‘Bariatric surgery’ is a term used to describe several procedures that surgically remove large sections of the digestive tract to essentially reduce the intake of food.

It works on two simple, if savage, principles: forcibly reduce appetite and food intake to drastically cut down on the calories you ingest, and restrict the ability of the now-brutalized digestive tract to absorb nutrients from food.

For many morbidly obese individuals, surgery is the last resort, after numerous attempts at dieting, exercising and pharmaceutical drugs fail to work. Desperate to lead normal lives, patients consent to going under the knife, allowing a doctor to reach into their abdomen and rip out vital organs, and twist, turn, staple and stitch together what is left inside into an unnatural mess.

In other words, some obese individuals - at least 200,000 a year in the US - are making a conscious choice to be severely crippled and maimed. If these sound like harsh words, I am not exaggerating…. There are numerous variations that go by different names such as gastric bypass surgery, biliopancreatic diversion, duodenal switch, stomach stapling, vertical banded gastroplasty and sleeve gastrectomy.

Strip away the fancy medical jargon of weight-loss surgery and what you are left with is a stomach that is reduced to around 15 percent of its original size, a small intestine (the seat of digestion and immunity) that has had essential segments like the duodenum removed.

Not only is your food intake drastically reduced, but what is left of your digestive tract is also unable to effectively process, metabolize and absorb what does go into it. Weight-loss surgery therefore radically alters your body’s biochemistry and metabolism in a way that nature never intended.

Not surprisingly, nature will revolt. Though bariatric surgery is reported to bring about dramatic results - a reduction by as much as half or more of body weight - it is also associated with dangerous medical complications.