# The ugly truth about having a gastric bypass: The frank diary from an obesity nurse



## Northerner (May 22, 2012)

Over 5.5 million Britons are now officially obese.
It?s a grim statistic: obesity can lead to arthritis and breathing difficulties as well as heart disease, stroke and cancer.
This is also costing the NHS dearly ? it spends an astonishing ?4 billion a year on treating obesity. 

An increasingly popular option is stomach-shrinking surgery.
To qualify for this treatment on the NHS you must have a body mass index of 40, or between 35 and 40 and also have type 2 diabetes or high blood pressure. 

Surgery is said to be the cheaper alternative in the long run and, last month, Scottish doctors said that unless more gastric ops were performed, the NHS would be bankrupted by the costs of diabetes and obesity care. 

But is it just the ?easy? option? 

We asked a nurse working on an obesity (or ?bariatric?) ward at a large NHS hospital in the south of England to keep a diary for a week.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/a...nk-diary-obesity-nurse.html?ito=feeds-newsxml


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## Hazel (May 22, 2012)

Fabulous article - pardon the pun, but food for thought for anyone considering this radical step.

Me, I am way too much of a coward to even consider it, I'll stick to the slow route of going to Slimming World


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## Northerner (May 22, 2012)

Hazel said:


> Fabulous article - pardon the pun, but food for thought for anyone considering this radical step.
> 
> Me, I am way too much of a coward to even consider it, I'll stick to the slow route of going to Slimming World



And you are doing a marvellous job Hazel  I thought it's good to have an article like this, especially since so many people are probably being bullied into the bypass option through guilt and the surgeons pushing it as an instant cure without consequences


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