Is There A (Blood) Test For Ghrelin Levels?
I have been having just about "normal" pre-op hunger pangs of late, @ 3 1/2 years out. It seems like no matter what I eat, I'm hungry again wtihin a couple of hours or so, even to the point of drooling.
Accordingly, I would be curious to see what my ghrelin levels are like these days (it would have been nice to have had a pre-op level check done also, as well as one a few months out, as a baseline, but oh well ).
Does anyone know if there is a standard blood test that can be done to determine the level? I would think it would be done after a fasting interval, or possibly after eating some kind of "trigger food" after a certain time interval has passed, to make it accurate ..
Frank talk about the DS / "All I ever wanted to be was thin, like that Rolling Stones dude ... "
HW/461 LW/251 GW/189 CW/274 (yep, a DS semi-failure - it happens :-( )
I initially checked the Wiki article on ghrelin, btw, and it covered just about everything on the hormone except how they check its levels ..
Frank talk about the DS / "All I ever wanted to be was thin, like that Rolling Stones dude ... "
HW/461 LW/251 GW/189 CW/274 (yep, a DS semi-failure - it happens :-( )
That reminds me ... last week I was going to do a post asking about the purpose of the "remnant stomach", but got side-tracked .. I don't understand why they do the pouch that way in the modern RNY surgery .. In the original days they just stapled a "pouch" off in a corner of the stomach, similar to the way it was done in the old VBG procedure .. Is the remnant left so that the procedure can be reversed if needed/desired w/o having to remove staples and/or a bunch of scar tissue/adhesions?
Frank talk about the DS / "All I ever wanted to be was thin, like that Rolling Stones dude ... "
HW/461 LW/251 GW/189 CW/274 (yep, a DS semi-failure - it happens :-( )
I thought the Wiki article mentioned something about it also being produced in the pancreas .. Did you run into anything about that when researching?
Frank talk about the DS / "All I ever wanted to be was thin, like that Rolling Stones dude ... "
HW/461 LW/251 GW/189 CW/274 (yep, a DS semi-failure - it happens :-( )
Even six years post-DS, I have the occassional day when I have NO hunger, but if I don't eat, I'll get nauseaous. It's really HARD forcing yourself to eat when you have no appetite, and you get no enjoyment from it.
I always thought it would be interesting to know if ghrelin was above average preop. Here is a study that talks about blood tests for it that might be helpful.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18376181?ordinalpos=12&it ool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_ RVDocSum