A gastric band can be helpful in reducing the amount of food someone eats, thereby contributing significantly to weight loss. The procedure is normally carried out using keyhole surgery, with a band (or belt) being placed around the top portion of your stomach. This means you feel “full” after eating only a small portion of food.

There are three major advantages to using a gastric band:

• It’s adjustable – so you and your doctor can control your weight loss without unpleasant symptoms caused by too much restriction
• The key hole surgery means that you don’t need a long recovery period
• It’s reversible – although a gastric band is meant to be in place for life it can be removed if circumstances warrant it, with no permanent changes to your stomach

Gastric bands have now been used worldwide since the 1980s and by and large they work successfully – on average, people lose between 50% and 65% of their excess weight in the first two years after the band has been fitted.

While patients will start to feel the benefits long before the two year mark, it’s important to remember that a gastric band can only do so much – it’s vital to eat healthily and take plenty of exercise as well.

Like any form of surgery, having a gastric band fitted carries risks, and these are always higher if you are excessively overweight. Statistics suggest that 1 person in 10 with a gastric band needs further surgery at some stage in the future.

After the band has been fitted it will probably be adjusted two or three times in the early months to optimise the setting for your weight loss programme. Once that’s been done, the band is maintained at that level until you’ve achieved your weight loss target.

For more information please visit  http://www.thehospitalgroup.org/gastric-band.php

Most sufferers try and get by with spinal problems for years – making their situation worse; this is especially prominent among people who are overweight.

I know that treating existing back pain will always be a part of my vocation, but I would like to be able to educate people also, on how to prevent these problems in the first place.

That’s why I’ve created my DVD’s. If you’re currently suffering from back pain, or spinal problems then these simple exercises will definitely aid your mobility and ultimately ease the discomfort. However if you’re concerned about developing back pain, or just want to take preventative measures, then these DVD’s are a brilliant way of ensuring you maintain the fullest range of mobility.

If you’re overweight, your body naturally places more pressure on your spine. This can make mobility more and more difficult and it’s important to address this problem sooner rather than later. The exercises I go through are easy and very simply, yet highly effective.

There are two DVD’s; one aimed at able bodied people and the other is for sufferers with a more restricted range of mobility – have a look at them and see which one is best suited to you.

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DVD 1 – Exercises for Able Bodied People

Only £9.99 – CLICK HERE TO BUY NOW

This DVD is for you if you are fairly active and mobile and do not suffer from a chronic/disabling condition. To be able to practice the exercises in this DVD you need to have full mobility in your joints, specially spine, and be able to go on the floor without any restrictions. You could still do the exercises if you have severe back pain, however, if you have had a surgery on your spine, have spinal fusion or suffer from Sciatica you will find DVD2 more suitable for you.

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DVD 2 – Limited Mobility and Wheelchair Users

Only £9.99 – CLICK HERE TO BUY NOW

This DVD is more suitable for people who have issues with their mobility, have spinal fusion or severe sciatica. The exercises also cover getting off the floor in case of a fall and demonstrates the independent manouver on and off bed for people who have these mobility issues. Exercises for wheelchair users is another chapter in this DVD, which focuses on this group of people.

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An Indiana pizzeria worker is set to undergo both back surgery and Lap-Band surgery as part of a worker’s compensation arrangement after being injured during work. The surgeries, according to a ruling by the Indiana Court of Appeals, will be paid for by his employers.

The Lap-Band details stem from the fact that 25-year-old Adam Childers weighs 380 pounds. Although technically, he was 40 pounds lighter in March 2007, when he was hit by the freezer door in the kitchen of Boston’s Gourmet Pizza, which caused him to fall down and injure his back. For the record, he also smoked 30 cigarettes a day.

The results of the accident reportedly caused Childers heavy back pain that had spread to his legs and was said to require an operation. However, he was medically advised that this operation wouldn’t be successful unless he lost some weight.  According to court documents, in fact, his doctor felt that if he lost enough weight, back surgery might even turn out to be unnecessary.

But it had also been finally determined that Childers had been unable to lose weight on his own during the period he had his accident. And so his weight situation at that time, when added to the incident, were found to create a “single injury” status that has made him eligible for both back surgery and the Lap-Band procedure … at the expense of Boston’s Gourmet Pizza.

As an analysis of the case on Workers Comp Insider recently noted, “With the Childers decision, employers in Indiana have been put on notice that at least one conspicuous part of the labor pool – obese people – bring the risk of substantially higher costs following injuries in the workplace.”

The implication is that employers might be inclined to discriminate against obese job candidates. Meanwhile, time will tell whether Childers will want to keep his job at the pizza shop after having Lap-Band surgery, since the frustration of not being able scarf down the occasional pepperoni pie may be too much to bear.

Source: Weight Loss Surgery Channel

Here’s her story...

Between us, my husband Barry and I weighed almost 50 stone. Barry had a gastric bypass a year ago and it has changed his life. I am determined that the same operation is going to change my life next month.

As this is my first blog post, I thought I would tell you just a little bit about what obesity has done to me and my life. It is not as if we haven’t tried to do something about it. “Yeah, ok”, I hear you say. But it is true. I have spent years yo-yo dieting. I thought I was doing the right thing. For every pound I lost I put several back on. The pounds pile on so quickly. The bigger and bigger I got the more and more difficult it was to get rid of it and the more and more desperate I have become. Imagine what it is like to hate the way you look – not just in a particular outfit, every single day of your life.

I was worried about going to a restaurant because you are concerned about whether you will fit in the chairs.

I couldn’t go on overseas holidays because I couldn’t fit in the aeroplane seats.

I was stared at in the street every day.

I couldn’t do the simple things I love in life like going for a walk or a cycle ride.

I got into a friend’s car one day and the seatbelt was too small to strap me in.

I have to take at least three pain killers every day, and have done for years, because I am in agony with my knees and back due to the extra weight I am carrying.

I know what you are saying – “just do something about it!”

I have been. Well, so I thought. But, I was not doing the right things. I now understand why yo-yo dieting doesn’t work. I now understand that it is not necessarily what you eat – everything in moderation – but the amount you eat.

After years of trying to do something about it on my own and failing, I have decided that enough is enough. I can’t live like this anymore. I am scared about what my weight will do to my health in the long term. I am sick of being judged because of the way I look. It has just got to stop. It may seem like an extreme choice to some, but the gastric bypass operation is my route to a new life.

I am almost 20 stone and a size 28. Things are going to change. Follow my thoughts, feelings and experiences during my weight loss journey every week.

Read more of Wendy’s diary here

On BBC1, there was a documentary called Fix My Fat Head, a video diary about an obese woman’s attempts to lose weight by addressing her ‘issues with food’ with the help of various counsellors.

On BBC3 was My Big Fat Wedding, documenting a pop star’s attempts to shift six stone before getting married.

Unfortunately, I was too late to tune into ITV’s The Biggest Loser, about assorted morbidly obese people trying to shed their bulk, but luckily the various satellite channels offered no fewer than seven documentaries about the world’s fattest mums, grans, teenagers and babies.

Programmes about obesity have become the new home improvement shows – the latest reality TV pornography.

Five years ago, it was impossible to escape the endless stream of shows telling us how to sell, improve or clean our houses.

Now, it’s impossible to turn on the box and not be faced with images of wobbling, dimpled flesh, tearful confessionals and grotesque obesity surgery.

Yes, it’s fair to say that fatties are big business – and the public is lapping it up. I admit I’ve found myself watching a documentary about the world’s fattest man – his 60-stone frame, how he eats six buckets of chicken for breakfast and has to be lifted with the aid of a whale sling.

But as I watch such tales of woe about how fat people just can’t beat this ‘disease’, I am aware that I am (excuse the pun) helping to feed the lucrative obesity business.

The real message of these programmes is that it’s OK to be life-threateningly overweight – it’ll get you on TV! – and that we should all try to be a bit more understanding and accept obesity as a modern-day ‘addiction’.

The question of personal responsibility doesn’t come into it. Everyone mutters ‘There, there’, but no one says: ‘Stop whining and go on a diet.’ I am 20lb overweight. My life isn’t at risk and I can still leave my home without having the roof removed.

The reason I am overweight is that I have big ‘issues’ with food: I put far too much of it in my mouth. My other ‘issue’ is that I don’t move my flabby backside nearly as much as I should.

I would love to be able to blame an unhappy childhood, low self-esteem or loneliness – as so many of the inadequate people who appear on these programmes do – but the reality is that I had a happy time as a child, I’m brimming with confidence and have an active social life. The reason I’m fat is that I’m a little greedy.

We are in the middle of an obesity epidemic and teenagers have a shorter life expectancy than their parents, yet these TV programmes are treating greed and lack of self-control as an illness.

Chicken pox, measles and flu are all diseases, because you can catch them – usually through no fault of your own. Since when did stuffing your face with junk food become an illness?

After dithering over the TV schedules, I decided to watch Fix My Fat Head, where the bright, funny, attractive – and very fat – journalist Hannah Jones set out to try to understand why she over-eats.

Shedding bulk: Contestants on the UK version of The Biggest Loser, which is one of many programmes about obesity

Well-meaning counsellors spoke endlessly about her ‘complicated relationship’ with food – presumably psychobabble for ‘gluttony and bone idleness’.

The psychologist was convinced Hannah must be using food as an emotional crutch to make up for an unhappy childhood, but it soon became clear she’d had an idyllic time growing up.

What was glaringly obvious to the viewer, but which none of the experts mentioned, was that Hannah ate chips with nearly every meal and piled her plate high with the sort of portion sizes that would keep a dozen hungry truckers full for a week.

She also got in her car for any journey longer than 100 yards. Mystery solved, Dr Watson.

If  obesity really is due to people having hard lives, then why is it a modern phenomenon?

Are we really meant to believe that today’s have-it-all generation has more to worry about than our grandparents and great-grandparents did at a time when obesity was rare?

The fatty industry is distorting our minds about something we all have the power to control, but choose not to.

Marilyn Monroe would turn in her grave if she could hear today’s size 22 teenagers describing themselves as ‘curvy’ – they are blissfully ignorant of the fact that a curve goes in and out, not just out.

Because of the culture we live in, where few people are forced to pay for their own failings, obese people know they don’t need to worry about dieting, understanding nutrition or exercising, because the NHS will pay for them to have a gastric band or stomach stapling.

One of the more shocking documentaries I watched recently showed a group of huge people attempting to gain even more weight in order to qualify for free surgery.

They filled their bulging bellies with doughnuts, cakes, curry and fizzy drinks to hit the 25- stone minimum required by their NHS trust.

Strangely, it never occurred to them to apply the same determination to dieting and send their weight in the opposite direction.

The Government estimates that by 2050, up to 90 per cent of children could be overweight, costing the taxpayer £50 billion a year – people who look after themselves will end up paying for fat people’s lack of self-control.

I have lost weight on several occasions and, yes, I always put it back on again when my resolve weakens. But when I set my mind to it, my success has been down to a winning formula of eating less and exercising more.

Never once have I thought of going to see a psychiatrist to address my relationship with food because I know my fat is my fault, and no one else’s. And the TV companies peddling obesity porn would do well to acknowledge that, too.

Source: Daily Mail

Vita Clinics are a specialist weight loss surgery clinic based in Birmingham providing weight management plans, gastric bypass surgery, gastric banding, sleeve gastrectomy, duodenal switch surgery, surgery rescue for patients who have gastric bands fitted and skin reduction services.

To get more information, to see whether obesity surgery is right for you or to book a free no obligation consultation with a Vita Clinics expert call 0800 849 4050 or fill in the enquiry form here.

Yet for most people in busy offices and other workplaces, a conventional, full body massage is too time-consuming, impractical and expensive as a regular stress-busting therapy. The answer – coming soon to a desk near you – is the chair massage.

More than 1,000 masseurs are now thought to be visiting workplaces throughout the UK – from high street stores to call centres, local authorities to hospitals – offering chair massage to busy office staff and other workers. A typical session takes just 15-20 minutes – so it can easily be fitted into a lunch hour or tea-break. The cost is relatively inexpensive and is subsidised by some employers. There are no messy oils or lotions. And you don’t even need to take your clothes off.

Many chair masseurs use acupressure, a Japanese style of massage using the same pressure points as in acupuncture. This is very different to traditional couch massage, which is often known as ‘Swedish massage’. Acupressure, sometimes dubbed ‘coffee break massage’, originated in the US, where it was devised as a quick stress-reliever for high-powered professionals too busy even to leave their desks.

Acupressure focuses on muscles in the back, arms, hands, shoulders, neck and head, where tension and pain often build up in desk-bound staff working under pressure. According to the UK training organisation, the Academy of On-Site Massage, acupressure uses more than 100 different stress release points on the head, neck, shoulders, arms and back. This is intended not only to relax tense and aching muscles, but to release energy and invigorate both mind and body.

To read the full article please click here.

Blue Soul have experienced on site massage therapists throughout the UK available for corporate and workplace therapies.  Visit www.bluesoulfeeling.co.uk for more info.

Jilly Trela and I first met in a Bristol tea room. The Victoria sponge looked quite tempting and I asked if she would like some with her coffee.

‘Not for me,’ she said. ‘I can’t have cakes – not with a band. It doesn’t go down.’  ‘What would happen if you did?’ I asked. ‘I would probably be sick.’ Jilly Trela is one of a number of people who are travelling abroad for obesity surgery.

At £3,000, her stomach band operation, which was performed in Belgium, cost half of what it would have done if carried out privately in the UK.  But it wasn’t the price that attracted the mother-of-two. Jilly travelled abroad because when she tried to get the operation done here, she was told she couldn’t get the operation on the NHS or privately, because she simply wasn’t fat enough.

The keyhole operation involves wrapping a plastic band around the stomach. After surgery, a liquid is injected into the band, known as a ‘fill’, to make it contract tightly around the stomach.  This reduces the patient’s appetite and means they might be sick if they eat more than a few mouthfuls at a time.

Aftercare is an vital part of the treatment, making up around 60 per cent of total care.

In the UK, private patients who qualify are offered aftercare packages that last for up to two years, while NHS patients can expect a lifetime of follow-ups. Those who have the surgery overseas, however, get little or none.

To read the full story click here.

Safe weight loss surgery including gastric band operations here in the UK with excellent support and after care visit www.vitaclinics.co.uk.

If you’ve had surgery abroad Vita Clinics also offer surgery rescue.

The popular TV host – who has recently slimmed down after being at the centre of a row when it was disclosed she’d had a gastric band fitted – will appear on the programme on Thursday (March 19).

The This Morning presenter’s appearance on the show alongside political bigwigs follows that of former Pop Idol winner Will Young. As usual, David Dimbleby will chair the debate, which comes from London’s Canary Wharf this week. Joining Fern will be Olympics Minister Tessa Jowell, shadow business secretary Ken Clarke and Liberal Democrat Treasury spokesman Vince Cable.

Article courtesy of MSN Entertainment News.

But how does a gastric band work, who should receive them, and is there still a stigma attached?

For some obese people, attempts at conventional dieting and exercise will fail, and their weight means a far higher risk of health problems later in life. It is at this point that their doctor may suggest gastric banding.

The principle is a simple one. Most people eat when they feel hungry, and when their stomachs are full, they stop.  The operation leaves a silicone loop tightened about three-quarters of the way up the stomach, creating a much smaller space at the top, with a tiny gap leading to the rest of the stomach.

Much less food is needed to fill up this little “pouch” at the top, at which point the person feels full. The “pouch” then slowly empties through the gap into the rest of the stomach, and appetite returns.

Dr Ian Campbell, Medical Director of the charity Weight Concern, said: “If you reduce the volume of food you can comfortably put in your stomach, you’ll eat less.” The NHS does offer gastric banding, but many people choose to have the operation privately, at a cost of around £7,000.

To read the full article please click here.

Vita Clinics offer gastric band surgery as well as other weight loss procedures. Visit Vita Clinics.

Researchers at the University of Bristol have found that hormonal changes caused by lack of sleep could lead to increased appetite. The population-based study examined more than 1,000 volunteers. Report author Dr Shahrad Taheri said: “Individuals who spent less than eight hours sleeping were shown to have a greater likelihood of being heavier.”

The research, carried out in conjunction with US scientists, is one of three published in recent weeks to produce similar results. It found that people who habitually slept for five hours had 15% more ghrelin, a hormone which increases feelings of hunger, than those who slept for eight hours.

Those who slept for less time were also found to have 15% less leptin, a hormone which suppresses appetite.

“These differences are likely to increase appetite and, in societies where food is readily available, this may contribute to obesity,” Dr Taheri said. “It is important for people to realise there is more to obesity than just stuffing your face.”

Sleep is important

Dr Taheri, whose work is published in the journal Public Library of Science Medicine, said there was evidence that children as young as two years old might be in danger of becoming obese if they lost a lot of sleep.

“We have to realise that sleeping is not a waste of time, we have to recognise that it impacts on our health.”

To read the full article please click here.

The author of this article Dr Shahrad Taheri is a Consultant Bariatric Physician with Vita Clinics – the UK’s leading clinic for weight loss surgery.