a guy where I work started the preop diet last week. on sunday he threw a blood clot and died! they said that major changes in eating habits can cause this?!? shouldn't doctors warn of this? this is the first I'd heard of this even being a possibility.

Wow! I have never heard of that.

I don't know what throwing a blood clot is but it makes me think he had the blood clot already and it was a ticking time bomb.

So, with or without the surgery ...in this case just going a few days without solids....he would have died anyways.

That's a tragic tale and fits in along with others like him who obesity claimed their life.

Banded Bob, thanks for sharing the info and yes....all doctors should warn that obesity can kill. And there are risks associated with obesity. So when attempting to correct the obesity, things can go wrong.

Being morbidly obese is itself a risk. If a change in diet will kill us, then we have no hope. I wonder, does taking 81mg of aspirin reduce our stroke risk?

There was a war news correspondent in Iraq last year who developed a clot and died because of riding too long in the armoured vehicle he was in. Otherwise he was in perfect health. Blood clots develop for a variety of reasons but I've never heard of one developing from going on a diet. It is usually prolonged inactivity or some other reason.

By "throw a clot" do you mean he developed one, or that an existing one broke free? There could be so much going on here. An overload of Vitamin K (diet-related) could be a factor. No bandster I knows focuses their diet on Vitamin K rich foods (e.g. dark green things). LOTS of things can cause clots, and death related to DVT will (err, most likely I guess) not have anything to do with the band directly.

It's winter, and coat sales are up.

It's winter, and crime rates are up.

Hence, wearing coats makes you more apt to commit a crime.

no details but I guess an existing clot broke loose. guess it could've happened anyway, but I was told the change in eating habit was a contributing factor.

I'm so sorry about your friend. But, if making a drastic change in your eating habits is a risk factor for a blood clot, then I should have died a long time ago, because pre-band, that's how I lived my entire adult life...yo-yoing between extreme dieting and eating everything in sight.

Tami

Oh wow. How tragic. So sorry about your friend.

ABSOLUTELY FALSE! Changing your diet to less calories will NOT cause you to develop a clot. Some of the risks for clots are obesity, clotting disorders, high cholesterol, heart problems, being sedentary, smoking, birth control pills...there are many more but changing to a liquid or lo-cal diet is not one of them. Very sorry to hear about your friend though...my heart goes out to you and everyone that knew him!

I'm certainly not a doctor, but I am a survivor of a pulmonary embolism, which it sounds like this guy had. I got mine a year after my surgery and it was not related to the surgery at all. It was related to birth control pills. I got a blood clot in my leg and it shot off bits that went into both of my lungs. I survived because a huge piece did not break off...if that happens, it plugs up the ONE artery you have that goes into your lungs. Lots of things cause blood clots and most people die of embolisms because there are not real symptoms until it's too late. I was lucky...and a doc in the ER actually ran a test instead of just looking at me and saying...yeah..you're short of breath because you're fat...which I almost didn't go to the hospital because that has been my experience with the medical community...if you are fat, it's the cause of everything...but my husband forced me to go! Lucky me!

Sorry to hear about this guy, but sadly, it's pretty typical.

After all the testing, etc. I had to go thru...I am certain it had nothing to do with his diet.

re: 'shouldn't doctors warn of this?"

not to take away from the tragedy of your friend....

1) warn of WHAT? exactly???

2) Predictions and warnings arising from such, and the 'incidence of occurrence' requires a statistical observation basis from which to make a valid assertion.

3) A jillion possibilities in this kind of circumstance make 'warning' a pretty vaporous cohort upon which to issue such.

4) which 'they' made a statement about diet change?

Morbid Obesity has a much elevated statistical relationship to such conditions that would be attended by a preexisting blood clot, that I doubt any mathematical model could possibly account for the effects of a few bowls of salad...

Co-morbidities are much like a ticking time bomb....we just can't predict which one will go off first....and we can't predict on an individual whether a bus will run over them....but we can predict how many in a population of 100,000 will be run over by buses....should there be some kind of 'health warning' to stay away from busses?

Jack I just love you...LOL

You always bring the point home so eloquently...:wink2: