10 Year Bloodwork

I am almost ten years out from my RNY gastric bypass surgery. I had my bloodwork done every year for a while thru my surgeon's office but have neglected to do it for probably five years. I decided I needed to have it done. I made an appt. through my surgeon's office and heard from them that everything is within normal limits. I was so glad. I saw the NP while I was there, and she went over my average meals and thought everything looked good there, too.

I have faithfully taken my bariatric vitamins every day since my surgery, and I'm sure that's a big factor as to why everything is normal. I really think it's a mistake not to take the bariatric vitamins and just take regular vitamins, even two at a time. When you compare what's recommended for bariatric patients, the others don't begin to compare to two at a time of a regular vitamin.

You need to get a copy of those results they say are normal. We have seen many instances here where normal is absolutely NOT normal. You will also need them to compare them with your previous years results as well as next years.

They're supposed to put them on the Patient Portal, but they aren't there yet. I was planning on calling them this week to ask them to mail them to me if they aren't posted.

Vitamins are vitamins. Ive seen one brand of bariatric vitamins that are total crap, and are also the most expensive I've seen. Some CVS ans Walgreen's store brands are just as good as anything out there.

We really need to learn how to read nutrition labels and figure out what the quality is for ourselves. Putting something on a label is just advertising.

Calling something bariatric means nothing.

Congrats on your success and for the good news about your bloodwork! Thanks for sharing :)

For the first year or two, a product targeted to the specific recommendations for a procedure can be useful, particularly for the malabsorbing procedures like the RNY and DS, but as we move on our needs can vary widely from those baseline recommendations - we may need more of this and less of that, so those targeted bariatric vitamins often need to be supplemented just like a general multivit. Those with the more purely restrictive procedures like the VSG and bands have much closer to normal needs, with the major variations being dietary choices - some jump onto various "high this, low that" malnutritive fad diets in a usually futile effort to goose up the performance of their WLS and continue them long term. For them, maybe someone will come up with some diet specific "Paleo", "Keto" or "Zone" vits to cater to their specific deficiencies. Given the nature of the nutritional supplement market, someone probably already has (and then combined it with "Genepro" for an all-in-one moneypit.)

Consistent labs will point one in the right direction of what is needed, and logging them to keep track of trends rather than waiting for something to fall out of "normal" will head off problems earlier.

Genepro. Oy. Don't get me started. Genaprotamin?