Feb 05 2009
Do you practice safe snacks?
The phrase “gastric condom” sounds like the name of a punk band, but in fact is a real device being tested to combat obesity and type 2 diabetes. The concept is that there’s a device that is inserted through the digestive tract and that puts a membrane around the first 60 centimeters of the small intestine. The membrane’s presence causes the stomach and intestines to react in such a way that reduces the absorption of nutrients and causes rapid weight loss, equivalent to gastric band surgery. The process promises to be cheaper than gastric bypass or gastric band surgery, is more easily reversible and would require little change in eating habits.
Somehow, I’m still wary of it.
I have known people who have gotten gastric band surgery and had some dramatic results with it. I understand their decision and won’t fault them for it, but I’m a little hesitant to consider surgical alteration to lose weight. I’m only slightly less iffy on the idea of doing it to reverse my diabetes.
The criteria for recommending bariatric surgery revolves around Body Mass Index (BMI) which is a measure of your weight vs. your height. At my weight prior to my diagnosis, I might have been a candidate as I had a BMI of over 35 and I had a complication (hyperglycemia). While I wasn’t very happy with my body at the time, I hardly considered myself in a condition where the best option was to surgically alter myself and I’d never trusted the BMI, knowing that it would count a body builder who weighed the same as I did as being just as obese as my sedentary butt.
If you are at a point where diabetes and weight is a critical issue for you, if your weight is due to overeating, if you can’t find another way to lose weight and if you’re doctor recommends it is safe, I can see getting the surgery and the gastric condom being a viable alternative to having your stomach stapled to itself. But it seems that nature of the device offers a quick fix to a complex problem, perhaps a little too quick.
