Star Jones’ Weight Loss Surgery – A Good Idea?
August 18, 2007 by Staff
Filed under Health, News, Weekly Columns
Columbus, OH (Akiit.com) – You’ve heard about it in the media: Weight loss surgery is sweeping the nation by leaps and bounds. Due to widespread coverage of her rapid weight loss through surgery, Star Jones has become the poster child within the black community and abroad for this option for losing weight.
Many people are considering weight loss surgery as a “quick fix†for a long standing problem. The question we all have though: Is it safe and is it necessary? Let’s review the facts and you be the judge for yourself.
FACT #1 – There are two main types of weight loss surgeries: Bariatric Surgery (Star Jones’ option, also known as gastric bypass surgery) and Lap-Band Surgery. The danger: Both surgeries leave the patient nutritionally deficient with a sentence of lifelong medical surveillance.
FACT #2 – Candidates for surgery must be at least 100 lbs overweight with a BMI over 40. Inherent risks are even more considerable when a patient is obese. The danger: Since all patients are obese, it makes it particularly dangerous when in combination with being bed-ridden after surgery, as blood clots can form in the legs and lungs. If left unchecked in the lungs, it can be deadly.FACT #3 – Weight loss surgery in fact changes the body’s biochemistry. The danger: Once the body’s biochemistry is altered, the body is thrown out its state of natural balance. It then becomes the breeding ground for the very diseases and even more serious ones that often result from obesity itself.
FACT #4 – Star Jones is living proof that bariatric surgery can provide lightening fast weight loss. The danger: Just like people who hit the lotto become overnight millionaires and in one year lose it all, so too is the case when people lose the weight too fast. Within two years they regain the lost weight. This is because they were not psychologically prepared to handle the success nor properly educated about the underlying behavioral, environmental, etc…causes of obesity.
These are some strong facts, and only a fraction of the dangers that exist with this very extreme weight loss option. Many physicians that have a financial interest involved will downplay or minimize these dangers, but they are very real and absolutely exist!
Most of us that have just an ounce of common sense can gather that weight loss surgery does solve one problem, but inevitably will cause many more just by sheer virtue of its extreme nature.
Our desire should be to not only get the weight off – permanently, but also to be healthier, to look healthier, with a glow that can light up Madison Square Garden.
If you want rapid weight loss that is accomplished safely and naturally without adverse side effects, there is an alternative that is helping the masses. More importantly, people are being educated about the true causes of obesity and subsequently are liberated! They are indeed free and positively exude a confidence that can only come from knowing that they can and will keep the weight off!
We all are stars in our own right; we just need to be given a real opportunity to be able to shine!
By Makeisha Lee