The Top Five Reasons To Consider Weight Loss Surgery

Are you considering Gastric Bypass Surgery? Perhaps you’ve got a Lap Band procedure on your agenda, or extensive liposuction planned. Many times, patients considering these procedures get a lot of ‘flak’ from family and friends who assume these procedures have only aesthetic value.  Weight loss surgery can make you look better, it’s true, but there are some very compelling health reasons on the table as well.

According to doctors at the Baylor Regional Medical Center, the top five reasons to consider weight loss surgery are:

Reason Number One: Reverse Type 2 Diabetes

Type 2 Diabetes numbers are reaching epidemic proportions in this country, and weight is a direct contributing factor.  Obesity is the prime contributing factor to this devastating, life altering condition: weight loss surgery can effect the dramatic weight loss required to reverse the disease.  In fact, 82% of patients with Type 2 Diabetes who had weight loss surgery reversed the condition within two years.

Reason Number Two: Increase Fertility

Obesity does not equal infertility; obese women can and do conceive and have healthy babies.  However,  obese women who do have weight reduction surgery do experience significantly enhanced ovulatory function, and have a higher rate of successful pregnancies than their obese counterparts.

Reason Number Three: Improve or Eliminate Hypertension

Weight loss surgery can dramatically and rapidly address hypertension. A study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in 2004 stated that hypertension was eliminated in 61.7 percent of weight-loss surgery patients and significantly improved in 78.5 percent of patients.

Reason Number Four: Ease Joint Pain

Joint pain can manifest in knees, hips, ankles, shoulders, elbows, wrists — anywhere where excessive weight puts undue strain on the joints.  Weight loss surgery reduces the amount of strain placed upon those joints, resulting in an enhanced quality of life and reduction or even elimination of pain!

Reason Number Five: Increase Longevity

If you want to live longer, lose weight.  Obesity can shorten your lifespan by up to twenty years.  That’s twenty years you could spend with your children or grandchildren, twenty years exploring the world, twenty  years doing the work you love, twenty years being you!