LAP-BAND® Treatment Dallas - North Texas Bariatric & General Surgery, P.A.

LAP-BAND® treatment at our Dallas office (North Texas Bariatric & General Surgery, P.A.) still allows you to eat a wide variety of food.

DR. FRANK VENINGA: There are as many opinions as to what an individual should eat after a bariatric procedure as there are bariatric patients. In truth, an individual who has had a lap band procedure or a gastric sleeve procedure, can eat anything. There is no restriction long-term to any food whatsoever. The key is that the food has to be chewed well and eaten slowly and therefore it will pass through an opening. I allow patients to regurgitate. The patients themselves have coined this as "sliming", that they can regurgitate up to two times a week. If they are eating and regurgitating more frequently then that, then one of three things are occurring. First of all, they're not chewing their food well enough. If they try to eat a whole mushroom without chewing it, it's going to come up. Two, they're trying to eat too fast. Although they're chewing furiously they’re trying to swallow too quickly and it regurgitates. Or three, the band is simply too tight. It is very important that the individuals accept that the band may be too tight and return and have some fluid removed. There is no restriction to any sort of fluid. Particularly, with the Roux-en-y gastric bypass procedure, individuals claim to develop inebriation very rapidly. And the reason is that alcohol is absorbed in the small bowel not in the stomach. Individuals who have a band, alcohol or any other fluid will enter into the stomach and then be passed out in the same fashion as it was prior to surgery .