A new trend in weight loss is making waves in Knoxville and it involves a grapefruit-size silicone balloon filled with 650 cubic centimeters of saline called Orbera.
What Orbera does is to utilize a gastric balloon that temporarily take up space in your stomach, helping you achieve an earlier feeling of fullness at mealtimes. The system helps patients lose more weight quicker than diet and exercise and the good thing about it? It doesn't require surgery of any kind.
Knoxnews explains the process, "The deflated balloon is inserted nonsurgically, through a scope put down the esophagus, then inflated with saline through a catheter; it has a self-sealing valve. The patient is sedated for the procedure, which takes about a half-hour."
"It's not just a balloon, it's really a medically supervised diet with a psychologist, a registered dietitian and an exercise physiologist, and we're using the balloon as an adjunct to that. It's a jump-start," says Dr. Stephen Boyce of New Life Center for Bariatric Surgery, who also does the procedure.
Interestingly they also reported a 23-year-old woman who are up for the challenge of having Orbera in her tummy.
Harmony has always struggled with losing weight through diet and exercise since she was a teenager. As part of the process, she'll have Orbera in for six months as part of a comprehensive weight-loss program, but it will also require her to that undergo a healthy diet and exercise for her to achieve losing 40 pounds before the doctors take medical ball out of her system.
."It's going to be a long journey, but this is different from anything I've ever done before," Harmony said.
This is true since she has to regularly visit her nutritionist and nurse to check out her progress within the first six months after it has been pulled out of her. She also said her long term weigh loss goal is 100 pounds and she is very much willing to make the necessary lifestyle change that she needs in order to attain her goal.
