Balloon Pill...

[Brandy]

http://www.upi.com/Health_News/2016/11/04/Balloon-in-a-pill-helped-obese-patients-lose-weight/5981478290973/?sn=bn_an

Ok, the people talking in this article are idiots who obviously make their money from shaming fat people, but the technology is getting impressive.

It won't be long before they figure out how to make it out of something that will dissolve and then there will be no surgical requirements. I'm not sure that this will replace diet surgery for the SMO, et all, but if you just need to loose ten pounds a year or so?

Do you think I off base? Will "normal" people put up with two weeks of mild nausea to lose 10 lbs? I know I would, cuz I put up with a whole year of the honeymoon period and that wasn't fun.

 

[swimbikerun]

If all you have mild nausea or the like it is possible. Alli and a few other ones like it gave mild issues and there were people ready to do this. I think diarrhea was a big issue with one of them and there were still people that would. If someone was getting married, going to a reunion, it is possible.

 

[southernlady]

Honestly it sounds like just another way of separating people from their money in the search of an EASY way to lose weight. And I don't see swallowing a balloon.

 

[Brandy]

It is just a pill now, smaller than a lot of the calcium pills we take. But the real difference is that it actually works for everybody because it works with your body's own mechanisms for managing itself. All patients feel full and lose weight like crazy until the balloon is gone, 100%. There is nothing stopping a person from regaining the weight like WLS, but then you can just take another pill and feel slightly crappy for a week?

No matter what I did before surgery, I couldn't lose weight. My short intestines were just a foot or two smaller than the records. Which meant that I had about six feet worth of extra digestive power. I am a mutant optimized for famine living in an abundant world. It isn't that I was looking for an EASY way to lose weight, I was looking for a possible way. From what I've read, this would have worked, even with my mutant powers.

 

[southernlady]

It is just a pill now, smaller than a lot of the calcium pills we take. But the real difference is that it actually works for everybody because it works with your body's own mechanisms for managing itself. All patients feel full and lose weight like crazy until the balloon is gone, 100%. There is nothing stopping a person from regaining the weight like WLS, but then you can just take another pill and feel slightly crappy for a week?

No matter what I did before surgery, I couldn't lose weight. My short intestines were just a foot or two smaller than the records. Which meant that I had about six feet worth of extra digestive power. I am a mutant optimized for famine living in an abundant world. It isn't that I was looking for an EASY way to lose weight, I was looking for a possible way. From what I've read, this would have worked, even with my mutant powers.

Maybe but yo-yoing is extremely hard on your metabolism and to keep it off would mean a lifetime of swallowing balloons.

I could lose easy enough, my issue was keeping it off and as I aged, it got harder and harder.

 

[Brandy]

Again, I don't think that this is going to replace diet surgery for the morbidly obese plus. I agree with you that it would probably be too uncomfortable to lose, say, 172 lbs that way.

But I am not sure that I agree with you about yo-yo dieting and this being the same thing. When you diet you work against what your body wants so your body starts fighting you. You eat only 500 calories a day and your body does everything in its power to stop you. Dreams, cravings, hormones, endorphins out the yang yang, as far as your body is concerned, you declared war and it is going to fight you and win. And it does win in the long run.

Although the odds of a less than obese person losing weight and keeping it off for five years are not very high, something like 5% if I remember correctly, the odds drop to zero if that person is over the morbidly obese line. I've posted those stats here before, so if I need to I can search for them.

But the thing that is different with this is that your body takes the pressure of the balloon at the top of the tummy as a message to stop eating now and not to start pressuring you to eat until its gone. So you are not facing an armed insurrection from your body and from what I can see from these studies, you wont. Yea, after it's gone you are back to the normal give and take of swapping between burning fats or sugars, but it doesn't look like the body digs in and systematically works to regain the lost weight plus a little to be safe, hence no yo-yo. It is exactly the lack of the yo-yo that grabbed my attention here.

I always envied the people that could diet their fat away, even if it came back. At least they got a break and they got that awesome flush of success that you get from losing weight. I never had that. I did 9 weeks of the South Beach Diet Phase ONE, never cheated and lost 4 lbs that came back plus 10 on the tenth week on phase two. I am not sure I can communicate just how horrible that was, how much of a failure I felt like. I still am working on the scars. Be thankful that you could achieve success, but please be careful shooting down others for things beyond their control.

..b.

 

[Eztli]

When I was a teenager I participated in a paid trial for a sort of ballon pill. These worked a little differently. You swallowed several of these wafer/pill things and then you drank a glass of water. The wafer would then (supposedly) expand inside your stomach and you wouldn't be able to eat as much. This was a good gig for the company because these things were huge and you had to take them several times a day. Because I was young and stupid I never bothered to even find out what was in these wafers, I was just desperate. Whatever it was probably wasnt good for ones digestive tract. I lost a couple pounds, probably the same I would lose if i made sure to drink a glass of water prior to each meal. But it got very onerous to swallow several wafers 3 times a day with water, I don't think its sustainable long term, not to mention buying those things would be incredibly expensive. Not sure if things like this exist anymore, but if they do, they aren't popular for a reason.

 

[Larra]

@Brandy I mean no offense and usually I don't get picky about words people choose, but there is no such thing as "diet surgery". It's bariatric surgery. I don't even like the term weight loss surgery because the surgery is about so much more than weight loss, it's about changing metabolism, absorption, satiety, nutrition, and more.
Now, if you want to call lap band diet surgery, I won't complain, because that's all it is - a glorified diet with a gadget to make eating miserable. And no metabolic benefits, no hormonal changes, nothing. But thankfully, lap band is gradually falling out of favor, far less of them are being installed, because people are becoming much more aware of how poorly they work and how often they end up being removed and replaced with something better (which means just about anything else).

Re: the balloon, I'm not impressed with any combination of the intestinal tract and gadgets. Yes, I could see how someone would lose 10 lbs with this type of thing, but it will just come back, probably with friends, when the balloon stops working. What's the point in that? Anyone who needs to lose just 10 lbs probably has an ok metabolism and could accomplish the same thing without a gadget, and without having a balloon where no balloon belongs irritating the inner lining of the stomach.

 

[DSRIGGS]

Dr K was telling me that these balloon things or something like it are all the rage in Socal now and that somebody asked why he isn't doing it. His badic response was along these lines.... I could charge people $8,000 for the first time and again every year or so (can't remember the exact time frame they last) but I value the well being of my patients and my reputation too much to do it.

 

[Munchkin]

If it wasn't for the endoscopy to inflate it, I would give it a go!

 

[Larra]

@Munchkin aside, these folks in SoCal who have a spare 8K sitting around could go to Mexico and get sleeves for just about that amount of money and have something that might actually be beneficial.

 

[galaxygrrl]

@Brandy, I too had a rather long small intestine, but, you know, the body does not waste calories, so you really don't know if you absorbed more calories from the same food as a someone with a shorter intestine, you made that assumption.

Well, I hope that balloon thing works. You know, without surgery, it really is a eat less, move more game and its for the rest of your life. We rarely ever talk about hormones here - for example ghrelin and leptin - which is a big part of this puzzle. The VSG cuts out the part of the stomach that produces it.

I yoyoed 100 pounds twice and when I took phent---ermine, it so worked. Not because I had smaller stomach, it just turned off the hunger drive I had.

Surgery is the best solution we have now, though I think the long term solution will be drugs to be honest and not an balloon in your stomach.

Hunger, food, absorption, is sooooo complicated. Drug companies spend billions on research and have not cracked the code. (they are not even close)

Thank goodness we at least have one WLS that works.

 

[southernlady]

We rarely ever talk about hormones here - for example ghrelin and leptin - which is a big part of this puzzle. The VSG cuts out the part of the stomach that produces it.

Actually the entire stomach produces both...and yes, the VSG gets rid of quite a bit but not 100%. But that argument is why surgeons and bariatric offices say "well, you won't feel hungry afterwards" which is bullshit. You won't feel the same amount but after you are healed, you will feel hunger again. And maybe for the first time, recognize it as REAL hunger and not boredom or stress.