Dean Kamen Invents Stomach Pump For Dieters

You may soon have another option to lose weight other than dieting and exercise thanks to Dean Kamen. The inventor has designed a pump that can suck the cheeseburgers out of your stomach and replace it with water. From the article: "The pump was invented by Dean Kamen, the same man who brought you the Segway, and perhaps more fittingly, a breakthrough dialysis machine. This pump works by routing a tube directly into the user's stomach and then sucking out some of the gooey, masticated goodness. The user then squeezes a little plastic bag to replace that volume of stomach-stew with water. Sounds great, right? There are some catches though. It hasn't been approved by the FDA yet, and some of the users in the tests had problems with certain foods like 'cauliflower, broccoli, Chinese food, stir fry, snow peas, pretzels, chips, and steak.' Oh, also there's a tube going into your stomach that you use to pump unpuked vomit into the toilet. Participants in trial studies did manage to lose about half of their excess weight this way, around 45 pounds on average, so apparently it works."

Comments

Isn't this just bulimia?

[Anonymous Coward]

Or at least a marketable, respectable form of bulimia.

Re:Isn't this just bulimia?

[19thNervousBreakdown]

Yes, it is. At least, it's bulimia. I don't see anything respectable at all about surgically altering yourself so you can gorge and still lose weight, and I guess time will tell if it's marketable (although I doubt it'll be even as successful as lap band surgery), but yeah, it's definitely mechanical barfing.

Re:Isn't this just bulimia?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

The tube should ameliorate some of the dangerous effects of repeated exposure to gastric acids by the sensitive tissues and teeth of the mouth and throat, so there is that...

Re:Isn't this just bulimia?

[jamesh]

Yes, it is. At least, it's bulimia. I don't see anything respectable at all about surgically altering yourself so you can gorge and still lose weight, and I guess time will tell if it's marketable (although I doubt it'll be even as successful as lap band surgery), but yeah, it's definitely mechanical barfing.

Depends on the size of the target market. How many people are there in the US who love eating but don't want to be fat? Probably not many I guess.

Re:Isn't this just bulimia?

[AuMatar]

Wrong question. How many people love eating, don't want to be fat, and think that this could possibly be a good or healthy idea? And want to deal with the disposal and cleanup of the pumped material? I love eating and it would be great to lose 100 pounds, but I know that this isn't safe and is actually counter-productive.

Re:Isn't this just bulimia?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know about you, but I deal with disposal of some pretty nasty material from my body at least once a day already...

Re:Isn't this just bulimia?

[Dahamma]

I assume you have never been intubated (even by a real doctor) before? They do it for most surgeries (to the trachea, not stomach) and most people have a minor sore throat afterwards. Do that yourself (all the way down to your stomach, even worse) every day and you will mess up your esophagus, larynx, of some other structure in your throat a lot faster than gastric acids would.

Re:Isn't this just bulimia?

[davester666]

You really should have that head wound looked at by a doctor...

revolutionary!

[terec]

This is going to revolutionize nutrition and eating, just like the Ginger/Segway has revolutionized transportation in our cities.

Re:revolutionary!

[Anonymous Coward]

How very shallow. How old are you? 16?

Coming from the guy whose username is 'Frosty Piss', priceless!

Broccoli? Really?

[GenieGenieGenie]

Why on earth would you want to suck out the broccoli? This gadget needs a fiberscopic camera that will allow you to view the semi-digested morsels and suck out the ones you don't want to keep.

Hard To Prepare Foods = The Win

[Anonymous Coward]

Several studies have show obese people prefer easily accessible food.

Stock up on hard-to-prepare food: eggs, flour, potatoes, etc.

These foods also happen to be inexpensive. And cuts down on all types of "impulse eating" as you ask yourself "Do I really want to spend 15 minutes on a snack or can I wait?" Of course, this practical advice doesn't make a guy on TV any money and doesn't make a mega-corp any money and doesn't sell books on a talk show ...

Re:Reminds me of food waste statistics

[LordLucless]

"There are nearly a billion malnourished people in the world, but all of them could be lifted out of hunger with less than a quarter of the food wasted in Europe and North America"

No, they couldn't, not unless that food could be transported to them and distributed before it became inedible. In countries with good infrastructure, that's not a problem, but those billion malnourished generally don't live in a place with good air freight service, well-maintained highways, and refrigerated trucking.

Any solution to global poverty is going to have to largely rely on bootstrapping local production. Despite importing a lot of food, most western nations export a whole lot more - they have sufficient capacity to feed themselves, and trade for variety/seasonality. Getting developing nations to the point of self sufficiency is key - anything else leaves them dependant on the developed world, which will screw them over when a drought/famine/whatever hits, and we have less excess to give.

why are people driven to eat too much?

[bzipitidoo]

A pithy answer like "Eat less and exercise" obviously doesn't cut it. That's like the joke about how to put a giraffe in a refrigerator. You open the refrigerator, put the giraffe in, and close the door.

Some findings and facts that have received some publicity lately:

1. Gut microbes adapt to the food you eat, so that simple calorie counting is not accurate. Fat people can gain weight on less food, because their gut microbes are more efficient.
2. Sleep deprivation is another cause of weight gain.
3. Chemicals such as Bisphenol A mimic hormones. Many other plastics are also problematic. They get into our bodies because we use them for food containers and linings. Once in the body, they screw with our metabolism. One common effect is weight gain.
4. The food industry's first priority is not our health, it's their bottom line. Most of us are also suckers for this, often measuring the value of food solely by price. It would be expecting too much to hope that the cheapest food is reasonably healthy, and of course it isn't. Breakthroughs that extend the shelf life of fresh food cheaply would be huge.

There are a bunch of other lifestyle factors that can cause weight problems: too much sitting, pollution, artificial lighting, stress, and disease. The obesity epidemic is not going to be solved with a "Just Say No" campaign to cheeseburgers.

Re:why are people driven to eat too much?

[lxs]

I'm reading a lot of excuses in your post. It's gut bacteria it's pollution, it's Big Corn, it's stress. I'm not reading anything about taking personal responsibility. Losing weight means running a calorie deficit. This will make you feel bad. The only way to get though that is to get off the notion that you should feel good all the time and volutarily put yourself in a situation where you're hungry and feeling bad. that feeling will pass in a couple of weeks and it will strengthen your willpower.

Re:Did You Think, Maybe...

[NIK282000]

There are many reasons for people to be fat but the ONLY mechanism is cramming your face with calories. Regardless of glands, mental health or family history you body cant just pull mass out of fat air, it needs to be fed. An intelligent diet and exercise are the cheapest and best solution to America's weight problem. Unless the person is not in charge of their own diet then there is no one to blame for their 300lb ass but themselves.