Do I Need To Take Vitamins After Bariatric Surgery?
Last Updated on February 14, 2020
Successful bariatric surgery is your first step towards living life at a healthier weight. But it’s just the start. Your surgery must be followed up by a comprehensive post-operative aftercare program to ensure that you remain of the path to healthy, permanent weight loss. This includes making vitamins and minerals after bariatric surgery a critical part of your daily routine for the rest of your life to ensure your body gets the nutrition it needs for a healthy lifestyle.
Why You Need to Take Vitamins After Bariatric Surgery
Before bariatric surgery, you generally get all of the nutrients you need from the foods you eat. But bariatric surgical procedures reduce the amount of food, and the nutrients it contains, that your body can consume.
In the case of gastric sleeve surgery, your stomach is reduced in size by about 70%, or less than one-third of its original size. The surgery can also impact how some of the vitamins and minerals get absorbed into your body. Vitamin supplements make up for the nutrients your body can’t get from diet alone.
But not just any vitamin supplements will do. Regular supplements are formulated to address the needs of the general population. But, as a bariatric surgery patient, your body needs higher levels of nutrients than what you can get from many regular vitamin supplements.
Without getting the vitamins you need, in sufficiently high quantities, you run the risk of suffering vitamin and nutritional deficiencies, both of which can complicate your recovery from surgery.
That said, it is critical for you to follow the advice of your gastric sleeve surgeon regarding the vitamin supplements you should take after surgery. Your surgeon will prescribe a course of vitamins according to your personal requirements.
To learn more about bariatric surgery, read our article “4 Misconceptions of Bariatric Surgery”.
