For this group, surgical weight loss may be the only option for successful weight loss. Researchers looked at the effect of surgical weight loss on the quality of sleep and daytime sleepiness in more than 300 morbidly obese individuals. More than half of the men and nearly half of the women had problems with sleep disordered breathing. All underwent surgery using gastric banding to lose weight and were observed for changes in their sleep patterns. The pouch of the stomach where the food goes is made smaller so a feeling of satiety is experienced sooner.
Patients eat less and lose weight.
A reservoir in the band can be adjusted to alter the size of the pouch. One year after surgery, patients lost a little more than 83 pounds and had their body mass index drop to 35.3. Highly significant improvements were seen in sleep disturbances. Snoring was reduced from 82 percent down to 14 percent, observed sleep apnea went from 33 percent to 2 percent and daytime sleepiness dropped from 39 percent to 4 percent. Based on these findings researchers conclude surgical weight loss using the gastric banding method dramatically improves and often abolishes symptoms of sleep-disordered breathing in morbidly obese individuals.