Let’s discuss the safety and effectiveness of various weight loss methods, from Botox and corsets to siphons and tapeworms.
A moderately obese person who does moderate vigorous physical activity, such as cycling or brisk walking, can burn about 350 calories per hour, but most beverages, snacks, and other processed junk food consume about 70 calories (293 kJ) per minute. Therefore, it only takes five minutes to clear an hour of exercise.
Install the AspireAssist siphon assembly.
It is a percutaneous gastrostomy device, which means surgeons cut a hole in a person’s stomach and remove the fistula from the stomach wall. Therefore, after each meal, a person can attach a suction gadget to the hole and empty their stomach directly, as you can see below and at 0:47 in my video. Extreme Weight Loss Devices.
This means that you can eat donuts, clean them through the hole in your stomach, and eat more donuts. Have your cake, and eat it, too…and two, three, and four times!
It seems like a quintessential American invention, straight from the country that brought us Jell-O salads, cheese spray, and deep-fried Snickers bars. Patients lose weight, perhaps in part because the fistula may interfere with the relaxation of the stomach wall during meals. This process requires drinking plenty of water and chewing food well, both of which can help with weight loss by increasing hydration and reducing food intake. Patients also started making healthy choices to avoid the negative view of gastric aspirate from unhealthy foods. (The tubing is clear, and, apparently, the fried food looks worse as it is removed.)
All patients need to take supplemental potassium, because it is absorbed in gastric juices. Otherwise, they are at risk of potassium deficiency (a common problem in bulimia), but most of the side effects are minor wound complications. Serious side effects, such as stomach ulcers, are rare. A major selling point is that the siphon device does not alter the anatomy of the gastrointestinal tract. That seems like a low bar, but in today’s Wild West world of weight loss procedures, you can’t take anything for granted. Take the duodenal-jejunal bypass liner, for example.
Gastric bypass surgery works in part by cutting off part of the small intestine so that food can no longer flow through it, thus helping to prevent the absorption of calories. Instead of major surgery, how about dropping a few plastic tubes to line the intestinal walls? The problem with the EndoBarrier is that it has to stick to the digestive tract. This is achieved with 10 hooks that cause bruising, including most of the 891 side effects reported in 1,056 patients—about 9 out of 10 people. Penetrating trauma, leading to perforation of the esophagus or liver abscess, is rare (occurring in only 1 of 27 patients).
Concerns have been raised about the “beauty” of the AspireAssist stomach pump, but the most serious endoscopic procedure I’ve found in my research is “bowel resurfacing.” Why cover the inside of your intestines with plastic to prevent absorption when you can “warm out the duodenal mucosa”? In other words, your gut lining is burned—or rather, “reawakened.”
Surgeons have tried injecting Botox into the abdominal walls of obese people, hoping that it would slow down their abdominal muscles, slow down the emptying of the stomach, make people feel fuller for longer, and help them lose weight. It didn’t work.
Swedish researchers are trying to make people wear corsets for 12 to 16 hours a day, seven days a week, for nine months. And it didn’t work. The participants in the study did not wear corsets—they were considered “uncomfortable.” Duh.
“Pure tapeworms” have apparently been widely advertised as a weight loss remedy since back in the early 1900s. The fact that live worms have been found during bariatric surgery suggests that self-infection with parasites may be ineffective.
Speaking of disgusting techniques, what about the disgusting itself? A study entitled “Harnessing Power of Disgusted: A Randomized Trial to Reduce High-Calorie Food Appeal Through Implicit Priming” attempted to use subliminal messages to undermine people’s appetite. Just before showing pictures of healthy food, the researchers briefly flashed pictures of happiness—such as a group of cats—for 20 milliseconds. That’s too fast to register consciously, but the hope was to plant a positive image in the brain. Before showing pictures of high-calorie foods like ice cream, they showed negative scenes, such as a cockroach on a slice of pizza, vomiting in a dirty toilet, and a burn wound. Apparently, it worked! Subjects later reported a reduced desire to eat high-calorie foods, although this was not directly tested. The researchers concluded that subliminal irritation may be “an effective strategy to combat the onslaught of food cues that promote unhealthy eating ….”
The whole world is watching, amazed at America’s cunning, writing comments like “Don’t Let Them Eat the Cake! Looking Across the Pond.” A paper in a journal Obesity Surgery entitled “What Are the Yanks Doing?” reviewed “US Experience with Implantable Gastric Stimulation,” placing electrodes in the muscle layer of the stomach wall. When that didn’t work, attempts were made to restore electricity to the colony.
Even more shocking were studies such as “Repetitive electrical brain stimulation reduces appetite in humans.” Although placing electrodes on the brain is considered a potentially problematic operation, scientists have long wondered whether “placing an electrode somewhere on the brain can make people eat less.” Holes were drilled into the skulls of five obese people, and wires were threaded into their brains for “electrostimulatory testing.” When the researchers wandered around and found places where they could get convincing starvation responses, they sent enough juice to fry the electro-coagulatory lesions. It seemed to work in cats and monkeys, but researchers found that burning holes in the brains of humans did not cause weight loss in obese people. Fortunately, as I explained in my book How not to eatHealthy, sustainable weight loss is not brain surgery.
Doctor’s Note
Check it out Is Gastric Balloon Surgery Safe and Effective for Weight Loss?.
What about drugs? Look Are Weight Loss Pills Safe? again Do Weight Loss Pills Work?.
So, what is the best way to lose weight? I wrote a whole book about it! How not to eat focuses only on sustainable weight loss. Borrow it from your local library or pick up a copy from your favorite bookseller. (All proceeds from my books are donated to charity.) To fuel your enthusiasm, take a look: The trailer for How not to eat: The guide of Dr. Greger Weight Loss.
For more on this topic, see the related post below.
