Florida Hospital Celebration Health (see more articles like this)

Feeling like you never fit in?

When you are 100 lbs. or more overweight, it's hard to say what's more devastating:  The diabetes, the crippling back pain, or the feeling like you never fit in.

It is estimated that less than 5% of individuals who participate in non-surgical weight loss programs will lose a significant amount of weight and maintain that loss for a long period of time. According to the National Institutes of Health, most people in these programs regain their weight within one year. Sustained weight loss for patients who are morbidly obese is even harder to achieve. Serious health risks have been identified for people who move from diet to diet, subjecting their bodies to a severe and continuing cycle of weight loss and gain known as “yo-yo dieting”.

The fact remains that morbid obesity is a complex, chronic disease. Weight loss surgery, when compared to other interventions, has provided the longest period of sustained weight loss in patients for whom all other therapies have failed.

At Florida Hospital Celebration Health, three common weight loss procedures are performed:

1. Purely restrictive: Laparoscopic Adjustable Gastric Band
2. Combination of restrictive and malabsorptive but mostly restrictive: Roux en Y Gastric Bypass
3. Combination of restrictive and malabsorptive but mostly malabsorptive: Duodenal Switch with Sleeve Gastric Resection

The program's comprehensive approach to weight loss includes post-surgical after care, psychological, nutritional, and spiritual counseling, and life long support. Patients can experience a weight loss of up to half their total body weight within 12 to 18 months following surgery. And for most people, this means freedom from diabetes and heart disease and the energy to really
enjoy life to its fullest.