I had heard of this some years back, and was skeptical, but sure enough, there are You Tube videos of people demonstrating this method, and here’s a website about it.
They have a G-tube button installed, and about a half hour after eating, they attach a pump to it and drain about 1/3 of it into the toilet. It sounds like yet another method of purging to me, without the dental or esophageal damage.
The site says that there are no American insurers that cover it, and I can see why. I’m very aware that bariatric surgery is only to be done when lesser measures have failed, but THIS? Eek. That’s all I can think of to say about it!
Has anyone here heard of this, or knows anyone who has it, or uses it themselves?
I read about it several years ago. At the time, I was grossed out and thought it was ridiculous, but I have a morbidly obese relative, and if this would mean keeping her around and healthier, maybe it’s not so bad.
Seems like less of a pain than eating sensibly and I say this as someone dieting at the moment. Cutting out all sugary drinks in favor of water has already made a huge difference.
I think if sensible dieting was doable long-term for the morbidly obese, they wouldn’t be morbidly obese. The long-term success rate for morbidly obese people who diet and don’t have a surgical intervention is abysmal—well under 1%. I’m not sure docs would do the aspiration surgery on someone who only had to lose 40 or 50 pounds.
I had a cousin who died from morbid obesity, before there were any surgical treatments. “Eating sensibly” wasn’t an option for her, not even as a child. If this had been available for her, perhaps it would have made a difference.
We pretend that eating is something we control with our logical brains, but there’s quite a lot wrong with that way of looking at it.
I get how this technique has a repulsive quality to it, but it could certainly be a lifesaving thing. And many many people live with various ostomies, which I think is similar in ways and more trouble in others. There are many constraints placed on medical and surgical treatments, but pretty isn’t one of them.
I also couldn’t imagine it being done as a first-line surgical option; in other words, it would be used for people who failed less drastic methods like a lap band.
I could get more behind something called “Aspiration therapy” that was run by psychotherapists who discuss how to make our aspirations of living a healthy lifestyle reality with positive support …
Before opening the thread my totally uninformed WAG on whatever “aspiration therapy” might be was that it was a quasi mystical Eastern practice where you deeply smelled your food to absorb the nutrition that way. No chewing, no swallowing; just smelling.
Darn good bet it’d cause weight loss. And irritability … at least by day 5.
I read through the clinical trial publications the company website provided, and there are potential problems with the research findings.
There was a high dropout rate of participants both before and after enrollment in the multicenter trial was completed. It’s not clear why that happened, but you might expect that the less dedicated subjects couldn’t stomach (sorry) the protocol. The percentage of patients lost to followup (European clinics paper) becomes especially startling several years after the device was implanted - of 200 or so participants studied in year 1, only a dozen or so are left by the 4th year to provide the rosy figures reported in the paper.
The lack of blinding in the multicenter trial apparently included those who provided diet/lifestyle education and counseling to patients. If clinicians knew which patients were getting counseling alone and which had the device implanted plus counseling, there could have been at least subtle differences in how hard the education program was pushed in the two groups, assuming there was much enthusiasm for pushing it at all. Did the counseling-only group get as much attention as the implantation plus counseling group?
The multicenter trial results focus most heavily on the percentage of “excess weight” lost and only secondarily on the percentage of total weight lost (the latter figures are less impressive).
Maybe there’s a place for “aspiration therapy” along with other surgical techniques but I’m not convinced it’s a long-term solution for most users.
*it must be wonderful being the co-worker of someone who regularly hurks out food consumed during the workday, whether it’s into the toilet in the adjoining stall in the employee bathroom, or maybe just a wastebasket in the next cubicle. Gaah.
**from the company website: “The AspireAssist is a helping hand in your weight loss journey”. Uh-oh. Whenever I see a health intervention characterized as being part of a “journey”, my woo detector tends to start beeping.
sets off my charlatan puffery meter. Something as radical as installing a permanent pipe into your innards, and pumping half your recently eaten food out into a toilet or wastebasket is merely a “helping hand”? For that much intrusion I’d want a 100% solution with wonderful results being a sure thing.
Said another way it’s ineffectual junk. Hard to say, ref the rest of your points about the studies, whether it’s ineffectual because it does not work or because it can’t be tolerated long term.
My SIL had that glorious experience many times during the first half of her first pregnancy, where she managed to continue working full-time despite spending much of that time skating on the knife edge of hyperemesis. This is a whole 'nother ball of wax.
