Here’s a new way to burn calories.
A North Carolina woman says she lost 110 pounds in 15 months after undergoing an experimental heat procedure to reduce her food cravings.
“I feel like I look like the Mary Morgan that’s in my brain,” Mary Morgan Mills, 34, of Raleigh, told FOX 5 Atlanta last week.
In February 2023, Mills had a gastric fundus mucosal ablation as part of a 10-woman study. A doctor threaded a tube down her throat to burn off stomach tissue that produces ghrelin, a hormone linked to increasing appetite, calorie intake, and weight gain.
When your stomach is empty, it releases ghrelin to let your brain know that it’s time to eat. Researchers have theorized that people with excess weight may be more sensitive to the effects of ghrelin.
“What we found, in the months after this procedure, was that, in fact, ghrelin was reduced,” lead researcher Dr. Dan Maselli, a bariatric endoscopist and associate director of research for True You Weight Loss, told FOX 5 Atlanta.
“We saw a 45% decrease of that hunger hormone circulating in the bloodstream within six months of the procedure,” Maselli continued. “In terms of stomach capacity, we saw a 42% decrease in the amount of food it would take to get us to feel full.”
Participants dropped 7.7% of their body weight on average over six months. Maselli and his team presented their findings last month in Washington, DC, at the annual Digestive Disease Week meeting.
He said the outpatient procedure — which is said to take less than an hour — caused minor side effects, such as stomach cramping, discomfort, and nausea.
Mills said she experienced an upset stomach for a few days but coped with popsicles, protein shakes, and “lots of bone broth.”
Mills, who at one point was 300 pounds, tried for years to shed weight. She said taking semaglutide — the active ingredient in drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy — made her constantly nauseous.
She lost 50 to 60 pounds in the first six months after the treatment and is now down 110 pounds.
“With that muted hunger, I was able to make decisions better for myself and not so impulsively,” Mills explained. “It made me feel a little more in control and not kind of at the mercy of, ‘Oh my gosh, I’m hungry all the time.”‘
The study authors say this “game-changer” approach could be a stand-alone treatment for obesity or it could be performed as people transition off injectable weight-loss drugs.
The researchers, however, acknowledge that they need to explore the long-term effects of the procedure and test it on more people.
Cleveland Clinic surgical endoscopist Matthew Kroh, who was not involved with the study, called the treatment “relatively straightforward.”
Kroh pointed out that people who undergo weight-loss surgery may spend days in the hospital and weeks in recovery. The gastric fundus mucosal ablation is performed in an office setting.
“There’s potential,” Kroh told Science News last month about the experimental procedure, “but I think we have to be cautious.”
