I was banded on 2-5-08 and am supposed to be on Clear Liquids for 2 weeks, 1 week full liquid, and 1 week mushies. I was bad and did 1 week clear liquids and then 3 days full liquids and the past few days on mushies. I feel fine but now am worried because so many people talk about the stomach needs time to heal that's why the liquid diets. I was under the impression the stomach wasn't cut right? so why so much time to heal? Or is it the fact of slippage? Please help me understand??

Thanks,

It's not the stomach directly, but involves the stomach. That's why the recovery food stages go from little action on behalf of the stomach (liquids) to full action (solids) progressively. Our bands need the scar tissue to develop - this is the "glue." The less the stomach has to work, the less motion elsewhere and the more the scar tissue can form.

Here's another explanation, much more eloquent than mine.

I do understand your desire to chew something, I really do, but... Just because something goes down okay doesn't mean it isn't setting us up for damage later. The sutures are helping scar tissue form around the band and that's what holds it in place on our stomachs. The sutures only help hold it on the front, scar tissue is all that holds it on the back of the stomach. Everytime we eat something more than a liquid, (and no, chewing something until it's liquid does not count) it causes our stomachs (which are muscular) to churn and undulate to digest that food. That churning stops the scar tissue from forming, or helps break new scar tissue just barely formed. Liquid requires little stomach movement to process. When we start to chew something, that lets our digestive system know that food is coming down, fluids begin to be secreted to aid in digestion and the stomach starts moving in preparation to start the breakdown of food.

I understand that some doctors move folks along faster in their diet programs, that's okay if it's what your doctor says to do, but Allergan (the manufacturer of the band) advises a very slow progression.

Damage we do now freshly banded may not show up until a year or two down the line. Maybe we have a bad episode of vomiting and because we just couldn't wait to chew, we didn't get good adhesion of scar tissue early on, it may slip.

When you see advice on eating "so the stomach can heal" it's basically a semantic error. There is no healing of the stomach itself, but rather controlling the stomach so that the band area can heal correctly. (That's the long story short).

wow.. ok that makes sense.. Thank you for copying that quote. I will stay on my liquids for another week and hopefully I didn't do any damage. I have a post op appointment tomorrow so we will see. Thank you for taking the time to respond.