#unless medically necessary you should not be rerouting or bypassing a major digestive organ

[is-the-owl-video-cute]

I would like to talk about this actually because I don’t think enough people realize how serious these sorts of “procedures” actually are. Because yes, one horrible mutilation to your digestive in the name of being skinny isn’t bad enough, there’s multiple iterations of this distressing Sawbones trend.

This is the lap band. Often touted as being the safest because the band can be removed or at least opened up to allow more food through. What does it do specifically? Makes it so that you can only eat as much as will fit in that teeny tiny little pouch. The issue is that the stomach itself as a full functioning organ is designed to stretch to hold food. The artificially made pouch is not. Eat a bit too much on a normal stomach and you typically just feel bloated and full and need to lie down for a while. Eat a little too much with a lap band, and you can cause the esophagus to stretch out too much and stop contracting. This can lead to severe acid reflux and loss of the ability to swallow properly. In an extreme case this could instead rupture the esophagus and/or stomach which is a medical emergency for obvious reasons. The band can also slip out of place and construct the larger part of the stomach, causing severe pain and discomfort. This is the only one of these procedures that is reversible.

Gastric sleeve is another form. It amounts to removing 80% of the stomach, permanently limiting the amount of food you can eat at a time DRASTICALLY. It can also cause frequent or constant drops in blood sugar, hernias (the small intestine may enter the incision site, or the mutilated stomach may slip out of its place and interfere with other organs), severe acid reflux, malnutrition, and frequent vomiting. Incision site can also build up scar tissue that further obstructs the stomach and prevents eating normally.

Gastric bypasses are among the worst though, and there are multiple kinds because of course there are, so I’m just going to cover the most common in the US. The one in the OP is an RNY bypass. Basically cuts the top corner out of the stomach, sews it to the small intestine, and then also sews the remainder of the stomach to the small intestine so gastric acid and other digestive materials can still meet the food. To get an idea of how small the remaining part of the stomach is, it holds about 28g. A normal stomach in an adult human holds around 1200g. For reference, 28g is around the size of a domestic mouse and 1200g is around the size of a red tailed hawk if that’s more easy to visualize. But I digress. RNY bypasses are so special they get all the side effects of the lap band and the gastric sleeve, but don’t give the medal for worst long term issue caused by bariatric surgery to the hernia yet, because we have dumping syndrome with the bypass. What’s dumping system? Well, the intestine actually wasn’t designed to take food straight from the glorified esophagus. Due to concentration gradients and pH levels clashing, you could be dealing with severe diarrhea as soon as 30 minutes after eating. Any meal but especially meals with sugar has a very high chance of causing this. But don’t wait, there’s more horrific bonuses if you get this surgery, because there’s also our great friend bowel obstruction and gallstones. Again, along with all of the above risks.

Theres something really insidious about how gastric bypass advocates deny that essential organ mutilation is unhealthy.

"I've lost so much weight I'm so healthy" your stomach is mutilated.

"My doctor is praising my progress" your stomach is mutilated.

"I fit in so many more clothes now"

Because an essential, life sustaining organ in your body was cut up and your digestive system rerouted.

Health isn't the end all be all of value, humanity or importance but I feel like there is a huge lie here when this is "healthy" and it's just ignored.

Sorry to just bring this up out of no where but I was reminded of how little this is really talked about in bypass circles. Like, no matter what, you are now unhealthy. The spector of health continues. The Ouroboros is unbroken. Only this time it's doctor approved.

-mod squirrel