GLP-1 medications don’t work for everyone. A local doctor says surgery is still an option
When Jennie Mixon had gastric bypass surgery in February 2024, she weighed 245 pounds, and was a Type 2 diabetic in Stage 3 liver failure.
Today, the 53-year-old is no longer diabetic. She lost half of the weight, and she can keep up with her two young grandkids.
“They exhaust me, but it is a good exhaustion now, compared to what it was,” Mixon told WTOP.
Mixon, of Bowie, Maryland, said she was “failing miserably, healthwise.”
She tried a GLP-1 drug, but a negative reaction sent her to the hospital. That, and other health complications from her weight and diabetes, led her to Dr. Yewande Alimi, a bariatric surgeon at MedStar Washington Hospital Center in D.C.
“The medications out there certainly can help patients really lose weight,” Alimi said. “But not every patient responds to GLP-1s. We also know that the most durable approach to weight loss really still is, the data shows, bariatric surgery.”
Obesity surgery rates have not changed since GLP-1 drugs, such as Ozempic and Mounjaro, arrived on the scene. Alimi said only 1% of obesity patients who meet the criteria undergo bariatric surgery.
And a stigma still lingers around the procedure.
“People sometimes think that it’s a failure of themselves, of their inability to do something, that they’ve reached out to consider bariatric surgery. And that really isn’t the case,” Alimi said.
“Obesity is a disease,” Alimi said, adding that it’s also complex. “Obesity actually affects so many organ systems that I can’t detail all of them in this conversation, but it really impacts every sort of organ system in the body.”
In Mixon’s case, gastric bypass surgery emerged as the better option.
“Bariatric surgery really does still win out when we talk about being able to get patients off of some of their antihypertensives, getting them off their insulin medications, and really bringing their weight down and getting them back to a fuller life,” Alimi said.
“I haven’t had any insulin since Feb. 19, 2024,” Mixon said. “I can get out and go on a hike with my daughter and my grandkids, and not be absolutely wiped out a third into it. I got my life back.”