This seems like an innovative approach to weight loss: reducing appetite by blocking the senses of smell and taste.
Compellis Pharmaceuticals of Boston said it has been issued an initial patent for a nasal spray that aims to treat obesity by blocking the senses of smell and taste."It seems so simple - blocking the sense of smell and taste," company chief executive Chris Adams wrote in an e-mail. "But it has never been used to treat obesity, and it really does work. Our bodies do not crave what we cannot smell or taste."
Assuming that the senses come back when you stop using the spray, this seems like a fantastic idea.
No more taste? That sounds like a nightmare. So now, instead of dieting by eating some foods you enjoy plus some foods you don't enjoy, you *only* get to eat food you *don't* enjoy. That seems like a *harder* way of dieting. Instead of choosing to eat less of the food you like, you will choose to render all food unlikable. This seems to require MORE will power, not less.
Any diet's ultimate success or failure is determined by only one thing: the decision to stick with it or not. There's really no way around it.
Having said that, most diets are ridiculous.. not just in whether they're more or less easy to stick with but also in how healthy they are for you over the long haul.
Anyone who tells you there's an easier way to lose weight and be healthy besides exercise, portion control, and eating natural foods is either trying to swindle you out of money or an idiot.
Try something simple and better for you: cut soda out of what you drink throughout the day. Replace it with any combination of water, real fruit juice (100% juice), milk, or Glaceau Vitamin Water. It's better for keeping the pounds off and it's a hell of a lot better for your teeth.
Another thing: health doesn't come in a pill. All you need to be healthy is in certain parts of the grocery store: produce, meat, dairy, and whole-grain bread sections and the pasta/rice aisle. Breakfast cereal is good, so long as it's got some fiber and isn't loaded with sugar.. but a toasted English muffin with some butter (the real stuff, not its less-healthy substitutes) and a glass of orange juice is a better breakfast.
Yeah, I can't see how removing taste or smell from the equation is going to make people eat less, unless it's in revulsion. :) When you're sick and can't taste food, you don't eat less, except to the extent illness suppresses your appetite.
I think that people need a certain amount of pleasure per day, and eating is one way to get it. Reducing perception of smell and taste could reduce the pleasure gained from food, though it wouldn't eliminate it. But reducing one source of pleasure doesn't solve the real problem, which is finding an alternative. Without that alternative, patients will go from fat and happy to thin and miserable, which obviously won't last.