Do you want to lose weight? Shut your nose!
Doctors from Israel have created nose plugs to help lose weight
Israeli scientists have created an unusual medical "gadget" that helps anyone lose weight, depriving him of the ability to smell delicious food. His prototype and the first results of his work were presented at the European Congress on Obesity in Vienna.
"We have just begun to study the role of the sense of smell in the work of appetite, the amount of food eaten and body weight. On the other hand, we all know very well that pleasant or unpleasant odors can increase or reduce our appetite. For example, we have shown that blocking the sense of smell deprives young and adult people of cravings for sweet food," said Dror Dicker from Hasharon Hospital in Petah Tikva (in a press release, Study suggests that a novel wearable nasal device to reduce smelling ability can induce weight loss and changes to dietary preferences – VM).
According to current WHO data, a global epidemic of obesity has been observed in the world since the 80s of the last century. Last year, every third inhabitant of the globe, a total of 1.9 billion people, suffered from extra pounds, about 15 percent – from severe forms of obesity. According to the organization, 47 percent of diseases – for example, heart problems, diabetes and cancer, are associated with obesity.
In recent years, scientists have increasingly begun to say that obesity and chronic inflammatory processes are strongly interrelated. The appearance of extra pounds leads to the development of foci of inflammation in the human body, which, in turn, contributes to an even greater weight gain.
Moreover, biologists have recently found out that substances that suppress inflammation, such as capsaicin, the main component of the burning taste of pepper, have proved to be very effective medicines for obesity. Many of these molecules are currently undergoing clinical and preclinical trials, but many more years will pass before they reach pharmacies.
Dicker and his colleagues offer a much simpler and wittier solution for overweight problems. Analyzing the prevalence of obesity among different population groups, scientists drew attention to the fact that people aged 50 and over are much less likely to suffer from obesity than representatives of the age group under 50, despite a similar diet and lifestyle habits.
After analyzing all possible reasons for this, Israeli doctors drew attention to the fact that around this age a person's sense of smell begins to gradually deteriorate, which can affect how appetizing an additional portion of food seems to him.
They tested this idea by making several kind of silicone "plugs" that let air through, but prevented odors from freely entering the nose of their owner.
They tested their work on a group of six dozen volunteers, half of whom received fictitious "drops" for the nose, which helped to lose weight.
Before starting the experiment, the scientists measured the typical amount of food consumed by their wards and asked them to reduce their "energy intake" by about 500 kilocalories. Every few weeks, scientists gathered volunteers and measured the level of fats, insulin and other important molecules in their blood and noted progress on the way to getting rid of excess weight.
As these observations showed, such plugs really helped the subjects get rid of excess weight and change their diet – on average, their weight decreased by eight percent over several months of the experiment, which is about twice as much as that of the control group. Similarly, the concentration of insulin in the blood, blood pressure and cravings for sugary foods decreased.
Such "nose plugs", as noted by Dicker and his colleagues, are absolutely safe for human health and they will be available to first-time buyers in the next few months.
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