People Are Successfully Losing Weight by Swallowing Inflatable Balloons  

A magic pill for weight loss seems as far-fetched as teleporting (come on, science). But researchers may have cracked it with Obalon, an Rx pill that contains not meds, but—get ready for it—a balloon. Yes…a tiny, inflatable balloon.

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Receive a prescription for this drug and you'll swallow a capsule attached to a small tube. Once it’s hanging around down in your stomach, a doc uses that tube to pump a nitrogen-mixed gas to inflate it (each balloon holds about a cup of gas; you can swallow up to three of the pills over a three-month period). The tube comes out and the air-filled sack in your gut remains, taking up space you’d otherwise fill with another slice of pizza. You get the idea. (Start your body transformation with Women's Health's Body Clock Diet.)

At the six-month marker, docs remove the balloons.

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Obalon has already been approved in Europe. And in a U.S. trial, researchers found the method helped obese patients shed nearly 7 percent of their body weight over six months, compared to those who swallowed a placebo sugar pill, who lost roughly 4 percent. Now the drug is awaiting approval by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. 

However, the slimming didn’t come without side effects—90 percent of study participants experienced mild abdominal cramping and nausea. You know, from the balloon in their stomach…

The obvious question: Could this be a magic bullet for shedding extra pounds? Meh.

Apparently, this groundbreaking weight-loss tool isn't really that new after all, according to John Morton, M.D., the chief of Bariatric and Minimally Invasive Surgery at the Stanford School of Medicine.  

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And balloons filled with gas, like Obalon, may not work quite as well as other models on the market. “Gastric balloons filled with saline, such as Reshape, which is FDA-approved and available in the U.S., or Ellipse—only available in Europe—trick the stomach into feeling satiety better than those filled with air,” says Morton. A for effort, Obalon.

Gastric balloons are generally only recommended for patients with a BMI from 30 to 40, a level classified as obese. So if you don’t have a significant amount of weight to lose, you’re better off sticking to eating well and getting more exercise. Fortunately, there are plenty of less scary ways to slim down. 

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