybody who does not produce much/any insulin anymore - e.g. like the OP.
Lisa:
Thank you for your detailed reading and analysis. This is not a negative but clearly shows WE are not analyzing
a person with type 2 diabetes and applying an appropriate tuning stratagy to each case to stop the type 2 riot.
The add insulin approach at every turn on a type 2 is not adequate nor necesssarily appropriate in all cases. Type 2 Diabetes Insulin resistance is not a monolithic single organ pancreatic disease that suggests just throw insulin at it. On top of it all the classic question - will cinamon help my type 2 diabetes demonstrates the lack of understanding out there and what we are up against.
Being on these useless stratagies for 30 years only to find it was the liver blasting my body into type 2 land is not
helpful and only demonstrates that a detailed proper testing and analysis of the complex multi-organ system
over a 2 to 3 day data collection and analysis and identifying the full aspects of organ, diet and exercise mis cues and optimization is needed with parallel tuning of the factors rather than tuning the issue one problem at a time and by one 15 minute Doctor’s visit at a time and one single shot lab test at a time.
The explosion of cases of type two diabetes is crying out for some revised thinking, analysis and approach.
For me scouting around looking for any turbulence in the data treating type 2 diabetes suggests the following:
a) turbulence resulting from bariatric surgery, lap band, restrictive diets suggests we have tripped over something
revealing some aspect of body operation not explained by the current heat seaking missle locked on target thinking that is NOT reducing type 2 cases - their doubling. Nothing else going on out there of interest suggesting gains.
b) medical science/drug industry is struggling to add drug tools to address many of the signalling hormones not withstanding everyone is looking for the one silver bullit solves all - unified field theory to solve all cases.
c) the improvement in farming and grain production by science along with the massive explosion of couch potato tools has also seen parallel explosion in type 2 diabetes cases - why?
d) the human body has all sorts of optimizations to reduce starvation by body but seems to have nothing to stop/block overloading body and muscles with glucose and preventing rot.
Thank you for writing.