Tue, Mar-03-15, 10:30
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Senior Member
Posts: 3,199
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Plan: High protein, lower fat
Stats: 000/000/145
BF:276, 255 hi wts
Progress: 0%
Location: Michigan U.P., USA
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"The Invention That Could End Obesity"
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A Michigan surgeon invented an apparatus that he believes tricks the brain into thinking the stomach is full. His Full Sense Device could be a lifesaver for millions of obese Americans and raises questions about how hunger — our most basic human impulse — even works. http://www.buzzfeed.com/joeloliphin...sity#.iybY9AAdn
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Dr. Baker has come up with a nonsurgical device that he says will enable obese patients to lose substantial weight, and at a fraction of the cost of surgery — in the neighborhood of $5,000 at an outpatient center. A company claiming to have found a simple solution to drastic, easy weight loss is, of course, nothing new; in fact, it’s big business. (See: late-night infomercials.) Some surgeons and researchers are skeptical of Baker’s pressure theory, and at least one patient experienced chronic acid reflux after the device was inserted. But more than 10 years after the eureka moment, Baker is hopeful that doctors in Europe could begin using the Full Sense Device this year and in Canada and Mexico soon after. Americans will have to wait longer; Food and Drug Administration approval is unpredictable and likely still years away. Baker’s concern, though, is that the Full Sense Device might work too well. If it’s effective, easy, and cheap, what’s to stop people from abusing it?
“When this hits the market, there’s not going to be just 10,000 to 15,000 people having it,” says Fred Walburn, president and sole employee of Full Sense Device’s parent company, BFKW. “There’s going to be hundreds of thousands. Millions per year.”
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Current plans would allow the device to remain for up to six months before removal, though in the future that time may be longer. In the company’s trials, every patient implanted with the device lost weight and continued to lose weight until the device was removed. Baker calls the phenomenon “implied satiety.” At six months, average patients lost 75% of their excess body weight — significantly more and at a faster rate than any bariatric procedure, and all, Baker says, with no “severe adverse side effects.”
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Though the concept of hunger may seem simple, it isn’t, nor is it understood entirely. Scientists haven’t pinned down exactly how the stomach communicates with the brain. The interaction between gut hormones and the nervous system is key — ghrelin and leptin, for instance, act on neural components of hunger — but there isn’t a complete set of answers for how the gut regulates appetite.
There’s also no consensus as to how or why bariatric surgery often leads to dramatic weight loss and diabetic improvements (or why sometimes it doesn’t). Most bariatric surgeons were taught that the procedures lead to weight loss through restriction and/or malabsorption, and many still hold fast to those two explanations. The restriction theory says that the surgeries lead to weight loss by limiting the amount of food the body can hold. Malabsorption — when something is bypassed to reduce absorption of calories — is also thought to play a role in gastric bypass. But research from the past few years suggests that there are, at the very least, more things going on.
What makes a gastric bypass patient eat less, Baker theorizes, is that it takes less food to put enough pressure on the stomach so that it sends neurological and hormonal signals to the brain saying, “I’m full.”
“People used to think satiety was on or off,” Baker says. “You’re hungry or you’re not hungry.” But Baker says it’s actually a continuum. When there’s nothing in the stomach you have hunger, then you progress to “not hungry,” then levels of fullness, then nausea, then vomiting. “The more pressure you put on,” he says, “the higher you get up that cycle.”
Randy Seeley, the University of Michigan researcher, has a different take. “It’s very clear that restriction and malabsorption have little to do with how surgery works,” says Seeley. His research points instead to the importance of gut bacteria — particularly the hormonal action of bile acids — after surgery.
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Baker agrees that gut bacteria and hormones are important, but thinks the stomach’s upper portion is the gut’s brain, which sets other processes in motion. Still, many questions remain regarding the roles restriction, malabsorption, pressure, hormones, and nerves play in bariatric surgery, and the answers will likely determine whether the Full Sense Device is a legitimate, long-term alternative to weight-loss surgery.
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One thing that surprised me about this was how lengthy, expensive and involved the FDA approval process is for a device like this. Whereas the surgeon could insert an esophageal stent without approval apparently.
There was a time when I was morbidly obese and just. could. not. get. motivated. to low carb or anything else AGAIN. I might have been interested in a device like this, except for the expense of course. Never mind the weight loss, just the 6 month "reprieve" would have sounded good. But I also think that weight loss itself is a motivator too. The hardest thing usually for me has been to get started and keep going after the start when 10-20-30+ lbs didn't seem to count for much.
In the comment section, which seemed somewhat less knee jerk and cliched than usual, btw, someone said that this guy would be bought out sooner or later and then the device would be buried because weight loss is such big business. The cynic in me thinks he may have a point.
Last edited by JLx : Tue, Mar-03-15 at 17:20.
Reason: typo
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Just another way to separate someone desperate from their money. But I'm cynical like that. 
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