Micronutrients & the sleeve

Oct 18, 2012

Today is my 9-wk surgiversary. I've lost 19 lbs (go me!). Still struggling with constant hunger, but it seems a bit less ferocious than before. The iron supplement has restored my energy, thank God, so the next issue to tackle is why am I anemic. A hemoccult test showed blood in my stool. That happened to me once years ago and proved to be caused by internal hemorrhoids, but since my mom had colon cancer I have to take it seriously. Could hemorrhoids that give me no symptoms be bleeding badly enough to cause anemia? I have an appt with my gastro doc to talk about it next week. He'll probably want to do a colonoscopy (sigh).

I had always thought that only malabsorptive WLS procedures (RNY & DS) can cause vitamin & mineral deficiences, but a friend of mine who's looking into an RNY revision sent me a link to an article about a study that found vitamin & mineral deficiences (and excessive levels in some patients) in VSG patients. 43% of the patients in the study had iron, folic acid & B12 deficiencies. Other patients had issues with other micronutrients. The authors of the study theorize that removing most of the stomach reduces production of hydrochloric acid (needed for absorption) and also that food passing through the sleeve so quickly can prevent full absorption.

Reading the article certainly made me take vitamin and mineral supplementation even more seriously than I already did.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3021197/

0 Comments