If you are like me, you want to know everything there is to know about what it is like to having gastric banding. The Lap-Band works, as you probably already know by being wrapped around the upper part of the stomach. Coincidently the upper portion of the stomach is also where the vagus nerve is located. This is the nerve that communicates with your brain and says “hey I am full down here you better stop eating” so the stomach is designed so that when food reaches the top portion of the stomach where the nerve is, you feel full. What the Lap-Band does it since it’s making a space at the top part of the stomach, the food quickly triggers that vagus nerve and you feel full.
So now we know the communication side of the Lap-Band story, now let’s look at what you have to do to live happily with your new friend wrapped around your stomach.
The Ins and the Outs
The first rule is sometimes stressed by your surgeon and sometimes not, but if you follow any rules, here is the one you should not ignore. Chew everything thoroughly! If you are the kind of person that takes a mouth full of food chews it three times and swallows, you and your Lap-Band are not going to get along well. The reason is simple to explain, before you had a band you could probably swallow a ping pong ball (don’t try it) and it would eventually make it to your stomach (you would not be happy with the journey). Well the Lap-Band does not stretch at all so when that big mouthful of food reaches that little opening (usually smaller than a quarter) there is only one thing that will happen. The food is not going to pass the opening, it is going to block the opening for everything else that comes behind it and all that food is going to make the trip back up from where it came. Lap-Band patients call this productive burping. It basically is not as violent as vomiting because your entire stomach is not involved in the process but it’s no fun and it never happens at an appropriate time. Chew everything to the consistency of a paste and if you can’t make a paste out of it in your mouth, like if you are eating a fibrous steak or well done hamburger, then you are probably going to have problems when it reaches the band.
Your Lap-Band surgeon may also tell you that you should not drink liquids during meals and that is very good advice. Remember the Lap-Band is a mechanical process and the way it ideally works is that you swallow well chewed food and it sits in the upper portion of your stomach created by the band and it slowly passes through to the lower portion of the stomach. Liquids will likely prematurely wash through your food through the band and not provide you the delay and feeling of fullness that is the key to your success so do your very best to avoid liquids at least until 30 minutes after a meal. This will give you the best opportunity for success.
You have to be committed to the opportunity afforded by the Lap-Band because let’s be honest, whether you are having gastric bypass, realize band, Lap-Band or a sleeve, there is always a way to cheat. If you wanted to you could drink liquid chocolate all day long and you would never know you had a restriction of any kind.