Chewing gum to make you thin
Jeremy Zawodny is a bit doubtful about a new chewing-gum-based anti-obesity drug. I can see his point, but I think he might be overegging the disbelief a touch. I followed up with the following:
I think it might help more than you’re expecting. There are, I believe, three states you can be in:
- Hungry
- Not hungry
- Full
Everyone wants to eat when they’re hungry. Everyone doesn’t want to eat when they’re full. As you say, though, people who are overweight (like, say, me) eat when they’re not hungry, when it’s neutral to do so (don’t necessarily need food, but don’t dislike the idea). People who aren’t overweight (and aren’t that way through a huge mental effort), I think, don’t eat when they’re not hungry (as you mention). So, what you want is to take someone overweight and poke their brain so that when they’re in the “not hungry” state they actually feel full and don’t want to eat. The impression I got (although this might be wishful thinking) is that that’s what this chewing gum stuff does, sort of. There may be some sort of conscious effort (i.e., recognising when you’re in “not hungry”), but the policy there is relatively simple: whenever you’re not actually eating a meal and you fancy a snack, eat the chewing gum instead of looking in the fridge. It’s no panacea, but if it works like that then it might have some hope of success.
(only posted here because when I try to post it on Jeremy’s site I get “You don’t have permission to access /mt/mt-comments.cgi on this server.”)
I think that both of you have missed 2 vital points, one from either side of the argument.
1. Chewing gum makes you hungry. Because you are chewing it stimulates the stomach to prepare itself to receive food, which never arrives, and thus the stomach tells the brain that you should be hungry. How they combat that effect, I’m not sure.
2. It’s not just about feeling hungry, it’s about stomach capacity. If you continue to eat in the ‘neutral’ phase, then your stomach increases in capacity, making it easier for you to get hungry. This is why stomach stapling works. In order to lose weight you need to not only not eat when you aren’t hungry, but actually also not eat when you _are_ hungry, in order to reduce the size of your stomach. (And to force your body to eat up some of that pesky fat).
An interesting read on this subject is The Hacker Diet at http://www.fourmilab.ch/hackdiet/www/hackdiet.html
118 minutes later
I heard something about this on the radio the other day, I’m not sure if this is a direct quote, I can’t remember exactly what was said, but it was something along the lines of:
Inventor: “We thought about the best way to administer these drugs, and we came up with a chewing gum, because it’s something they like doing”.
Nice.
4 hours later
Can you try posting that again? I think I fixed the problem, but honestly wasn’t able to reproduce it in the first place…
21 hours later
hi my name is kailyn, and i ned to lose weight but i dont now how to do it in 5 days how long does it take for the gum to work?
i like your idea a lot keep me pssted please thanks i love your idea it is the best bu where do you buy it? sre do you make it you
2 days later
testing my openid!
2 days later
Check out this webpage for similar idea. http://www.10minutegumdiet.com
38 weeks later