Tuesday, May 15, 2012

Stress and the Lap-Band

Just found this great info about why the band gets tight during stress and at different times of the day. I actually believe the guy. Click here to read the original blog post by Dr. Terry Simpson, MD (Lapband surgeon from Arizona). BTW, he has a lot of other blog posts well worth reading.

Here is his post. the part in red about the balloon in the band being semi-permeable might explain why I have problems when I fly.

"Often times patients will come in because their band feels too tight. They find more difficulty with some foods, and are uncomfortable. They ask me “does stress cause the band to tighten?” The answer is, yes, it does.

The biology of stress is this: when you have stress, be it physical stress (like an illness) or mental stress (like your mother-in-law coming by for a short two week visit)…the body reacts by retaining fluid. You may notice that wedding rings are tighter, and there is more swelling in the legs at night.

The balloon of the band is a semi-permeable membrane, meaning it is osmotically active. In plain English: the more water you retain, some is transmitted to the band, so it swells.

If a patient has 5.5 cc in their band (we measure it) and they come in and it feels tighter, we find they have 6 cc in the band. Where did the ½ cc come from? That is from the extra water the body is carrying. Since the balloon on the band is semi-permeable it will retain more water also.

This is the same reason that most people find the band to be tighter in the morning. In the evening you may notice you have some swelling of your ankles – by gravity your body water has gone down to the legs. In the morning that swelling is gone, and the water has gone back to the central compartment of the body where the band is. If we measure the band in the morning it can have 0.25 to 0.5 cc more in it (which can make a difference).

This is also why we don’t like bands being too tight. People need room for stress – of all kinds. Leaving room in the band to allow for this, means that patients will have fewer difficulties."

Huh. You learn something new everyday.

6 comments:

Jacquie said...

With all due respect, I dont buy that at all. The part about your body retaining fluid? Yes. Not the part about the band retaining some of it. My doctor used a ring as an example for me. It fits fine and then stress, you fly, or in the morning or whatever, you retain fluid and the ring becomes too tight. Body flushes water out and ring fits again.

Tina@The BanditGirl said...

Thank you for sharing. This actually makes a lot of sense. I'm wondering, though, what keeps the saline the doc puts in from leaking out? Hmmm.

MandaPanda said...

Dr. Simpson is actually my doc! I have found though that lapband docs all seem to have different theories because they can't see the band and all the water and everything all the time to know how the body really interacts with it. :)

Rhonda said...

Sounds like it could be a legitimate thing to me. Thanks for posting, it's an interesting article!

Theresa said...

Very interesting. I definitely get tighter with stress and anytime I'm retaining fluid, my band is affected.

Barbara said...

Stress equals tight band in my life.. I was surprised to read that that the membrane was semipermeable .. I would think that might harbor bacteria in your system as well..

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