I am a little confused - I read a post that suggested after 18 months that the malabsorption stops as your body will adapt itself.

Is this true? Is there any of this component that remains? Is it an individual thing?

I dont believe that to be true. I was told I had to take vitamins for the rest of my life!!

supplements forever

My understanding was the rest of your life too

My understand is that you begin to absorb the nutrients you take in via food, but you aren't eating enough to get want yo need so you need to take supplements.

My surgeon says forever

The Vitamin aspect does remain for ever but your body does adapt and you will start to absorb more calories.

There are these little tiny things in your small intestine called villi. They are like fingers that grab up calories and absorb them. When they bypass part of the small intestine, suddenly there are fewer villi in there to suck up the calories.

However, your body quickly figures that out. Crazy isn't it. So your small intestine starts to grow more villi in the part that has not been bypassed. After a while, you may have about the same number you had before surgery so you absorb about the same amount of calories again but you still can't eat enough for all of the vitiamins that you need due to the size of your pouch. So you will need to take vitiamins and Calcium the rest of your life.

I find that I feel better when I take vitamins. The barometric vitamins are more expensive but I do think that they get absorbed more effectively than traditional vitamins. I take four optisource vitamins every day. What vitamins do you take?