In the latest study conducted by the American Society for Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery (ASMBS), more than 30% of Americans fall within the category of “obese” or an estimate of 15 million people. The startling thing that the ASMBS had also found out is that of the millions and millions of Americans who suffer from extensive weight gain, only about 1% of them actually go under the knife for corrective dietary procedures. Even though the number of people seeking out surgical therapy is still small, Dr. Marc Lussier and Dr. Michael Feiz, both plastic surgeons in Los Angeles, said that the number of patients who are trying to help themselves through plastic surgery is steadily increasing.
Dr. Lussier and Dr. Feiz practice cosmetic surgery in their clinic in Los Angeles, and said that more and more people are leaning towards a quicker and more efficient approach to weight loss, which is surgery, than sticking with the more traditional way of dieting and change of lifestyle. Although the latter would be more financially appealing, the idea of going through the physical and psychological torment that is dieting usually scares off people who are in the extreme ends of the obesity spectrum. The worse that could happen is that they could sink into depression due to the diet, and may potentially end up worse than what they started with.
The procedure that is most popular right now for people wanting to lose a huge amount of weight with minimal surgical intervention is called the gastric sleeve. Dr. Feiz explained that this procedure is gaining widespread popularity because of its efficiency at hitting two birds with one stone. He said that the procedure targets two aspects of a person’s diet, the hormonal and the physical. In a gastric sleeve, 70-75% of the stomach is sectioned off, leaving behind a smaller yet fully functional storage place of food in the body. Dr. Lussier said that the simple reason behind this is that the smaller the stomach of a person, the easier it is to feel full and satisfied with the amount of food ingested. For the hormonal aspect of the treatment, there is such a hormone called Ghrelin, which basically tells the person that he/she is hungry. The mechanism of secretion of Ghrelin is pressure-sensitive, particularly to the pressure exerted by food against the stomach wall. When there is no pressure exerted, meaning there is no food in the stomach, Ghrelin is secreted causing the person to feel hungry. When food is pushed up against the stomach, thereby increasing the pressure, Ghrelin production is halted, thus giving the person a sense of satiation. Dr. Lussier believes that the gastric sleeve also covers this base, since a smaller stomach would require less food to be filled-up, thus less food to minimize the secretion of Ghrelin.
Even though gastric sleeves seem very effective in reducing one’s weight, Dr. Feiz and Dr. Lussier insist that proper consultation should always be done with a board-registered plastic surgeon before a patient goes under the knife. Any cosmetic procedure, no matter how minor or major, will be bound to have restrictions and side-effects. Surgeons who have built good rapport with their patients stand to benefit much more from the weight loss program simply because patients tend to understand more fully the steps that have to be taken in order for the therapy to work. Patients who also trust their physicians more also tend to follow their advice more strictly, thus increasing the efficiency of whatever therapy they are currently undertaking.
