‘Surgery in a pill’: The latest crazy way to lose weight

There’s no end to the weird ways people promote for weight loss. You can eat real low-carb food to lose weight and manage type 2 diabetes. OR you can just take a pill which mimics bariatric surgery and keep eating disease-promoting high-carb junk food.

It may work to some degree, for some time, at least if you’re a rat.

It sounds like a joke, but unfortunately it is not. Let me introduce you to yet another weird weight-loss method:

An oral agent was administered in rats to deliver a substance that could temporarily coat the intestine to prevent nutrient contact with the lining in the proximal bowel and avoid post-meal spikes in blood sugar. “We envision a pill that a patient can take before a meal that transiently coats the gut to replicate the effects of surgery,” said co-senior author Jeff Karp, PhD, a bioengineer and principal investigator at BWH.

Science Daily: ‘Surgery in a pill’ a potential treatment for diabetes

Here’s the problem. If you coat the intestines with some temporary cover to not absorb the nutrients in food… you don’t absorb the nutrients. There’s a reason why we need to absorb vitamins, minerals and protein etc., it’s to stay healthy and strong and have a functioning body.

You can’t solve the problem of refined high-carb, high-sugar foods by not absorbing the nutrients.

A smarter solution is more nutritious food, without all the refined carbs and sugar, so that you don’t need to eat so much. Learn more