Reshuffle the Deck. Weight Loss Surgery Is Safe, Lasting.
Sleeve gastrectomy, bypass procedures result in excess weight loss of 72%, 83%, respectively. “You have been dealt a bad deck of cards, but I am the dealer, and I’m going to reshuffle the deck,” NewFit founder says.
CLICK HERE TO LISTEN to Dr. Nathan Allison discuss why people suffer chronic obesity and what can be done about it.
BREVARD COUNTY, FLORIDA – For years, the medical community, along with everyone else, believed obesity was the predictable result of bad diet and poor decision making. The solution then was healthy choices and austerity. But this ignored two critical facts, says Health First General Surgeon Nathan Allison, MD, founder of the NewFit Surgical Weight Loss Program.
The first is metabolism. Metabolism is how much food energy your body craves in order to maintain weight, and it’s largely set by hereditary factors and things outside of our environment or control.
“You can imagine if you’re genetically predisposed to have a metabolism of 1,200 calories a day, and the person next to you has a metabolism of 2,200 calories a day, that person is going to have a much higher opportunity not to gain weight when they eat something that’s high in calories,” Dr. Allison says.
The second thing is that obesity “is a complex, multifactorial disease process that affects multiple systems simultaneously,” causing break down at the cellular level throughout the body, turning healthy tissue fibrous and diseased. Obesity comorbidities include (and are not limited to) heart disease and diabetes, two of the top 10 causes of death in the United States. Therefore, if healthy changes of habits tame obesity in a patient, great, but if not, other medical therapies should be considered, and one of the most effective is surgical weight loss.
Dr. Allison likened obesity in many cases to being dealt a losing hand at cards.
“You have been dealt a bad hand,” he says. “But I am the dealer, and I’m going to reshuffle the deck. I’m going to give you a tool that can help you with weight loss.”
Health First’s NewFit Surgical Weight-loss Program offers four kinds of bariatric surgeries: gastric balloon, gastric band, sleeve gastrectomy and gastric bypass. In each of these cases, calories are restricted by the physical size of the stomach. And in each of these cases careful nutrition, activity levels and other lifestyle choices continue to play a role in the success of weight loss.
“A lot of folks think, ‘If I have weight loss surgery, I don’t have to do that diet and exercise stuff.’ That’s actually completely false. You can’t do anything without diet and exercise,” the doctor says.
NewFit received national accreditation again last year from the American College of Surgeons Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery Accreditation and Quality Improvement Program (MBSAQIP).
Accreditation is an endorsement by fellow surgeons that NewFit is performing safe and effective metabolic and bariatric surgeries, and continually improving. As an MBSAQIP-accredited hospital, NewFit also becomes an ACS Surgical Quality Partner, a designation for surgical centers dedicated to consistently improving procedures and approaches.
“On top of our excellence across the board,” Health First General Surgeon Kenneth Tieu, MD, Dr. Allison’s partner at NewFit, said at the time, “we have to demonstrate that we’re constantly improving care. Our surgeons are involved in continuing medical education, and we’re improving patients’ post-operative experiences.”
“We have been a top decile performer in all facets of weight loss. Since its inception, ever since we applied, we have been a Center of Excellence… for all of the major insurance carriers in our area,” Dr. Allison says on the podcast.
Patients who choose sleeve gastrectomy can expect to lose 72% of the extra weight they’re carrying; for gastric bypass, the loss rises to 83%. A person who is 100 pounds overweight, then, can expect to shed about 72 pounds following sleeve gastrectomy, or 83 pounds following bypass, and expect to keep it off.
“Less than 5% of patients will gain more than 10% of this weight back in time,” Dr. Allison says.
For very obese patients (those with a body-mass index of 40 or more), surgical weight loss can substantially improve quality and length of life. A widely reported study by the National Cancer Institute a decade ago suggested the longevity of a person living with a BMI of 50 or greater is shorter than that of a lifelong smoker.
“You have to balance the risk of the surgery, which is not zero but very low, with the reward,” Dr. Allison says.
“What I’m most proud of is the thousands and thousands of patients we have … who will tell a friend, ‘You need to go see these guys at NewFit because they changed my life.’
“If I change your life today, that’s great, but if I change your life today and your friend’s life tomorrow and their friends’ lives the next day, that’s really what it’s all about.”
Visit HF.org/newfit to learn more about weight-loss surgery and see if it’s right for you.
CLICK HERE TO LISTEN to Putting Your Health First with Dr. Nathan Allison.
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