May 4, 2011

Former Football Player Loses Over 150 LBS, Jaime Maggio Reports

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April 28, 2011

Gastric Surgery for Teens: When All Else Fails

Four years ago, when she was fifteen years old, Michelle Montanti lost over 100 pounds. But she didn’t do it through dieting or exercise–instead, she went under the knife.

It was the best thing she has ever done.

“I’m so happy I did it,” says Michelle, now 19 and a student at Le Cordon Bleu Cooking School, in Los Angeles, where she plans to use her culinary skills to help other teens learn that eating healthy can be delicious and easy.

Michelle wrestled with the scales her whole life, weighing 246 at her heaviest (she’s 5’2″). Like most overweight kids, she was relentlessly teased, and it only got worse when she entered high school.  She tried every conceivable diet from vegan to liquid protein, but none worked. As for exercise, she was too heavy to even to do a simple sit-up.

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March 22, 2011

Hoping to Avoid the Knife

By Andrew Pollack

In November, the prestigious Cleveland Clinic hailed a “scar-less” weight-loss surgery as one of the top 10 medical innovations expected this year.

Developed by a company aptly called Satiety Inc., the procedure shrinks the stomach by using a stapler inserted through the mouth, rather than by cutting open a person’s belly.

But when the results of a clinical trial came in, the procedure resulted in the shedding of far fewer pounds for patients than the company had hoped. Venture capitalists who had invested $86 million in Satiety over a decade shut the company down.

The failure of the procedure, called transoral gastroplasty, pushes back the availability of any incision-less procedure to millions of obese Americans for several years, a disappointment to companies trying to find the next best thing to major surgery. The setback also further restricts options for those who are overweight, because it is occurring on top of federal rejections of a new generation of diet pills.

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