Scary Weight Loss Strategy: Surgeons Sew Patches on the Tongue Making Eating Painful
By Sarah Jio, Glamour magazine
A friend of mine posted a shocking weight loss trend on Facebook recently and I gasped. A surgeon in Southern California is popularizing a controversial new weight loss strategy which involves surgically attaching a patch to the tongue that makes eating so painful people would rather ... not. Oy.
Dr. Nikolas Chugay, a plastic surgeon in Southern California is making headlines with his new "Chugay Tongue Patch," which he calls an alternative to more drastic weight loss methods such as gastric bypass surgery or the lap band.
According to his Web site: "During a reversible procedure that takes less than an hour, the patient is fitted with a custom patch for the tongue which makes chewing of solid foods very difficult and painful, limiting the patient to a liquid diet. ... Post operatively, patients may experience swelling of the tongue for 24-48 hours. Speech may be affected during this time but typically returns to baseline within 48 hours."
But what he calls brilliant (even calling it the "Miracle Patch"), others, including me, call freaky.
Yikes! Does this seem like a good idea to anybody?
P.S. More weight loss news: Researchers give another reason to get fit--being overweight is expensive! And, the easy, quick-fix way to burn more calories at work.
More from Glamour:
Photo Credit: Condé Nast Digital Studio
