We can doweightloss surgery without scalpels, without blood, without anaesthesia.

Weight-loss surgery could beat diabetes

• by: From correspondents in Chicago
• From: AP
• March 27, 2012 3:00PM

NEW research gives clear proof that weight-loss surgery can reverse and possibly cure diabetes.

Two studies, released today, are the first to compare the benefits of stomach-reducing operations to medicines alone for "diabesity" - Type 2 diabetes brought on by obesity.

Both studies found that surgery helped far more patients achieve normal blood-sugar levels than medicines alone did.

The results were dramatic: Some people were able to stop taking insulin as soon as three days after their operations. Cholesterol and other heart risk factors also greatly improved.

Doctors don't like to say "cure" because they can't promise a disease will never come back. But in one study, most surgery patients were able to stop all diabetes drugs and have their disease stay in remission for at least two years. None of those treated with medicines alone could do that.

"It is a major advance," said Dr John Buse of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, a leading diabetes expert who had no role in the studies.

There were signs that the surgery itself - not just weight loss - helps reverse diabetes. Food makes the gut produce hormones to spur insulin, so trimming away part of it surgically may affect those hormones, doctors believe.

Weight-loss surgery "has proven to be a very appropriate and excellent treatment for diabetes", said one study co-leader, Dr Francesco Rubino, chief of diabetes surgery at New York-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center.

"The most proper name for the surgery would be diabetes surgery."

The studies were published online by the New England Journal of Medicine, and the larger one was presented today at an American College of Cardiology conference in Chicago.

More than a third of American adults are obese, and more than eight per cent have diabetes, a major cause of heart disease, strokes and kidney failure. Between five million and 10 million are like the people in these studies, with both problems.

For a century, doctors have been treating diabetes with pills and insulin, and encouraging weight loss and exercise with limited success. Few very obese people can drop enough weight without surgery, and many of the medicines used to treat diabetes can cause weight gain, making things worse.

Gastric Lap Band Surgery--with scalpels--- fraught with danger

Friday, August 07, 2009

Weight Loss surgery death rates down? No evidence of this!

An article on aol news with the headline of "Obesity Surgery death rates low" reads:

-Obese, but worried that surgery for it might kill you? The risk of that has dropped dramatically, and now is no greater than for having a gall bladder out, a hip replaced or most other major operations, new research shows.

Sounds good, doesn't it? Now you can have a gastric bypass and have it only be as risky as gall bladder surgery i.e. 1 death in 7000 surgeries.

But wait! First of all the study didn't exactly say that at all.

The finding of the study, another Dr David Flum study to be published in the NEJ on August 13th, which looked at the medical records of 3,412 gastric bypass patients and 1,198 given stomach bands i.e. adjustable lap band, was that there were 3 deaths in 1000 patients so that's still _a lot_ more risky than gall bladder surgery. 
[to be fair with statistics: there are multiple articles stating that in Australia the risk is only 1 death in 1000 patients. However one death is one too many.~~Michael]

Flum's own studies of 62,000 gastric bypass patients 6 years ago, found that 1 in 50 died within 30 days.

The "less deaths now" are attributed to "newer methods" and lap surgery. However, if you average the very LOW death rate of the adjustable lap band surgery in with gastric bypass, that's far more likely where the lower death rate figures come from.

That is the death rate on adjustable lap band surgery is 1 in 7000 or the same as a gall bladder surgery. And I sincerely doubt the death rate on gastric bypass has been reduced that much in the 6 years since Flum's other study (report delivered to the College of surgeons in Oct 21, 2003.[Study title: The Impact of Bariatric Surgery on Patient Survival: A Population-Based Study]) which was never formally published and which concluded by comparing desperately ill fat people hospitalized for other reasons than WLS, that even with such a high death rate it was slightly more risky to be fat than to have a gastric bypass.

It's called "cooking the books" and it's easy to see how they arrived at those figures. In 1198 lap bands, there were likely no deaths! And in 3412 gastric bypasses, there were likely 68 deaths within 30 days of surgery, however they probably took the table death figure which is 1 percent so that's 34 deaths.

Now lump them all together and that's 34 deaths in 4610 WLS surgeries or 8 deaths in 1000 surgeries. That's still more than the 3 per 1000 surgeries they are claiming so more cooking must have occurred. Simply, I have read nothing about the study being randomized and greatly suspect it was not randomized which means they could pick and choose the members of the cohort. That is, at the 10 hospitals they studied, there were likely far more patients than 4610 who had WLS but many were not included in the study for this or that reason.

Anyway, you get the gist. The gastric bypass isn't likely, any safer than it was in Dr Flum's study, 6 years ago. They just uh..re-computed because the results from the 2003 study which studied 62,000 cases of gastric bypass done in one hospital, didn't look so good (2 percent death rate within 30 days).

Fortunately for those providing gastric bypass, few will "do the math" or notice that the study was not 'randomized'. Unfortunately for those patients who have gastric bypass which Dr Terry Simpson emphasizes is over 100 years old (is essentially a modified Billroth II surgery originally done for duodenal ulcer), many may go in thinking that by some magic, the gastric bypass is now "safer".

I would suggest those who question, go to Dr Simpson's website and listen to the part of his online seminar about why he prefers the lap band to the gastric bypass and duodenal switch.

Posted by SueW 


 For informatino relating to VIRTUAL GASTRIC LAP BAND SURGERY,  with no scalpels, no pain, no anaesthesia, no blood, no side effects go to  Grassel Hypnotherapy

What exactly is Hypnosis?

The state of hypnosis is a condition that involves increased responsiveness and suggestibility, and in which the inner world of the imagination and feelings is granted a degree of importance usually given only to outward ‘ordinary’ reality.

It’s easier to describe than define. Under hypnosis, no stress hormones are released, the breathing and heart rate slow down and blood pressure drops. The stomach produces less acid and the bronchi dilate within the lungs. It also seems that hypnosis may boost the immune system, because within the blood vessels of a hypnotised subject the production of lymphocytes (white blood cells) is increased, and these defensive cells cling more firmly to the insides of the veins qnd arteries. These discoveries would seem to support the belief that hypnotharpy can help alleviate all manner of physical complaints, from asthma to cancer.

Scientists at Stanford University in California, have also discovered that during hypnosis the brain emits alpha waves—tiny rhythmic electrical impulses generated by brain cells.  Alpha waves denote a condition of mental alertness coupled with physical relaxation; they are also produced instates of meditation and when practising yoga. 

Freud taught that the unconscious is the repository of memories and impulses that are repressed by personal consciousness. [I think Freud had some serious mother issues]

Imagination if perhaps the most powerful function humans possess. Imagination and creativity have been the sole domain of humans for centuries. New studies, using non-human criteria, which is very hard to do, being humans and all, have shown creative problem solving abilities in dolphins and a few species of monkeys/apes.  Human imagination, creativity, fantasies, inspiration and intuition all bubble forth from the unconscious mind. The ability to put two unrelated things together to make something totally new is what makes us who we are.  Adding friction to a hunk of wood made fire for the caveman. Compressing highly flammable fuel and adding fire makes an explosion. 

Putting an explosion in a sturdy cylinder makes a cannon. Shrinking the cylinder, adding a little projectile makes a rifle. Putting cylinders around an axle makes an engine. Putting an engine on a kite makes an aeroplane. Putting the combustion chamber inside the projectile makes a rocket.  We do this all the time. We do this with everything. There are a zillion cookbooks in print. Each recipe has come from someone who said, “I’ll just add a bit of this and a bit of that, and see if it tastes good.” Sure cave men ate bird eggs, but somewhere down the line we found that whipped eggwhites, sans yolks, can be baked into Pavlova.

Humour is, for the most part, a story with a funny ending. The whole purpose of having an intellect that enables us to recognise the vignette, is so that we can learn from past experiences and predict future outcomes with the same recipe of experiences. Our minds race ahead to the anticipated ending, and the joke-teller makes a right turn and the last minute, a surprise ending. 

When in a relaxed state, we can imagine feelings and experiences. We actually feel the emotions that are attached to the experiences. And we can change the emotions attached to an experience. “What if I change my frustration towards my mother-in-law to pity? Then I’ll feel much better about her upcoming visit.”

 original author unknown

 For more information, go to: Grassel Hypnotherapy