When you hear weight-loss surgery, you think image obsessed celebrities, and the morbidly obese - not teenage girls.
Aren't teenage girls only concerned with the latest trends at Hot Topic, and that Justin Beaver character?
No, many teenage girls spend a lot of time worrying about their weight and now more, and more teens are opting for risky lap-band surgery to lose weight.
Even though gastric banding is not approved by the United States Food and Drug Administration, a new study in the journal Pediatrics found the rate of gastric banding between 2005 to 2007 rose five-fold.
Researchers say most of the patients were young white girls, despite adolescent white girls only making up less than half of overweight youth.
Gastric banding places a silicone loop around the top part of the stomach, unlike gastric bypass which divides the stomach into an upper and lower pouch; both procedures facilitate dramatic weight-loss.
Among California teenagers, the rate of gastric banding increased from 0.3 per 100,000 kids to 1.5, whereas bypass surgery, which is considered the "gold standard" of weight-loss surgery, decreased from 3.8 per 100,000 to 2.7.
Gastric banding occupies two-thirds of an estimated $400 million weight-loss surgery market; intense marketing is helping the lap-band industry grow. Not being FDA approved makes this massively unethical.
And, many health experts are alarmed by the raise in gastric banding, finding fundamental and potentially dangerous problems with the surgery; placing a rigid ring around a moving organ could erode the area over time.
To me, this is a no-brainer. Weight-loss surgery is extreme, and should only be used in extreme cases where everything else has failed; i.e. no amount of nutritional intervention or exercise rehabilitation is going to save a severely obese person's life in time. But teenage girls? No, always no.
Teenagers aren't lost causes. Well, except for the 17 year old boy who is still eating paste. If you're younger than 18, your support system is probably stronger than it will ever be. So, between family, friends, school, and your doctor - there has to be a better, safer why to lose weight.
If you start taking the easy way out at 15, 16, 17, you're not exactly setting a good precedent for the rest of your life - are you?
Image credit: Lap Band Gastric Surgery / band bypass ballon
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