Half a croissant, on a plate, with a sign in front of it saying '50c'
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Diet Dialysis

Lose weight while watching TV, sleeping, or otherwise immobile.
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How do we gain weight? Our blood circulates sugar, fat and proteins until they’ve either been absorbed by cells, or processed by our liver for temporary storage. Basically what isn’t used is converted into fat.

How do we lose weight? Muscles cells pull nutrients out of the blood. Fat cells must shrink in order to replenish this supply of energy.

Why not fool our body into thinking we’re running a marathon without even moving? When we go to sleep, we could attach some type of quick-connect tube that runs our blood through a dialysis like device designed to extract sugar the same way our muscles do. The blood would then return to our body to have its sugar load replenished. Fat cells would shrink very rapidly.

In the morning we’d wake up to find a full bag of glucose hanging on our Diet Dialysis machine. A bag of fat as well, if it could be filtered out before being processed by the body..

Just think: you could deep fry your chicken one night, then reuse the oil from your blood the next day to deep fry something else ;)

TIB, Sep 02 2003


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       Type 1 (insulin deficient) diabetics can accomplish this without the tube in a vein. A drug that decreases circulating insulin would accomplish the same end - but you would just pee out a full bladder of glucose in the morning instead of find a bag.   

       I wonder if this would work. Obesity tends to decrease insulin sensitivity (type II diabetes) so perhaps manipulation of the insulin axis is an attempt by the body to shed extra calories. Maybe by doing this chemically, it would be a sort of pre-emptive strike.   

       My own pre-emptive strikes: 1 - let us have none of this "live healthy, eat less" sermonizing. Not the point. 2- Diabetes is tough on a body - but that is usually the extremes. That fact alone should not doom the idea. Also, it is not clear whether it is high sugar or lack of insulin which is so tough on eyes, kidneys etc. Maybe an approach which short-circuited insulin's effect on sugar would allow the insulin molecule to retain beneficial, nonmetabolic effects on other tissues.
bungston, Sep 02 2003
  

       Bloody good chicken.
thumbwax, Sep 02 2003
  

       I always think it odd that so many people in the US and Europe are obese, while the governments still subsidize industrial grade food production (large scale farming), plus a lot of people elsewhere in the world are hungry. But that probably has political causes, there won't be less subsidies or hungry people if everybody here were skinny. So I still think your idea could work and after reading patiently through my ranting you now deserve a bag of delicious donuts, deep fried, golden brown with a generous layer of icing.
kbecker, Sep 02 2003
  

       weird category though.
po, Sep 03 2003
  

       [po] Perhaps its perfect for computer nerds. They can even degrease while the work. I don't understand the "drive" application though.
kbecker, Sep 03 2003
  

       Oh, that's because TIB used the new random category feature. Lots of people seem to be using it lately.   

       This idea is so very, very wrong.
RoboBust, Sep 03 2003
  

       So wrong that it's right?
DeathNinja, Sep 03 2003
  

       Why not just hook yourself up to a machine that sucks all the partially-digested food out of your GI tract while you sleep?
AO, Sep 03 2003
  

       From which end, [AO]? I think you should halfbake that one up yourself.
bungston, Sep 03 2003
  

       Well then send those people your spare glucose.
sub_text, Sep 03 2003
  

       this has convinced me to launch the ultimate day spa. Diet Dialysis performed while one lies in the tanning bed and receives a Botox booster is sure to break the bank
BeeBee, Sep 04 2003
  

       Why dialysis? A fuel cell that ran off of glucose could be implanted. Transformer couple this through your skin to anything that needs power (cellphone, pda, laptop, arc welder...). Just turn on gadgets to burn glucose. Just imagine how much obesity SETI could consume.
ATP, Oct 16 2003
  


 

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