Surgery to Lose Fat

When somebody is desperate to achieve something, he or she does not hesitate to try everything under the sun. Surgery to lose fat can be said to be the desperate man's (or woman's) choice for slim body. Without denying the advances of modern medicine and the miracles that surgeons perform every day to save people's lives, it is still shocking for many people in their right mind how can a healthy person volunteer a life-threatening operation just in the name of vanity.

Because the truth about fat-loss surgery is exactly that – while 5 or 10 or 20 percent of the patients need such surgery because without it their lives are in danger, the majority of the people who choose to have such an operation endanger their lives in the name of vanity. For instance, about 1 out of 12 patients, who have undergone gastric bypass surgery die because of the complications of the operation. But it seems that this fact is not shocking enough for “brave” optimists, who are willing to go an extra mile and endure extra pain in order to strip the extra weight.

As it turns out, very often the patients (or victims, it depends on the point of view) do not know in advance what exactly is going to happen to them in the operating room and above all – in the months and years after the operation. If they knew, or if they took the warnings in earnest, probably they would have never gone the extra mile.

First, extracting fat from your body (or liposuction) is not as painless and easy as tooth extraction. Well, tooth extraction is also a surgical operation and it does require a qualified dentist to do it but the idea is that extracting fat is not the same as extracting teeth, though sometimes even tooth extraction can lead to complications. With liposuction, you also get anaesthetic (full or local), so you will not scream with pain during the operation but after that you usually need a week or a month to recover.

One of the weaknesses of liposuction is that if you are prone to accumulating fat tissue, you will regain the fat in some time, unless you keep to a very strict diet. Anyway, if you manage to keep on a strict diet and exercise regularly, you will be able to be slim without liposuction. When you regain the fat in a year or two, you have the choice to undergo the liposuction operation once again. Probably you guess what your choices are two years after the second liposuction? Another operation. Soon you might discover, that liposuctions have become for you as routine as visits to the dentist.

While liposuction generally is not a life-time solution, gastric bypass surgery is. Does it sound too good to be true? If it does, you are right – even though gastric bypass surgery is a life-time solution and after that you will hardly be able to regain fat, even if you want to, the price for this is really high.

First, gastric bypass surgery is a major surgical operation. Essentially, when this operation is performed, your abdomen is opened and part of your intestines are cut. This way you will always absorb less food and will throw out more. Yes, it is a radical solution and if you survive the operation and the post-operational period, you will say farewell to body fat but not all patients are that lucky.

It is not a matter of a skillful surgeon only. Your body might simply not be able to recover from this major operation. That is why gastric bypass surgery is recommendable only for extremely obese people, whose health is already at risk because of their extreme weight.

Second, besides the immediate life risk, another hazard of gastric bypass surgery are the negative traces it leaves on your body - scars and the baggy skin. Scars remain for life, though after a couple of years or decades they fade. Baggy skin is removed by additional plastic surgery during which the surgeon cuts the excessive pieces of your skin – in a sense like the tailor cuts pieces of your clothes, in order to make them fit to your new body.

Gastric bypass surgery is still relatively new and there are no long-term studies on its effects. What is worrying is that it becomes a kind of a fashion, especially in the United States, where obesity has epidemic proportions. While it is still not a cheap operation, affordable by the average Joe and the healthcare system pays only for those gastric bypass surgery operations that are life-saving, it is dreadful to think what might happen, when such an operation becomes affordable for everybody.