I've mentioned before, but i'm getting banded on 4/17. I was on the phone with my mom last night and she asked if i ever heard of this...someone she knows- sister- got weight loss surgery (she's not sure which) and this guy's sister told my mom that she got parkinson's 3 years later. She was told at the time of surgery that this was a risk. :sneaky:

I never heard of that. I did a quick search and nothing came up. Maybe these people are wrong, but I wanted to put it out there and see if anyone ever heard of this??

This is the first I've heard of that...

No, the two are not related. Parkinson's disease is caused by degeneration of neurons in a particular part of the brain that secrete dopamine. There are genetic factors, and sometimes medications or trauma can induce it. But there is nothing about lap band surgery that would cause this particular kind of pathology. And in all of the literature I've seen on bariatric surgery I have never run across anything like that.

You CAN have another kind of neurological problem that is caused by thiamine deficiency, if you eat a poor diet after being banded. This is Wernicke's encephalopathy. But it is nothing like Parkinson's disease. I think having the bariatric surgery and being diagnosed with Parkinson's disease were coincidental events having nothing to do with each other. Even without the bariatric surgery, she probably would have been diagnosed with Parkinson's.

HTH.

Trust me, everyone will tell you a story. A friend of a friends neighbors best friends cousin has weight loss surgery and died. blah blah blah. When I first started thinking about WLS, I told a few people and I heard every kind of horror story there was. When I finally decided to go thru with the surgery, I told only my DH because I didn't want to hear the negative talk.

Yes, there are risk to surgery, you should not take it lightly, and it is not for everyone. But for me, it was the only choice I had left. I am happy I did it and have no regrets.

Best wishes to you!

I had my lap-band, and like 18 months later my dog had to be hospitalized for a stomach virus. I'm still trying to figure out how my band caused that. :ohmy:

I agree with previous posters - everyone has a "friend of a friend" story that 99.999999999% of the time has no grounds in reality at all.

The two are not related. I mean - I'm sure people with bands get all sorts of other medical problems that are not related to the band...that's just life - nothing to do with the band.

People are nutty.

My grandmother wouldn't see a dentist (ever in her life) because when she was a little girl, her father died from an abscessed tooth (in the 30s). It had gotten infected before he finally went to the dentist. By the time he did, it was too late and he died from it. His wife spent the rest of her years telling her kids that the dentist killed him.

Obviously, the dentist didn't kill my great grandfather, just as no one has gotten Parkinsons from WLS.

Wheetsin and Angie: I AM HOWLING! It is too true that there's rumors about everything in life--you just have to measure out what you want to believe! :thumbup: