Gastric Balloon or Gastric Sleeve: Which Suits Whom
If you have started researching weight-loss procedures abroad, two names come up again and again: the gastric balloon and the gastric sleeve. They are usually presented side by side, as though they were the small version and the big version of the same treatment. They are not. One is a temporary device that is placed […]
Gastric Sleeve Risks and Complications: An Honest Timeline
Most articles about gastric sleeve complications give you a list. A list tells you what could go wrong, but not the thing you actually want to know: when each problem tends to appear, which ones the hospital will catch before you leave, and which ones only show up weeks or months later, when you are […]
How Much Weight Will I Lose After Gastric Sleeve, and How Fast?
Almost everyone asks this before they ask anything else: how much weight will I actually lose, and how long will it take? It is the fair question. You are being asked to accept an operation, a permanent change to your stomach and a lifetime of follow-up, and you want to know what you get in […]
Questions to Ask Your Surgeon Before You Book Bariatric Surgery
By the time you sit down with a bariatric surgeon, you have usually spent months reading. You know what a sleeve is. You have watched the videos. What most people have not prepared for is the consultation itself: forty minutes in which a stranger decides whether to operate on your stomach, and in which you […]
How to Choose a Hospital for Bariatric Surgery Abroad: A Checklist
Choosing where to have bariatric surgery is a bigger decision than choosing which operation to have. Two hospitals in the same city, offering the same sleeve gastrectomy with similar equipment, can give very different experiences: one assesses you properly, explains the trade-offs and stays in contact for years; the other books you in, operates, and […]
Nausea and Vomiting After Gastric Sleeve: Causes and Fixes
Almost everyone who has a sleeve gastrectomy feels sick at some point in the first few months. It is the most common complaint in follow-up clinics, and the one patients worry about most, because vomiting feels like something has gone wrong. Usually it has not. University Hospitals Sussex NHS Foundation Trust tells sleeve patients plainly […]
The Liver Shrinking Diet Before Gastric Sleeve Surgery
If you have a gastric sleeve booked, somewhere in your pre-operative paperwork there is a diet you are asked to follow for the last two weeks before surgery. It is usually called the liver shrinking diet, or the pre-operative liver reduction diet. Patients often mistake it for an ordinary crash diet. It is not one: […]
Protein After Bariatric Surgery: How to Hit 60 to 75 g a Day
Almost every bariatric team sends patients home with the same instruction: get your protein in. It sounds simple until you are three weeks out of a sleeve gastrectomy, your stomach comfortably holds about a quarter of a cup, and a single chicken breast looks like a full day of work. Protein is the one nutrient […]
Vitamins After Gastric Sleeve: Your Lifelong Supplement List
A gastric sleeve removes about 75 to 80 percent of the stomach. That is what makes the operation work: less volume, less hunger, a faster sense of fullness. But the same change narrows the doorway through which vitamins and minerals enter your body, and it does so permanently. Smaller meals mean fewer nutrients arriving. Less […]
Am I a Candidate for Gastric Sleeve Surgery?
Almost everyone who starts looking into weight loss surgery asks the same question first: do I even qualify? It is usually asked as a question about one number: people calculate their body mass index, compare it against a figure they read somewhere, and conclude they are in or out. A reasonable place to start and […]