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Tag: nutrition

Iron Supplements

July 29, 2025 1:30 pm

Iron is critical for the production and action of red blood cells. Deficiency of iron may have many causes. These include bleeding from the GI track, inadequate absorption, inadequate intake, and menstrual losses in females.

 

Regardless of the underlying cause, chronic deficiency of iron will lead to iron deficiency anemia (IDA).

Normal Iron Ranges:

It’s important to have at least yearly laboratory studies to surveil for abnormalities. Normal results of iron testing may be different for men, women, and children. Iron and TIBC are measured in micrograms per deciliter (mcg/dL). Normal results for iron are:

  • 65 to 175 mcg/dL for men
  • 50 to 170 mcg/dL for women
  • 50 to 120 mcg/dL for children

Normal results for TIBC are 250 to 450 mcg/dL for men and women.

To correct or prevent IDA, iron supplementation is recommend in some patients. Iron absorption is very inefficient. It take a long time to develop IDA and as long if not longer to correct it with oral supplementation. This is why we recommend some patient condor getting iron infusion.

For most, oral supplements are adequate. There are different formulary of iron supplement with varying degree of absorption.

Heme iron  and  iron bisglycinate have been shown to have much better absorption than ferrous sulfate formulary.

This is why we recommend:

 

 

Heme Iron or 

 

Iron bisglycinate.

Feeding Tube with Duodenal Switch

February 03, 2025 9:53 am

The surgical changes following the revision of the failed gastric bypass to the duodenal switch or a primary duodenal switch require an evident appreciation and understanding of the anatomy and physiology of placing a feeding tube and managing the nutritional status. There are different places where a feeding tube can be placed.

1-A feeding gastrostomy tube endoscopically cannot be placed because of the transected post-pyloric duodenum (The image viewed on a desktop or a laptop allows the scroller on the image to move)

2-An orogastric or nasogastric tube should only use an elemental feeding formula. This is because the food in the stomach is prevented from mixing with the biliopancreatic juices, which will not be adequately absorbed.

3-A feeding Jejunostomy can only be insured surgical post ligament of traits. This cannot be done endoscopically because duodenal switch transaction post pyloric small bowel to prevent mixing of the biliopancreatic secretion.

  Additional information 

Cheers! Alcohol Metabolism

December 17, 2024 1:59 pm

Cheers! Let’s take a minute to look at alcohol metabolism. It’s that time of year when it seems we are going from one Holiday or Christmas party to another, and then we get together with the family and have a little more alcohol. The following diagram shows how alcohol metabolism takes place.

Alcohol is a caloric intake, and we all need to keep close tabs on it. Alcohol is very easily metabolized and the calories add up quickly.  Every stage of alcohol processing in the liver involves the extraction of calories and free radicals, which are toxins. Excess calories not used in bodily functions can be stored as fat mass. Alcohol can be a  roadblock in weight loss. Those drinks add up!

Alcohol Calorie Count

Here is a short video as a reminder while everyone waits to get ready for the next party.

Happy holidays.

A newsletter post from 2004 regarding the effects of alcohol and weight loss surgery. 

Digestive Juices

December 16, 2024 9:04 am

Our body has to maintain a narrow acid-base balance, PH (7.35-7.45) in the bloodstream. This is accomplished by a highly regulated system that involves multiple organs. Kidneys, liver, Lung, and  GI tract all interact with each other to maintain the normal environment. For example, in a chronic smoker, there is a build-up of carbon dioxide, which develops respiratory acidosis. This acidosis may be partially corrected and compensated for by retaining bicarbonate to keep the blood PH in the normal range.

Covid 19:Anesthesia, Weight Loss Surgery and Malnutrition

October 30, 2021 8:52 am

As the COVID-19 pandemic is charting its course into 2022,  as health care providers, we have had to adapt and adjust to the transient and shifting environment. Testing for COVID-19 has been in place, and is now part of the standard for preoperative work-up. In addition, covid testing will likely be part of screening any surgical procedure for the foreseeable future.

The challenge of pandemic control is the large pockets of populations in the US and worldwide that do not have protection against the virus and are not vaccinated. Vaccination provides the only proven long-term protection against COVID-19 infection and its long-term persistent health effect. In addition, the complication rate reported in scientific journals is negligible compared to the complication and death rate from the COVID-19 infection.

There are implications of covid infection and general anesthesia published in peer-reviewed journals. The increased risk of general anesthesia after covid infection is related to the severity of the initial infection and the extent of the treatment required, and the persistence of the post covid symptoms, including shortness of breath, fatigue, and laboratory finding elevated inflammatory markers. Long after resolution of the acute COVID-19 symptoms, the most common persistent complaints are fatigue, shortness of breath, Joint and chest pain; and all these increase the risk of post-operative complications (Carfì et al., 2020)

The required delay for surgery may be as short as 2-4 weeks to as long as six months or longer if the persistent symptoms are present. Surgery may not be avoidable in a critical life-threatening situation and may be necessary even with a much-increased risk of complication (Collaborative, 2020). Recovery post-COVID-19 may not be complete with the resolution of the initial symptoms (Dexter et al., 2020)

Recent publications and scientific presentations have also shown the protection that weight loss surgery and maintained weight loss provide in those who come down with the COVID-19 infection (Aminian et al., 2021). However, the rate of weight gain, lack of weight loss is worse for weight loss surgical patients post COVID-19 disorder (Bullard et al., 2021; Conceição et al., 2021). Furthermore, patients with COVID-19 infection post weight loss are at a higher risk of malnutrition (di Filippo et al., 2021; Kikutani et al., 2021). Up to 40% of patients have malnutrition if hospitalized with COVID (Anker et al., 2021).

To summarize, Weight loss and weight loss surgery reduce the severity of the initial COVID-19 infection. However, it increases malnutrition risk, requiring nutritional support and surgical interventions in non-responsive cases.

 

REFERENCES:

Aminian, A., Fathalizadeh, A., Tu, C., Butsch, W. S., Pantalone, K. M., Griebeler, M. L., Kashyap, S. R., Rosenthal, R. J., Burguera, B., & Nissen, S. E. (2021). Association of prior metabolic and bariatric surgery with severity of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) in patients with obesity. Surgery for Obesity and Related Diseases, 17(1). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.soard.2020.10.026

Anker, M. S., Landmesser, U., von Haehling, S., Butler, J., Coats, A. J. S., & Anker, S. D. (2021). Weight loss, malnutrition, and cachexia in COVID-19: facts and numbers. In Journal of Cachexia, Sarcopenia and Muscle (Vol. 12, Issue 1). https://doi.org/10.1002/jcsm.12674

Bullard, T., Medcalf, A., Rethorst, C., & Foster, G. D. (2021). Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on initial weight loss in a digital weight management program: A natural experiment. Obesity, 29(9). https://doi.org/10.1002/oby.23233

Carfì, A., Bernabei, R., Landi, F., & Group, for the G. A. C.-19 P.-A. C. S. (2020). Persistent Symptoms in Patients After Acute COVID-19. JAMA, 324(6), 603–605. https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.2020.12603

Collaborative, Covids. (2020). Delaying surgery for patients with a previous SARS-CoV-2 infection. British Journal of Surgery, 107(12), e601–e602. https://doi.org/10.1002/bjs.12050

Conceição, E., de Lourdes, M., Ramalho, S., Félix, S., Pinto-Bastos, A., & Vaz, A. R. (2021). Eating behaviors and weight outcomes in bariatric surgery patients amidst COVID-19. Surgery for Obesity and Related Diseases, 17(6).

Dexter, F., Elhakim, M., Loftus, R. W., Seering, M. S., & Epstein, R. H. (2020). Strategies for daily operating room management of ambulatory surgery centers following resolution of the acute phase of the COVID-19 pandemic. Journal of Clinical Anesthesia, 64. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclinane.2020.109854

Di Filippo, L., De Lorenzo, R., D’Amico, M., Sofia, V., Roveri, L., Mele, R., Saibene, A., Rovere-Querini, P., & Conte, C. (2021). COVID-19 is associated with clinically significant weight loss and risk of malnutrition, independent of hospitalisation: A post-hoc analysis of a prospective cohort study. Clinical Nutrition, 40(4). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.clnu.2020.10.043

Kikutani, T., Ichikawa, Y., Kitazume, E., Mizukoshi, A., Tohara, T., Takahashi, N., Tamura, F., Matsutani, M., Onishi, J., & Makino, E. (2021). COVID-19 infection-related weight loss decreases eating/swallowing function in schizophrenic patients. Nutrients, 13(4). https://doi.org/10.3390/nu13041113

Medication Accumulation in Gut Bacteria May Curb Drug Effectiveness, Alter Gut Microbiome

October 05, 2021 2:06 pm

By Marilynn Larkin September 23, 2021
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Many common medications such as antidepressants, diabetes and asthma drugs can accumulate in gut bacteria, altering bacterial function and potentially reducing drug effectiveness, researchers say. “It was surprising that the majority of the new interactions we saw between bacteria and drugs were the drugs accumulating in the bacteria, because up until now biotransformation (chemical modification) was thought to be the only way that bacteria affect drug availability,” Dr. Kiran Patil of the MRC Toxicology Unit, University of Cambridge, told Reuters Health by email. “We also were surprised to see the stark effect of bioaccumulation on bacterial metabolism and on community composition.” “There will likely be very strong differences between individuals, depending on the composition of their gut microbiota,” he noted. “We saw differences even between different strains of the same species of bacteria.” As reported in Nature, Dr. Patil and colleagues grew 25 common strains of gut bacteria and investigated their interactions with 15 structurally diverse oral drugs. The team identified 70 bacteria-drug interactions, 29 of which had not been previously reported. Seventeen of the newly discovered interactions could be ascribed to bioaccumulation – i.e., bacteria storing the drug intracellularly without chemically modifying it, and in most cases without bacterial growth being affected. To gain additional insight, the team investigated the molecular basis of bioaccumulation of the antidepressant duloxetine. They found that duloxetine binds to several metabolic enzymes and changes the metabolite secretion of the affected bacteria. When tested in a microbial community of drug accumulators and non-accumulators, duloxetine markedly altered the small molecules produced by the drug-accumulating bacteria, which the non-accumulators fed on; this caused an overabundance of consuming bacteria, thereby unbalancing the composition of the community. Further, the team validated their findings in C. elegans; worms grown in bacteria that accumulated duloxetine behaved differently from those grown in bacteria that did not accumulate duloxetine. Summing up, the authors state, “Together, our results show that bioaccumulation by gut bacteria may be a common mechanism that alters drug availability and bacterial metabolism, with implications for microbiota composition, pharmacokinetics, side effects and drug responses, probably in an individual manner.” Dr. Patil added, “Next steps will be to take forward this basic molecular research and investigate how an individual’s gut bacteria tie in with differing individual responses to drugs such as antidepressants – differences in response, drug dose needed, and side effects like weight gain.” “If we can characterize how people respond depending on the composition of their microbiome, then drug treatments could be individualized,” he said. “The clinical relevance will hopefully be clear in the next 2-3 years.” Dr. Libusha Kelly of Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York City commented on the study in an email to Reuters Health, “This work highlights the broad importance of microbe/drug interactions in drug bioavailability and the unrecognized potential for bioaccumulation of drugs to modify metabolite secretion in microbial communities.” “As the authors note,” she said, “this study in bacterial isolates is only the first step towards understanding how bioaccumulation might influence drug metabolism and microbial community composition in the context of the far more complicated communities of microbes in the human body.”
“There are likely additional, cryptic, ways in which bacteria alter bioavailability and drug metabolism in the human body,” she said. “Furthermore, we do not understand how microbiome/drug interactions influence drug efficacy and safety in individual patients, which limits the clinical utility of our field currently. However, the authors uncover an exciting direction for future research.” Source: https://go.nature.com/3CxioHd Nature, online September 8, 2021. Reuters Health Information © 2021

Over the Counter Vitmain D3 better than the Prescription Vitamin D2

August 30, 2021 10:41 am

Vitamin D absorption is based on a complex series of pathways in the human body. We have discussed the significance of Vitamin D in a broad health condition, including Covid-19, immune system and bone structures. These articles explain the differences in detail. https://www.dssurgery.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/jcem5387.pdf https://www.dssurgery.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/jcemE447.pdf We have no finaicial insterst in the recommendations made on our site.
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