Photo: Pexels.com Weight loss surgery can be a powerful tool to help you lose weight fast and maintain your fat levels long-term. All weight-loss surgeries work by minimizing the amount of food you can eat, forcing you to reduce portion sizes and making you feel satiated after eating only small meals.
The best weight loss surgery types available are gastric band, gastric bypass and gastric sleeve. All three types of bariatric surgery are safe and effective, but they differ slightly in how they work.
Let's take a look at the differences:
The best weight loss surgery solutions:
Gastric bypass surgery
A gastric bypass is probably the most common type of weight loss surgery, as it gives consistently reliable results with few side effects. Many doctors consider the gastric bypass to be the best weight loss surgery, as the procedure is very well understood, having been safely performed with consistent results for more than 50 years.
How does a gastric bypass work?
A gastric bypass works by reducing the size of the stomach and, therefore, the volume of food that it can accommodate. A large portion of the stomach is stapled together, leaving only a small pouch that is connected to the small intestine.
Due to the tiny size of the new stomach, only small meals can be digested effectively, so patients feel extremely full eating just a fraction of the amount they used to consider normal. As well as forcing patients to reduce portion sizes, a gastric bypass reduces the calories and nutrients that can be absorbed from food, further aiding weight loss.
Gastric sleeve surgery
A gastric sleeve, or sleeve gastrectomy, is one of the best weight loss surgery types available today. This procedure has high success rates and has evolved rapidly over the years to rival or even surpass the gastric band in terms of success. Gastric sleeves typically see less than 5% of patients regain their weight over the long term, so this type of surgery is understandably popular with surgeons and patients alike.
How does a gastric sleeve work?
Like gastric band surgery, a gastric sleeve aims to reduce the amount of food a patient can eat and absorb by altering the volume of the stomach. The key difference with a gastric sleeve is that instead of creating a stapled pouch and reconnecting the small intestine, a gastric sleeve procedure physically removes up to 80% of a patient's stomach.
If you've been unsuccessful at losing weight using other approaches, a gastric sleeve, despite sounding rather drastic, can keep weight off for the long term, helping some patients to lose a staggering 50% of their body weight.
Gastric band surgery
Gastric band surgery has been around since the late 1970s and divides opinion amongst doctors and patients alike. Whilst gastric bands aren't always the best weight loss surgery method available, they still have their place, though more advanced techniques are rapidly overtaking them in popularity.
How does a gastric band work?
As the name suggests, gastric bands are rigid bands of material that wrap around the top of the stomach. Like the staples used in a gastric bypass, the band sections off a part of the stomach, resulting in a deduced volume for digestion.
Early gastric bands came with all kinds of complications, including instances of the band slipping, food intolerances and even vomiting. Today, many of those complications have been reduced or even eliminated, thanks to the adoption of silicon adjustable bands and several decades of experience.
Summing up
Whilst weight-loss surgery is now commonplace and considered very safe, all three types of surgery come with risks. Weight loss interventions of this type are not "quick fixes" and require a lifetime commitment to staying healthy and keeping a close eye on nutrition. For more information on the different types of procedures and to learn about the benefits of having this type of weight loss surgery abroad, visit Weight Loss Riga.
