If you’ve reached a point in your life where other means of weight loss, such as diet plans, meal replacement, and exercise isn’t helping your weight loss goals, then the last resort to consider is Gastric Bypass Surgery, Weight Loss Surgery (WLS), or Bariatric Plastic Surgery.

In this series, we discuss the benefits and consequences of Gastric Bypass Surgery or Weight Loss Surgery in order to give you the best information possible so you can make the best choice for your weight loss goals and your weight loss plan.

The topics of this series on Gastric Bypass Surgery are:

1. What is Gastric Bypass Surgery?
2. What is the Cost of Gastric Bypass Surgery?
3. Life after Gastric Bypass Surgery
4. Books on Gastric Bypass Surgery
5. Diet Products that help with Gastric Bypass Surgery

What is Gastric Bypass Surgery?

According to a local encyclopedia on weight loss:

Gastric bypass surgery makes the stomach smaller and allows food to bypass part of the small intestine. You will feel full more quickly than when your stomach was its original size, which reduces the amount of food you eat and thus the calories consumed. Bypassing part of the intestine also results in fewer calories being absorbed.  This leads to weight loss.

The most common gastric bypass surgery is a Roux-en-Y gastric bypass.

In normal digestion, food passes through the stomach and enters the small intestine , where most of the nutrients and calories are absorbed.  It then passes into the large intestine (colon), and the remaining waste is eventually excreted.

In a Roux-en-Y gastric bypass, the stomach is made smaller by creating a small pouch at the top of the stomach using surgical staples or a plastic band. The smaller stomach is connected directly to the middle portion of the small intestine (jejunum), bypassing the rest of the stomach and the upper portion of the small intestine (duodenum).

This procedure can be done by making a large incision in the abdomen (an open procedure) or by making a small incision and using small instruments and a camera to guide the surgery (laparoscopic approach).

Here is a Gastric Bypass picture showing how the stomach is made smaller and its connection to the small intestine:

Because the stomach is smaller from the Gastric Bypass Surgery, you will feel full with very little food consumption. This leads to weight loss.

The next part of our series will investigate the Cost of Gastric Bypass Surgery or Weight Loss Surgery and also the lifestyle choices one has to make AFTER Gastric Bypass Surgery or Weight Loss Surgery.

As in all things, you decide what is good for you.  Our goal at ThriveBetter.com is to help you win – to help you be your best self.

Choose Health Today.  Choose to be Happy Today.  ThriveBetter!