Your lapband is doing well, then it starts feeling tight. Some foods that went down easy aren’t going down as easy as they did before. Some foods cause a pain when you eat. Then the heartburn begins. You haven’t had a “fill” for a while, and now you feel as if you did.

If your lapband is tight, there are two primary reasons:

(1) The band is a semi-permeable membrane – which means fluid from your body goes in and out of your lapband. We talked about this here. Essentially your body will retain fluid, and your band will become tight. This happens with stress, be it physical stress (becoming ill), or mental stress (your boss is mad at you). When we remove and measure the fluid from the band we find that there is more fluid than we placed into the band. This is pretty simple- we remove a bit of fluid, allow things to recover, and re-adjust you later to a place where you were “good” but a touch less because we want to have the band not so tight that stress will make the band intolerable.

(2) Something became stuck in the band. When something gets lodged in the part of the stomach where the band puts on the pressure, it can cause the stomach lining to swell a bit. This is like having a fill. The next day more things become stuck – and as time goes on the cycle gets worse and worse. Typically we have you go on liquids for 2-4 days and let the swelling get better. If it is just so swollen that you cannot tolerate liquids, or feel uncomfortable – then we will remove some fluid for a bit.

If your band feels tight do this:

• Go on a liquid diet.
• Make an appointment to come into the office for a visit.

Stay on liquids- and don’t force anything until you see us. Our staff will get you in quickly. If you are having problems during the week- remember we see patients until noon on Friday- so don’t be miserable on the weekend!