From Gizmodo
When JuniorCrooks posted recently about pills for weight loss, it got me curious.
Meds have desirable, and undesirable side and adverse effects. Well, what about other methods? There are caloric and food type adjustments that should be made and I wondered about tech.
There are surgical procedures such as stomach bypass surgery as well as “lap banding” where a balloon is wrapped around the junction of the esophagus and the stomach (done laparascopically – through a tube inserted through the wall of the abdomen).
Now there’s a new player: A gastric “pacemaker” (nerve stimulator would be closer to the truth) called Abiliti.
When a person starts eating, the device senses it and stimulates the Vagus nerve (which mediates stomach and intestine movement and secretion) and causes one to feel “full” much earlier than he/she would having eaten.
It’s run by a minicomputer (just like its brain, spinal cord and cardiac cousins). The device senses and paces according to the signals it receives.
According to its creators, “The system goes beyond just zapping the stomach. It also collects information about food consumption and exercise, all of which can be downloaded to the doctor's office or shared in the Abiliti online community.”
Is it effective? Yes. It’s designed to last for five years (power cell/size limitations) and costs between $24,000 to implant. That’s a good deal of money. However, if you figure in the “cost” of Diabetes and Hypertension along with resultant heart, nerve and blood vessel disease as well as Strokes and Kidney Failure, care and medications, it’s not that bad a deal and no monetary value can be placed on the human suffering. A better deal would be people saying “enough”, but how often has that ever happened?
So, is it effective? Well, according to the company, in a trial with 45 people, 20% weight loss was achieved. Considering that diets yield about 3%, that’s an impressive number.
As with any foreign device in the body, infections are a risk, and have been reported. It’ll be coming in 2014.
Worth A Second Look: Reversing Diabetes is possible (Type II – Adult Onset Diabetes/Insulin Resistant Diabetes):
http://www.cnn.com/2011/HEALTH/01/28/reverse.diabetes/?hpt=Sbin
I do applaud the doctors and scientist that develop these things. Obesity and its many issues are a huge problem. But I can't help but think that sometimes the simplest of ideas work the best.
I know its a "joke" video but if you ever watch the Biggest Loser show they do have some of the best results by following this concept.
Amen Ryat
North americans are getting fetter and lazier everyday and we wonder why our jobs go overseas. The parks are empty and when I do get on a bus most people take up 2 seats. As well as people I know driving half a block to the store or driving 5 km for a coffee when there is a machine to make coffee in front of there fat head. "Oh but I need my bear claw".
You should try the cnn link at the bottom of the OP.
If people want to lose weight they can on their own. Just watch some of the stupid TV shows that offer money and stuff to lose weight. These people do a hell of a job losing weight they have had for years. But of course they are on TV and receive gifts. Movie stars get free weight loss plans to apear on TV showing it. The device above sounds like a good thing and some will do it but can't see most people doing it because they talk about their weight but do nothing now to help theirselfs. In time someone will be on TV showing how the device works so great but then again they wouldn't have paid for it to be put in them. Don't get me wrong medicial advancement is a good thing and should continue but some things are a bit over the edge and one has to wonder where the money comes from for some of the advancements. I know as many of you know many people over weight and are happy. They know they are but have no plans to do anything about it. We blame many things example fast food places. If people don't care then they just don't care. BTW, I'm 5'10" and weigh 178#. I'm also 66 and by the standards set I'm overweight so go figure.
They get a heck of a lot more than that, Dave.
Stockholders and Venture Capital, I'd imagine.
Until they get sick and blame the fast food places. People rarely hear and accept truth (they tend to hear it as 'blame' which it isn't) and then go on to act on it. That's just the way it is (but doesn't have to be).
The problem remains sustained motivation in an atmosphere decidedly hostile to honest, healthy solutions and choices. Market pressures and eroded 'free time' are also negative forces, but families (especially, but not exclusively, while the kids are young) are the perfect places to start exercising together.
Also, no one forces us to have social activity exclusively in restaurants (just because it's 'easy' - easy = lazy in this context). Other choices would be bike riding or hiking... or sports (not on the couch as a spectator, but as participants).
The "Craig Ferguson Diet" - "Stop shoving so much stuff in your face". Worked great for me, especially since "stuff" included a whole lot of sugar.
Yep.
This isn't as simple of problem as you're all making it seem. It's not just about eating less and moving more. Certainly that's what it is for some, but there's also the psychological side of the issue. When my sister was put on the ventilator last year and my dad's cancer came back, everybody (except me because I don't live near them) put on a bunch of weight. Stress eating.
Sure, when a person is psychologically well, it seems simple enough -- calculate the amount of food you need to take in to be a certain weight, stick to that, and exercise, but when you're stressed, or hurting, or dealiing with some PTSD sort of thing from back in your past that you've covered up, then eating becomes a drug. Then, suppose you realize you're under a bunch of stress, and your doctor prescribes an SSRI to deal with the depression and the stress -- BAM -- 20-lb weight gain. There are other medical conditions that make the "sensible, eat less, move more" theory ellusive -- things like metabolic syndrome, PCOS, sleep apnea, joint problems, restrictive lung disease -- all problems that a lot of morbidly obese people have, and all of them contribute to making the problem worse, but put up hurdles to simply working out all the time.Much like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, everybody has to find their own way home. They all probably have the ruby slippers they already need to get home, but if somebody tells them how easy it is, (as Glinda the good witch pointed out), they wouldn't believe them. They have to find out for themselves.
I'm pretty grateful to anything that medical science discovers and makes available for people to use in dealing with their battles. I don't believe there will ever be one method that will work for everyone, because although the problem may look identical on the outside, from the inside it's different for everyone.
Oh, and Dave -- if you just hold your weight until you're 70, statistically you'll outlive someone who was a normal weight, underweight or obese, according to this study: http://www.webmd.com/healthy-aging/news/20100129/overweight-older-people-live-longer
Oh ya, that's an old friend of mine. I do go up and down, it's not like I just waived my hand and everything's good. I just keep pluggin' away at it. It just helps to pay attention, I didn't ever used to get on the scales at all.
Well ain't that a pickle. I think I'm going to have to try to stay less obese and take my chances though. I kind of like hauling less around.
You bring up a good point k10w3. A lot of people's eating issues due stem from a psychological problem. So counselling is always a good help here as well. Fortunately for me, food disgusts me when I am stressed. I have force myself to take in the bear minimum.
And while the other issues do create hurdles, hurdles can still be cleared. Most, but not all sadly, can often be contained by an increase in exersice.
[quote]Oh, and Dave -- if you just hold your weight until you're 70, statistically you'll outlive someone who was a normal weight, underweight or obese, according to this study: http://www.webmd.com/healthy-aging/news/20100129/overweight-older-people-live-longer[/quote]
Now we are talking. Must check into what it will take to make it to 80. Don't want to check out to soon and let Doc have an easy time of things without me here to straighten him out.
My son read the bio of one of the infomercial diet/muscle products testimonial faces.
He was a fitness trainer and body builder. They paid him 200k to not exercise and to eat out for six months and then put him on their "diet supplement" and told him to go back to his "normal" diet and excerise routine (a.k.a. fitness trainer).
Then he stood on camera smiled six months later and said, without changing my normal diet or exercise I lost fifty pounds with "these". His appearance was billed as an unpaid testimonial by a fitness trainer (they paid him to not exercise not to appear on camera--wink, wink).
Back in the 70's, Wesson Cooking Oil was sued by a competitor for commercials showing the oil after cooking and then showing a cleaner looking Wesson pan. The tag line was, "Nothing leaves less oil than Wesson".
The competitor took them to court and showed scientifically that "oil is oil" no matter what label you slap on it and it HAS to be messy. When asked while under oath to explain how their oil in the commercial was shown not to be messy, the company explained that it wasn't their oil so it wasn't false advertising. The meat cooked in the "Wesson" brand was actually cooked with NOTHING. Hence, "Nothing leaves less oil than Wesson". They lost
Caveat Emptor!
FYI, I held my weight from my mid twenties all the way till my forties--then metabolism slows and you have a harder time losing added weight. I walked several miles a day but had to stop when a bone in my foot dislocated (by walking so much). I have been able to hold my weight but it is not like flipping a switch and it is very differnt for everyone. I dropped twenty five pounds just by changing my diet a little (common sense--no "plan") but your body changes as ypou get older and what isn't an issue one year may become one the next. No silver bullets. Push the plate away and walk more is the best thing to start with.
SIN-Imperium -- OMG! That's SO typical of advertizing. I will never forget the episode of Mad Men, where they try to sell cigarettes after they've been medically proven to be unhealthy, and they came up with the slogan, "it's toasted." (ALL tobacco in cigarettes is toasted). I'm not one to fall for ads, but my husband is, and anytime he comes racing in to my office to tell me about some fantastic brand, I just look at him expressionless and say "it's toasted."
While not completely correct, whether the root cause is stress/psychological/inactivity, etc. decreasing the caloric intake and increasing exercise will help... (I'm not discussing endocrine causes for obesity here, nor rare syndromes...run of the mill stuff only).
For stressed people, as well as for those with depression/anxiety, exercisse will help as well. If placed on an ssri, a hi protein/low carb diet can help greatly in mitigating weight gain.
Lol...I loved Christina Hendricks from "Firefly" and I have only seen a couple of the episodes of Mad Men but I may start using, "It's toasted".
Yeah the simple thing is, consume fewer calories, burn more off--guaranteed to work. But it isn't that simple for everyone.
Another factor is, eat healthy, get counseling, etc.--and a lot of people can't afford to. they can't pay a therapist or a fitness trainer, they can't quit their desk job that makes them sit all day and they can't come home and not take care of their kids at the end of the day and then exercise after when they need sleep.
The real key to having a chance for succes is to start with something. Start small with the things you can do. Forget the "big plan"--do the plan you are capable of, then add to it and if you pick something you know is doable, hold yourself accountable to stick with it instead of somebody else's plan you tried.
Want a really simple thing that will work (if you stick to it): Stop the carbohydrate you eat the most of (bread/potatoes/rice/corn/pasta) and sodas (pop).
I guarantee you will lose weight. Substitute the carb with a green vegetable and/or salad.
Don't believe me? Try it for a month....but don't deviate.
OP that is so very wrong in so many ways.
It reminds me of the over the counter electrical muscle stimulators where the client could supposedly get a workout without working out, insane.
Yeah--if you are a childless or single child PROFESSIONAL couple you can swing a good lifestyle pretty well. If you have more children, a single household income or two non-professionals look at the suggested diets, lifestyle activites, medical care and it is absolutely out of reach for most people.
Not excusing or judging but people on assistance here in the US are often very obese or their children are and it's simply that the food you can AFFORD to buy is high carb, high sugar, high fat. People in third world countries have the same problem just getting subsistence levels of food due to the price.
So the answer here is, "You should have gone to college, not married and not had children.". Sadly, that's exactly what some people think should be forced on people. Do that and the next remedy is, "Well--you shouldn't have been born"...and how will they recommend that be fixed?
At the turn of the century when a lot of new progresive movements began in the US, eugenics and "racial control" and the like were some of the avant garde liberal ideas--Planned Parenthood's founders for example advocated compulsory sterilization of the genetically diseased, retarded and generational poverty families. Right about the same time the Nazi party was forming. All things old are new again.
The simplest things are the Hardest to do. I think that is one reason why I don't quit UPS. I have to eat about 3,000 calories or I will pass out due to all the moving I have to do with that job. Don't start to get fat, don't bother to have to lose the weight. At 5'10" and 145 LBS.
For probably as many reasons as there are people, Karen.
We know what's right, but can't do it. Not just food. It's a question of will at it's base, I believe. I do know that if you want something badly enough, you'll do what's necessary to get it...
Not at all. Your example is not parallel to the device described. I suppose cardiac and deep brain stimulators don't work, either?
The external stimulator you describe is more properly comparable to a girdle. Incidentally, people affected with strokes, fractures and Landry-Guillian-Barre Syndrome do benefit from external muscle stimulation to prevent atrophy.
This OP has to do with direct vagal stimulation (Rt. Vagus nerve). And there's nothing "wrong" about it apart from value judgments.
I firmly believe in low carbohydrate dieting, fat doesnt make you fat carbs do mostly, like bread and potatoes. Carbs raise blood sugar and raise insulin and insulin tells you to store fat, this is why the Atkins diet works. A lot of people do low-fat, high carb and end up yoyoing on their weight because insulin forces fat to stay in your adipose cells and you get an undershoot of nutrients and after a high carb meal you have almost no blood sugar or fats to use as energy.
Many people who lose wait on high carb low cal gain weight back because they are starving and lose lean muscle mass. We can digest meat as the stomach has a pH of 2 to denature proteins and bile salts to emulsify fats. Many indiginous people eat mostly meats and vegetables and have lived healthily, and some, like the Inuit and Masai, live on basically meat only diets. So people are know to eat veggies and meats in their natural forms, but no human on earth eats a stick of wheat, but processes it into bread, which makes it the one unnatural food that is now supposedly a health food in whole grain form. However whole grains still easily spike your blood sugar and should not be consumed in excess. In fact this is how cows are fattened, the corn and wheat feed is all starch which becomes high blood sugar and promotes fat storage, cows must eat grass because they have bacteria that creates fats and proteins from fiber, this is why factory farmed animals fatten up so fast and are sick from nutrient deficiency.
If people fail on low fat diets, they really should try low-carb, and add meat back into their lives while cutting bread and rice. your body only needs small amounts of carbs like 50-120g. after a certain threshold your body goes into fat making mode because it doesnt like lots of blood sugar. Your brain is practically made out of saturated fat and cholesterol, but it is the only part of the body that NEEDS glucose to work, which your body can make from gluconeogenisis from proteins or ketosis from triglicerides.
No mammal ever eats a low fat diet, herbivorous mammals have gut bacteria that digests fibers which are indigestible polysaccarides to mammals and turns them into short-chain saturated fatty acids and "animal" proteins, in other words, the fiber is turned into fat and protein by gut bacteria, a process nearly absent in humans. All mammals thrive from high fat and high protein, you should try it as well. If you can do well on a veggie diet then whatever works for you, but if it hasnt worked you should try low-carb. most people fail on lowfat diets so pharmacueticals manufacture shit like this to make money. Watching the Weston A. Price foundation's presentation should get you to understand what we should eat and to become skeptical of mainstream government advice and inform your self.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frBbQb5HD_Y&feature=mfu_in_order&list=UL
Also look up the documentary fathead on hulu, and look up journalists like Gary Taubes and Malcolm Kendrick to see what the literature really says and watch their lectures
Sugar: the bitter truth, By Robert Lustig is also a good refernce to watch, he gives nearly endless evidence about how bad sugar is and how it makes you fat. The one thing i do disagree with him is about fibre since he did not mention the evidence or any pathways about how fiber helps you
Edit: As for gluconeogenisis and ketosis its basically the production of glucose and ketones from protein and triglycerides. glucose is basically blood sugar, ketones are basically alternative fuel that actually MAY have the heart and brain functioning more efficiently. There are apperent studies that show that ketones damage kidneys, but the studies have only been done on people who are born with bad kidneys, and ketosis makes it worse. In normal people there should be no problem with ketosis. Just think about it, in nature, would u always have food available? or would u need to cope with starving.
If you need anything further explained or clarified (yes i am a bad writer) let me know . and I am up for a friendly debate as well for meat eating
^ Precisely right. Nice to see that. Try breaking it up with paragraphs, princeofstar... and I doubt if most folks know what gluconeogenesis is... just the same, sound physiology.
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