Wipe the cobwebs off and put it up for sale
As if stapling your stomach into a tidy little pouch and rewiring your innards weren’t barbaric enough (I’m talking about the popular gastric bypass surgery, of course!), snip-happy surgeons are hunting for more ways to make you thin.
Here’s the latest: Cutting the nerve that makes you feel hungry!
That’s exactly what is being considered now. For this particular operation, the vagus nerve would be snipped. This is a nerve that travels the length of space between your brain and your stomach. It also has offshoots that travel into several of your organs, creating various effects—one of which controls gastric-acid production and the brain hormones that stimulate your appetite.
This surgery, called a vagotomy (which rhymes with “frontal lobotomy”), was used over three decades ago as a way to treat ulcers—but was a very invasive way of doing so! Since then, other less drastic alternatives have been created, and this Great Hope for ulcer patients was fortunately left by the wayside.
But not before one side effect was noted: Patients lost weight after this procedure.
So now this old procedure is being tested with 30 patients in a still-in-progress study. The final results are not in, but preliminary findings show weight loss of around 18 percent in the majority of those past the one-year mark for surgery.
It seems excessively barbaric to cut nerves to control how much and what you put into your mouth. Do you remember Pavlov’s dogs? They salivated at the sound of a bell. Maybe the golden arches have the same effect for some folks—and it’s not necessarily a response to the vagus nerve. No matter which way you slice it, I think this is an extreme “solution.”
Surgeons will tell you they are touting this as the next-best option for those fearful of the drastic cut-and-paste types of surgery, or who just aren’t overweight enough to opt for one of those. The real reason surgeons are doing this? They can make tons of money targeting the overweight-population market—which is much larger than the obesity market—that this surgery is designed for and cash in on the quick-fix weight-loss hysteria.
And here’s something they won’t tell you: You still have to watch your diet and do regular exercise following the operation.
You’ve heard me talk about surgeries to say no to. Add “vagotomy” to the list!
