Plenity is a huge capsule filled with Hydrogel (cellulose) that expands in your stomach to make you feel full. Average weight loss after 6 months was 4 pounds! (Seriously?.. I can lose four pounds of water with one day of fasting and could also buy any number of fiber products with cellulose, aka wood pulp)
Even better, the study was funded by Gelesis, the maker, and check the long list of authors for their other disclosures of COI. Thank you FDA!

The study and authors:
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/oby.22347

https://thehill.com/policy/healthca...-loss-treatment

http://time.com/5570718/plenity-weight-loss-drug/

I read about this drug's approval. It is truly absurd. The profit motive counts on the gullibility of the consumer wanting to seek out easy answers. I'll pass on this pill.

More of the same. Find me an "easy" button. Enable people to continue eating terribly unhealthy food, but tout and sell a product that can counteract that terrible diet with the "sensation" that it might help to lose weight. Based on the "overweight people get and have diabetes, so losing weight will prevent and assist in diabetes management" theory.

I was so disgusted didn't dig too far into the study, but if the average loss was only 4 pounds, how many gained weight due to the thought "I'm taking a weight loss pill" so let's have dessert.

How ridiculous. Four pounds in six months. That's nothing. Even if the study was "continue to eat normally."

The only benefit I see is that it's a bit like a non-surgical bariatric procedure. So if it can keep some people from having surgery, even if just for a few months or a year, that gives them some more time to skip that and hopefully in that time they'll find a healthier option like low carb. That's pathetically thin, but it's all I've got.

So many drugs/pills cause more harm then good. Money, money, money, money......MONEY!

I could eat a big green salad (plain) and temporarily feel full from all the fiber stuffing my stomach, but it wouldn't be long before I were hungry again as my GI figured out I didn't give it any satisfying macro-nutrients like protein and fat. I would expect this fiber gel capsule to do no better plus not even the benefit of veggies.

I believe it is Dr Fung who says that bariatric surgery which makes the stomach smaller so that people will feel full eating less food targets the wrong source of hunger. Since hunger is hormonally mediated by the brain fooling around with the size of the stomach does not address the real problem. Seems the same would go for these pills.

At least Olestra gave you anal leakage.

There was a mouse study, 25 different diets, looking at lifespan. One of the factors, besides carb versus protein versus fat--diets were from ketogenic to very low fat high carb--was calorie density. This was controlled by adding cellulose to the chow in varying amounts. All but one of the lowest calorie density--that is, highest cellulose fiber diets--were at the very bottom of the list for length of lifespan. Apparently sometimes cellulose kills. There was another study, sort of at the beginning of the modern rebirth of studying ketogenic diets, the study was called something like " A ketogenic diet results in a unique metabolic state in mice." That study had a false start, six months in the mice on the keto diet were dying too much, and had an implausibly short life span. They switched from purified cellulose to "wheat middlings" which didn't kill the animals so quickly. Okay, it's mice. But if bacon was this deadly in mice, they'd never shut up about it.

A prescription "weight loss device"? Wow. I wonder how much it costs. You could probably accomplish the same temporary effect by drinking a quart of water before mealtime. But it wouldn't solve the hunger problem for long, I'm guessing.

And what about that "goes through the digestive system like food" thing? Don't you wonder how that gel stuff comes out in the end, so to speak?

Back in the 90s, my OB/Gyn helped me with my obesity problem with a little prescription that came to be notorious as Fen/Phen, an appetite suppressant. I have to say, that stuff worked. I literally didn't want to eat. Luckily I abandoned it after about three months by choice--even not knowing then what the dire outcome could be. It probably did help me get going on a dietary strategy that eventually dropped off fifty pounds. But it was personal motivation plus a low cal/very high exercise regime that really did the job.

Dr. Atkins saved the day for me in the long run. Being "not hungry" and being "well fed" at the same time is a good way to live.

Wheat middlings, more evidence that attempting to control ingredients in a non-human metabolism to discover a clear dietary influence in humans is impossible, especially in mice

What could possibly go wrong? Feeding wood pulp to mammals, they already do to humans. While looking for information on celluose, found long lists of processed food products that already include it. The food companies claim that celluose is in most vegetables so perfectly natural. http://naturalsociety.com/15-compan...pulp-cellulose/

And now it is FDA approved!

Termites love it!