When I first met Amy, she was 100 pounds over weight and diabetic. Amy relates, “my triglycerides were up around six hundred.” Amy’s primary care doctor told her she had to get her life back on track and lose weight...or else. "I tried every diet under the sun" explains Amy, "and nothing worked for me. I couldn’t even exercise because I was so big. I was forty-one years old and I weighted two hundred and twenty seven pounds. I knew I had to lose weight or I was going to die.”

Amy came to one of my free seminars on weight loss surgery. After learning about the different weight loss options, she chose to have the Lap Band procedure. The Lap Band is a restrictive procedure that is very safe and can be done as a same day surgery. It requires no stapling, bypass, or intestinal re-routing. The Lap Band works by restricting the amount of food a patient can eat, while allowing all the digestive processes to continue uninterrupted. It works by placing a silicon band around the top portion of the stomach, creating a small pouch that receives a limited amount of food. An inflatable balloon rests against the stomach on the inside wall of the band, and an external port allows this band to be filled with a saline solution to reduce or increase the size of the pouch.

The Lap Band is the least invasive of the bariatric procedures. There is no cutting, stapling, or intestinal re-routing, and the Band is both adjustable and reversible, and carries a low risk of malnutrition. Weight loss with the Lap Band is slow initially, (1.5 to 2 pounds per week), but at two to three years a patient with a Lap Band loses as much as a gastric bypass patient.

"I chose the Lap Band procedure, which Dr. Beltre performed in 2006,” she relates. “I lost four pounds the first week after my surgery, and I averaged two pounds per week after that until I reached and then passed my goal weight!

“I started noticing improvement in my health about four months after my surgery, and while I have changed the types of food I eat---I don’t eat much red meat or pasta---I find I am very comfortable with my reduced appetite. “Now that I have lost all that weight, I feel so much happier” says Amy. Amy no longer has to live with the threat of diabetes or high cholesterol. She is now more energetic and happier thanks to the Lap Band!