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FDA Approves Implantable Vagus Nerve Disruptor For Weight Loss
The L.A. Times reports that for the first time since 2007, the FDA has approved a weight loss device (as opposed to a weight-loss drug), an implantable device called the Maestro Rechargeable System. Using electrical leads implanted just above the stomach and a regulator carried under the skin near the ribcage, the device suppresses signals carried by the vagus nerve. ... The device adopts a variant of a "neuromodulation" technique long used in the treatment of epilepsy: by applying intermittent bursts of electrical current to the vagus nerve, it disrupts the signals that prompt the stomach to relax, expand and prepare for an influx of food. ... The FDA approved the use of the device in adult patients with a body mass index, or BMI, between 35 and 45, who have at least one other obesity-related condition, such as type 2 diabetes.
The vagus nerve does a lot of really cool things which don't get a lot of appreciation.
Cats purr to self-stimulate it. That's what they're doing when they make that noise. And you can do it also. It orders the mind, creating calm and clarity. When you're affronted with terror or high emotion, "pipe breathe" and within half a minute, you're in the zone, able to think and react with calm precision to high-stress situations. And that's just *one* thing.
So yeah, let's allow big pharma to cyberman our core nervous apparatus for something as incredibly stupid as a weight loss gimmick.
The science on this is not bullet-proof yet, but there are studies that link unexplained panic attacks and associated syndromes to vagus nerve problems. There are multiple theories, including one that proposes that physical symptoms of panic are experienced, and this triggers the psychological ones.
I don't know if this thing will help fat people, but I'd bet a dollar on the fact that it will definitely boost sales of paxil and valium.
lucm, indeed.
The vagus nerve is an important physiologically but it's not endowed with magical properties. Just saying.
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
Affecting a nerve to help people regulate their hunger and help them loose weight? There is already a way of doing that and it's called Leptin. Leptin is the hormone that regulates hunger by stimulating receptors in the hypothalamus. When someone suffers from leptin resistance, he will eat all day. The fix? bye bye sugars, bye bye inflammatory foods, bye bye foods with anti-nutrients.
I lost 100lb resetting my leptin cycle, I stopped eating all day and simply wasn't hungry anymore. No will power, no pills, nothing... the anxiety for food just went away.
Here is a nice article with 29 scientific references that explains exactly the importance of Leptin Cycle
And here is a nice video from Stephan Guyenet, Ph.D. explaining it too
Affecting a whole big nerve instead of changing eating habits is a really really bad idea
- Human knowledge belongs to the world
I have a Vegas Nerve. Lost a lot of money on blackjack and hookers.
Table-ized A.I.
Meh it's all very well to start talking about willpower but I mean look at how vaping has exploded lately in lieu of cigarettes. If these devices help reduce obesity, they're saving lives, and that's a good thing.
Cats purr to self-stimulate it. That's what they're doing when they make that noise.
So when I see some fat folks purring, I will know that they are using this device . . . ?
It will be on the side effects list: "Makes you purr."
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Most obesity is due to poor nutrition and lack of exercise. Changing nutrition and exercising costs nothing and has numerous health benefits. Giving people an inferior, costly, and risky substitute for a simple and effective solution is not a good thing.
I've also been hearing about success in treating tinnitus by stimulation of the Vegas nerve.
46137
Most obesity is due to poor nutrition and lack of exercise. Changing nutrition and exercising costs nothing and has numerous health benefits. Giving people an inferior, costly, and risky substitute for a simple and effective solution is not a good thing.
Exercising makes you fit, but unless you're an athlete it doesn't burn enough calories to make up for excessive calorie intake. I can usually burn 5-700 calories in an hour, but a Big Mac and 0.5 liter coke will undo that very easily and that's not counting the fries. You can subititute the burger with about 100 grams of potato chips or about three 0.5 liter beers. And if it's not excesses in sugar and fat you can easily overeat on quite ordinary food by simply eating too much.
You can easily overeat by 1000+ calories a day, in fact your body is built to quickly store fat in times of plenty since before refridgerators and preservatives that was the primary means of surviving harsh winters, draughts, bad luck hunting and so. The body is sending you all these wrong messages that you did great to secure all these reserves Except these days we only go up and never down.
Sure, it's just a matter of not eating but that's easier said than done, a nagging hunger is very very annoying. It's like I've grown up in a fairly cold climate, send a person from the tropical regions here and have him dress like me and I swear he'll think it's cold, damn cold. I doubt our bodies are that differntly build physically, but it's not as easy as to say it's all in your head. Maybe it is, but he's still freezing where I'm not. And I'm still hungry even though you're not. It's not fun. Being fat as fuck is also not fun, so I try balancing it out. But it's not easy.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Obesity is a major health problem in much of the western world. It's nice to just blame fat people for lack of willpower or moral fibre when you are controlling it, but that doesn't help anyone. Anything that can seriously help people control their weight isn't a gimmick, it's a fix for one of the most common and serious health issues we face.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Well, I don't know who to root for. I completely distrust the medical/cosmetic industry when it comes to selling solutions, especially for cosmetic issues (and this may be mostly health now, but don't kid yourself where it will be funded). On the other hand, the trolls who say it's all will power and fat is purely moral don't have much science behind them, and appear more motivated by "just world fallacy" reasoning (if a person is ill, and it isn't me, they more likely somehow deserve it). Both cost us money, over-prescription, and people who try to "believe-away" real health problems with high society costs.
As for the people who smugly think it's justice for affluent societies like USA, look at how obesity rates rise in nations which go from very poor to moderately poor. Africans, Asians, Latinos, and Europeans are not immune to unintended consequences. News Flash: As the threats of starvation subside, threats of overconsumption increase.
Gently reply
The implants have been used to control certain forms of epilepsy for some time. The side effects are known, which is how the possible use for weight control was discovered.
This isn't some random shit that someone started doing, so take your idiotic fear-mongering elsewhere.
For me, sadly, it is the opposite. Once I started cooking and baking, I got good at it. Then I realized "you mean I can have butter chicken and chocolate cake whenever I want?"
Mostly random stuff.
Well, I don't know who to root for.
Don't worry - the tendency to see both sides of an issue is a genuine medical affliction brought on by an over-active brain. Soon they'll have an implant to help such people reduce every issue affecting the world to a simplistic false dichotomy, taking away the uncomfortable urge to try and deal with complexity.
Meanwhile, you just need to rely on willpower to suppress your skepticism when reading stories like this.
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
Moderate exercise, like walking, some time after a meal has a good effect on blood glucose peaks. There's more to exercise than just burning the calories.
, teenagers jumping off cliffs
That is an unfortunate side effect of improving someone's condition with severe depression. I've been there, when you're so depressed you don't want to get out of bed or do anything, barely having motivation to eat. Suddenly with an SSRI, and some other alternatives in principle as it isn't just the drug, you have energy and motivation to do things. Some people use that energy and motivation to fix some of the issues and improve their environment to remove things reenforcing their depression, to get their life back in shape. Others who were previous suicidal but too depressed to actually give a damn or motivate themselves to do anything also now have motivation to do what they think they want.
There is a simple solution to obesity: feel like you're starving all the time.
FTFY. I'm sure you're totally man over nature, showing the third most powerful driver of all life who's boss. (after sleep and thirst, and usually before sex)
Most overweight people who are otherwise mostly healthy can reduce their caloric intake significantly without feeling like they're "starving all the time." Have a salad for lunch instead of that pizza or burrito. Stop eating crap between meals. Drink some water before you start eating. Stop wolfing down your meals, and stop when you start feeling full.
Anything that can seriously help people control their weight isn't a gimmick, it's a fix
This is closer to a gimmick. And a dangerous one at that.
From TFA:
In a 12-month clinical trial considered by the FDA, 38.3% of subjects who received the active Maestro device lost at least a quarter of their excess weight, and 52.5% of subjects lost at least 20% of their excess weight. On average, weight loss in those subjects with an active device was about 8.5% greater than that seen in subjects who received a Maestro electrical pulse generator that was not activated.
...
While the cost of the device has not yet been set, Lea said that getting the device implanted and activated will likely cost "somewhere between $20,000 and $30,000"--an amount that is more than gastric banding but less some of the most complex gastric bypass surgery.
Over a year, on average, it increases the weight loss by "about 8.5%" compared to an implant which was turned off.
And, it works for about half the people.
I.e. For the people who have been losing weight through other means, 92.2% of the weight loss is attributable to FACTORS OTHER THAN THE IMPLANT.
"About 8.5%" increase is about 7.8% of the new total.
All that at the yet unknown cost of MAYBE $20-30k, invasive surgery and most importantly - randomly fucking about with one's nervous system.
They are patching-in this implant to jam that same network which we KNOW to be a major neurological pathway and of huge importance "in the bidirectional communication of the gut-brain axis and...useful therapeutic adjuncts in stress-related disorders such as anxiety and depression".
That thing severing of which causes mice to give up and surrender in stressful situations?
They are flooding that with jamming signals during the hours when one is awake.
What could possibly go wrong, right?
And to achieve what? A sense of satiety.
Because as we all know, we eat ONLY when we are hungry and we intake food by volume, regardless of the calories.
100 grams of Nutella and 100 grams of cucumbers is the same to us.
We just need to get our stomach to think it is stuffed with SOMETHING - and then we will stop gaining weight.
At least according to the logic behind this "50-50 chance for 8.5% increase in the effectiveness of dieting" gimmick which works by jamming one's nervous system.
That $30000 spent would be better invested into healthier food and exercise.
Heck... it's TWO annual federal minimum wages in the USA.
One could literally spend a year on that money doing nothing but working on their health.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Back in 2000 I started taking an OTC weight loss pill that contained Ephedrine. It completely killed my appetite. Often times at work I would only notice it was lunch time because it had gone quiet as everyone had left for lunch. Without intentionally changing my diet, with the exception of ditching soda for iced tea, I lost 85 pounds in 10 months. I still continued to eat the same foods, but didn't snack or eat other than meal time because I had no desire for food. I did not exercise at all, unless you count the walk back and forth to my car in the parking lot... Once I stopped taking those pills, I slowly put the weight back on and by the time it became an issue the FDA had banned the sale of Ephedrine based diet pills. I tried the new non-Ephedrine version of the pill and it simply didn't work - I was still hungry and wanted to snack. If they could implant something in me that gives me the same lack of appetite, I would sign up for it in a heartbeat.
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing -- Emo Phillips
The point of exercise isn't to burn excess calories, it is to improve health and change your metabolism.
Yes, you can. You can also easily not overeat by 1000 calories a day. In fact, you're already doing just that because if you kept overeating by 1000 calories per day, you'd explode.
No, it's not a matter of "not eating"; a diet that is predicated on fighting "nagging hunger" is doomed to failure. Hunger isn't just "very very annoying" it's pretty much irresistible.
It is a matter of eating the right things, things that make you feel full without overeating.
That does require eating stuff you don't like and not eating stuff you do like until your tastes adjust, but it does not require you to go hungry. I know, I went through it.
Then do something about it. Your problem is either that you don't know how to eat and people aren't telling you, or that you choose to eat bad foods. Subjecting yourself to invasive surgery is not the answer.
The implant does not cause the lack of appetite - it simulates the feeling of being full and prevents one from feeling "hungry", where hungry is synonymous with "empty stomach".
It does not stop one from snacking NOR "treating" anxiety with food NOR absorbing calories through the stomach OR the intestines.
Without intentionally changing my diet, with the exception of ditching soda for iced tea, I lost 85 pounds in 10 months.
How much soda? Those are HUGE source of sugar.
On top of that, CO2 in sodas increases the pressure and turbo-charges the reaction of absorption of those calories.
Once I stopped taking those pills, I slowly put the weight back on
Did you start drinking soda again and what made you start going to lunch again? Hunger for food or for social interaction?
Clearly, you didn't need those calories for almost a year - while you were taking in a substance which messes with dopamine levels.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
As someone else who has been depressed, when the SSRI start working (& it can take 6 weeks IFF they work) you have energy and the ability to act that you didn't before.
I wasn't suicidal during my depression and that did not change. It didn't change any of the times I had to switch medications (you have to taper off and go through depression before you start the next).
I put my energies into things I wanted to do but couldn't with the depression. If I had been suicidal, maybe I would've tried.
Instead I did the things I had enjoyed before. With the depression, it wasn't possible to enjoy those things. I even questioned if I had ever enjoyed them.
I think he means we should restructure our health system in such a way that there is no big pharma or at least so that the size of the company offers no advantage. We need some major reforms in healthcare here in the states. With most of it being run by non-profits or at least a viable and equally competitive path being run by non-profits. This is true for all tech development.
Either way, there SHOULD be federal support for this, but only in the sense of loans from the federal reserve at the same rates and terms given to banks. This kind of development is of clear targeted benefit to our society in a far more obvious way than lining the pockets of wealthy bankers.
Let's say I'm someone who is capable of producing a drug or thinks I am. I should be able to use the local biology lab (akin to a library, either private non-profit or city sponsored) to develop it and perform the research I need. I should of course have to pay for access and when I submit a request for new equipment, whether or not to acquire that equipment should be a question posed to the existing membership along with how much it will increase dues and how long it's expected to increase them. Of course, I should always have the option of donating equipment myself. All members must be human persons (including partnerships) or non-profits (with no management salaries in top 10% income brackets). The requirement is that if developed further you must use "in system" facilities for manufacture and distribution and the lab will own the ip and all profits after costs will go to the inventor or non-profit that developed the drug but other members would be able to utilize the IP royalty free. Everyone is assigned a development log for every project and everything they do, every piece of equipment they use goes in and results are logged there. Including anything they do on their own without using lab equipment.
Trials and testing and advertising for the same. The same kind of thing. Centralize the costs but require those using the system to pay the costs. Streamline the process to parallel FDA approval and go through FDA approval using template requests and submissions. Members pay dues while using the process. The previous log is required and access is only to individuals and non-profits. Members vote on whether to proceed on studies and any study that hasn't met the minimum requirements for their study (animal trials on X subjects for Y time for instance) can't have it put to a vote unless they submit for an exemption and provide justification.
Manufacture, Advertising, sales, and distribution. This would need to be a national non-profit. Drugs would be sold with a fixed markup over a fair estimate of costs (30% is typical markup in a retailer). When patents expire drugs would continue to be made available at cost only without the markup as long as they are viable. If a capacity increase is needed or better equipment of some type, it goes to a vote of members with patents in the system. Want to pull a drug? It goes to a vote among the members of the system.
In the end, it costs what it costs and those costs are spread out among everyone developing drugs and those people get all the profits. Since all costs come from federal loans it's very easy to determine them. Divide up the total loan payment among the total number of mg/ml of drug produced and let the more expensive vs less expensive to produce drugs live with the average. It's better than all the min/maxing and duplicate charging games that result from any other way.
The G spot is exists, isn't particularly hidden or hard to find. It's just highly overrated. There is also the P spot and the A spot. Most people also aren't aware there are two points in the backdoor as well. And then of course there is the head of the clitoris. Technically, all of these spots are actually part of the clitoris which is as long as the average male penis.
Those are all stage 1 with the backdoor points being the most critical to achieving sustained high intensity orgasm. For some women, on the right day, you can get there in just a few moments pushing the right button, others will require stages of varied stimulation over a good hour or even two, most will flit somewhere between most of time and hit these extremes sometimes. But in every woman exists the potential for a level of sustained high intensity orgasm that doesn't stop as long as stimulation continues. Get her there and you can do whatever you want for your own pleasure and she won't mind a bit, she'll be too busy contorting and spasming with whole body wracking waves of pleasure.
In that state you can still build orgasmic peaks that for lack of distinctive word she will still call orgasms and you can change it up and do those at various points. No matter how long it took to get there in the first place, triggering an orgasm peak from the clit, vagina, or anally will take only a few seconds. Which is very satisfying for a man. Even hopping in at this point for what would normally be the duration of a lackluster quickie will trigger a multiple highly intense orgasm.
A couple words of warning though. Go about figuring her out wrong and she'll feel like you are treating her like a machine. Also there is a point of sustained orgasm where you've started with the clit head to get things moving and completing an orgasm with that point will bring a finale to things. So when she starts repeating from stimulating her somewhere else don't go back to directly stimulating that place for awhile. Also, she'll need a recovery period afterward. She's going to be a little sore the next day from all those muscle spasms and contractions. And if you do it too much she'll desensitize. If she goes for direct clitoral stimulation with any frequency she probably won't desensitize at all especially using something like a wand massager. There is also a good chance the experience will be so intense she is a little afraid of it.
Stage 2 is most effectively reached through Stage 1. In this state it's much easier, though with repetition, to build lasting associations in the nervous system with other points on the body (especially sensitive ones). It's possible to build these associations to the point where she can orgasm through stroking her hair, kissing her, or light touches. The nipples/breasts are particularly easy since some level of association has usually been formed by contact with them during sex already. Anywhere that is ticklish is an especially good target. It's easy to build associations that are strong enough to trigger/escalate arousal through these things. These associations are both psychological and physical because optimized communication pathways will be formed by the two centers being activated at the same time. Eventually, it's best to work toward caresses all over the surface of the skin.
Stage 3 is when you can stimulate this without actually even touching. Strokes so close she can feel them but not actually making contact. Trust me, if you get to this point. That woman will be yours forever. The sight of you, your smell, the stink of your sweat, and the very idea of your touch will send tremors through her body. Especially the smell of your sweat which makes perfect sense if you've taken the time to pay attention to a woman. There is no limit to how much of a man or how strong the man who shows that much consideration and makes her feel that way is entitled to be.
You're welcome.