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Wednesday, December 20, 2006
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Obesity: More Silly, Futile, Dangerous Solutions that Won't Work
If this weren't so funny it might be pathetic - or, if it weren't so pathetic it might be funny; I'm not quite sure which it is... Sometimes it's hard to tell whether these news stories are serious or offered tongue-in-cheek...
So, here we have an article that describes how one company has won a patent for a substance to squirt up your nose to stop you from being able to smell and taste on the theory that if you can't smell or taste anything you might not want to eat. (so does this mean that the "biology experiment that has been growing in the back of your fridge for a few months will now be OK because it no longer smells or tastes disgusting? Do I see a sharp increase in visits to the ER for stomach pumping in the future? Ewww... Yuck!)
The article then goes on to describe brain-altering drugs, now available in Europe and soon to be available at a pharmacy near you. The drug company, in small print, lists the following side effects from their delightful chemicals: Nausea, vomitting and other gastrointestinal disorders, disorders of the nervous system including headaches, faintness, dizziness, psychiatric disorders including mood swings, anxiety, depression, irritability, sleep disorders and other similar disorders - Hmmm... might be enough to make you lose your appetite, huh?
Another company that wants to give you a battery powered "stomach pacemaker" (so what happens when the batteries go dead? Gotta have another operation to put in new "CopperTops?), and yet another hopeful that wants to electrically zap your poor stomach into submission - presumably so that you can pass undigested chunks of food from your stomach to the small bowel, where it has no business being in that condition. Imagine the medical problems that will cause - why, I'll bet that there will be new drugs needed to solve new, treatment-created problems... along with the "Little Purple Pill" now used by so many to shut off their stomach's ability to produce vital food-digesting stomach acid.
Then there is the really tragic, or perhaps tragi-comic statement that this article makes, to wit: "Bariatric surgery, including gastric bands like the Lapband, is the only effective permanent solution, doctors say." Yikes! How has mankind survived for lo these many years without major, dangerous, mutilating stomach surgery? But wait, it gets better! "Gastric bypass surgery makes the stomach smaller so patients can eat less and cuts out a long stretch of small intestine so fewer nutrients are absorbed." Whew! Now it is starting to make sense: take some poor fat person, who is most likely malnourished anyway whether because of eating all the wrong things, or eating "right" according to the government's much-ballyhooed "Food Pyramid" and take out a big chunk of his small bowel so he is guaranteed to be malnourished! Just which doctors are these? Have these people entirely forgotten the Hippocratic Oath that they once swore? What ever happened to the concept of "First of all, Do no harm"?
Here is my statement, guaranteed to fly in the face of "conventional" Big Medicine: Fat people are not fat because they can smell and taste, nor because they lack some electric gizmo surgically implanted, nor because the are in possession of all the internal parts that their Creator gave them - they are fat because they are starving! That's right, starving - as in malnourished! Doesn't it make sense that our bodies might have more wisdom that our brains, and be telling us that we must eat because we are low on some vital nutrients? And if we don't get enough essential nutrients, the body will continue to demand to be fed until the shortfall is made up? So if we eat junk with no nutritive value, our poor bodies demand more - and unfortunately, we just tend to eat more of the same empty junk and get fatter and more malnourished!
Want to learn more? Maybe even take a chance and lose some weight and restore your health? Check out Dr. Myatt's Super Fast Diet...
Cheers, Nurse Mark
Firm designs nasal spray to fight obesity
(Toby Melville/Reuters)
By Jason SzepTue Dec 19, 12:29 PM ET
Dieters may find some welcome assistance from a new nasal spray that could help resist the appetizing aromas of cinnamon bun stands, pizza parlors or tempting bakeries.
Compellis Pharmaceuticals of Cambridge, Massachusetts said it will begin human trials next year of a nasal spray designed to fight obesity by blocking the senses of smell and taste. It won a patent for the product this month.
"The pleasurable effect of eating is all stimulated by smell and taste," Christopher Adams, the company's founder and chief executive, told Reuters on Tuesday.
"The premise is that olfactory activity that controls both smell and taste is a trigger and a feedback mechanism to eat. If you have some kind of reduced sense of smell or taste, you tend to eat less," he said.
The product, known as CP404, is among the latest devices and treatments under development in the multibillion-dollar fight against obesity.
An estimated 65 percent of adult Americans are overweight or obese, putting them at higher risk of heart disease, diabetes and other conditions that account for more than $100 billion of the country's $1.9 trillion annual healthcare bill.
French drug maker Sanofi-Aventis began marketing its obesity pill Acomplia in Britain in June and expects to receive U.S. government approval by April to sell the drug in the United States. The pill switches off the same brain circuits that make people hungry when they smoke cannabis.
Medtronic Inc., the world's biggest maker of medical devices, is developing a battery-powered gastric pacemaker that causes the stomach to contract, sending signals of satiety to the appetite center in the brain.
Enteromedics Inc. of Minneapolis is working with the Mayo Clinic on a device known as "Maestro" that uses electricity to paralyze the stomach, reducing or stopping contractions that churn food as part of the digestion process.
Those last two devices, like CP404, are still years away from reaching consumers.
TO SEEK FDA APPROVAL
Adams said he would seek Food and Drug Administration approval in about three years after human trials begin in 2007. He also expects to tap the stock market to raise $25 million to $50 million in an initial public offering if human trials are successful, with the spray expected to hit the market in 2010.
The nasal spray treatment would retail at $500 to $1,000 a year.
The Obesity Action Coalition, a Tampa, Florida-based nonprofit organization, cautioned that any such spray should be accompanied by other treatments and a change in lifestyle to be effective.
"There are a lot of reasons why obesity exists, and it's not always a case of food addiction," said James Zervios, a spokesman for the coalition.
"People still need to eat. Every time they get hungry I don't think they could just use the spray," he said. "People need to be taught what are the better foods to eat -- what's high on protein, what's low on fat."
Bariatric surgery, including gastric bands like the Lapband, is the only effective permanent solution, doctors say. Gastric bypass surgery makes the stomach smaller so patients can eat less and cuts out a long stretch of small intestine so fewer nutrients are absorbed.
But the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, a unit of the federal government's Public Health Service, has warned that four of every 10 patients who undergo weight-loss surgery develop complications within six months.
1:02:06 PM
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© Copyright 2007 HealthBeat.
Last update: 1/8/2007; 9:35:02 AM.
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