More About Surgery
Reader Midknyt alerted me to this article about an upcoming study to compare the three most common types of weight loss surgeries. It seems that the lap-band surgery is the safest, and gastric bypass more risky than previously believed. (No statistics are provided to back up these claims.)
"But regardless of which method is used, studies show an inescapable reality: No surgery gives lasting results unless people also change eating and exercising habits. 'The body just has many ways of compensating, even after something as drastic as surgery.'"
There's also a brief mention of a drug called rimonabant that "blocks a pleasure center in the brain." But I like my pleasure centers!
"But regardless of which method is used, studies show an inescapable reality: No surgery gives lasting results unless people also change eating and exercising habits. 'The body just has many ways of compensating, even after something as drastic as surgery.'"
There's also a brief mention of a drug called rimonabant that "blocks a pleasure center in the brain." But I like my pleasure centers!
3 Comments:
They had this hoopla about Meridia too, and it turned out to be a bust. I've seen tons of posts of people that wanna buy this new whats-its-name drug already.
I think that the surgery has been overused, although it is not necessarily a bad idea as a last choice. The malnutrition caused by it is quite something to watch. I've had friends and family who've had every single kind, the 3 described there, and it is rough.
You know, I hadn't thought about the rimbonant that way. It seemed like the stuff was a wonder drug! But I wouldn't give up feeling pleasure for the ability to stop eating, even as bad as it gets sometimes.
Rimonabant only blocks one of many receptors involved in feeling pleasure (incidentally, it's a cannabinoid receptor, which as you might guess from the name is the family of receptors stimulated by use of marijuana). But, Aventis published findings from the clinical trials a couple of months ago, and it does look like some people who take the drug had psychiatric side effects (2.9% of people taking it at the therapeutic dose reported experiencing depression and 1.7% anxiety). So, in most cases, it seems that overall "pleasure" would not be affected (but you'd probably enjoy smoking pot a lot less).
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