Can a vibrating capsule assist in controlling weight?

Ingesting the capsule earlier than a meal might induce a sense of fullness, fooling the mind into believing it’s mealtime’s finish.

Consuming a considerable meal triggers your abdomen to sign your mind, indicating fullness and prompting you to stop consuming. Equally, a liquid-filled abdomen can convey these cues, explaining why dieters are inspired to hydrate earlier than meals.

MIT engineers have developed an revolutionary method to take advantage of this phenomenon, introducing an ingestible capsule designed to generate vibrations inside the abdomen. These vibrations activate stretch receptors, mimicking the feeling of fullness. In animal trials, administering this tablet 20 minutes earlier than meals triggered the discharge of satiety-inducing hormones and lowered meals consumption by roughly 40 per cent.

– Commercial –

A way of fullness

The researchers at MIT have developed a capsule the dimensions of a multivitamin with an built-in vibrating aspect. When ingested and uncovered to gastric fluids, it prompts mechanoreceptors, stimulating the vagus nerve and mimicking post-meal hormone launch patterns. Animal research demonstrated that the vibrating capsule, when activated for about 20 minutes earlier than feeding, led to a 40 per cent discount in meals consumption and slower weight achieve. The tablet usually vibrates for half-hour however might be tailored for prolonged intervals, with potential wi-fi management. Notably, the tablet handed via the digestive tract with out antagonistic results.

Another method

The researchers recommend that this sort of tablet may provide a substitute for present weight problems remedies. Conventional nonmedical approaches like food regimen and train might not at all times be sensible, and plenty of medical interventions are invasive, together with gastric bypass surgical procedure and gastric balloons (not extensively utilized in the USA as a result of security issues). Whereas medicine like GLP-1 agonists can help weight reduction, most require injections and are unaffordable for a lot of people. In line with Srinivasan, the MIT capsules might be manufactured at a decrease price, growing accessibility to those that lack entry to costly remedy choices.

Researchers goal to scale up capsule manufacturing for human scientific trials, which is essential for assessing security, optimum timing, and frequency of capsule ingestion earlier than meals.