Lara Pizzorno is the author of “Your Bones: How You Can Prevent Osteoporosis and Have Strong Bones for Life – Naturally” and a member of the American Medical Writers Association with 29 years of experience specializing in bone health.
Recently we asked Lara if she would help us provide a series of short, ongoing videos to help you (our customers and readers) stay up to date on the latest facts and science related to bone health.
In this latest video, Lara discusses the different reasons why people undergo bariatric surgery. Watch the video below (or read the transcript provided) and let us know what you think in the comments. 🙂
Hello, my name is Lara Pizzorno. I’m the author of Your Bones and I’m here today to share with you some information that I hope will help you to have healthier bones. In the last couple of videos we’ve been talking about bariatric surgery which is surgery to treat morbid obesity because these surgeries are greatly increasing in how often they are done as more and more of us in the population become obese. And they have very, very negative effects on bone. And these negative effects have not really been reported yet to the general public. And so I’m hoping to provide you with some information if you’re considering bariatric surgery or have had it done already that can help you to have healthier bones.
So in this video I’d like to discuss some of the reasons why people do wish to have bariatric surgery.
Morbid obesity, in addition to making it very difficult to just get around, typically brings with it what medical types call comorbidities. These are other disease conditions that accompany one another and increase our risk of death.
The comorbidities of obesity include insulin resistance, type 2 diabetes, chronic low grade inflammation, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, increased risk of cardiovascular disease, heart attack and stroke, gall bladder disease, liver disease, osteoarthritis, asthma, obstructive sleep apnea, incontinence, menstrual irregularities and plenty more.
Both the Roux-en-Y and the sleeve gastrectomy procedures that we began talking about in the last couple of videos result in not only rapid and very impressive weight loss, but in more than 60% of the patients treated with these procedures, they greatly lessen or even completely resolve many of the life shortening conditions that accompany obesity including diabetes, high cholesterol, high blood pressure, and obstructive sleep apnea.
Unfortunately though, as researchers have now begun to learn, bariatric surgery also changes the digestive tract in ways that immediately, significantly, and adversely impact our ability to absorb calcium and many other nutrients that are necessary for our bones and also for our overall health. And both the Roux-en-Y and sleeve gastrectomy procedures are irreversible.
That’s the findings of the two most recently published studies, which I mentioned in the first two videos, which have confirmed the results of a number of other studies that have also revealed accelerated bone loss that shows no signs of stopping after these procedures, are cause for real concern.
In our next video, we will learn from these two studies what happens to bone within the first two years after gastric bypass surgery. And we’ll also talk about what doctors are now beginning to see in patients 9 to 10 years after their bariatric surgery. I hope this information will be helpful to you and that you’ll tune in next time. Thank you.
Sources:
Obesity facts, figures and guidelines. West Virginia Division of Health Statistics accessed 3-6-15 http://www.wvdhhr.org/bph/hsc/pubs/other/obesity/commor.htm
Buchwald H, Oien DM. Metabolic/bariatric surgery worldwide 2011. Obes Surg. 2013 Apr;23(4):427-36. doi: 10.1007/s11695-012-0864-0. PMID: 23338049
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