Researchers have made a breakthrough achievement in two areas of medicine that don't usually go together - varicose vein treatment and weight loss. A treatment sometimes used for varicose veins has been successfully used as an appetite suppressant in early testing on pigs. This could mean that the varicose vein treatment may ultimately emerge as a weight loss tool for humans.
The treatment is a surgical procedure called gastric artery chemical embolization (GACE). It is not a common treatment for varicose veins because of the fact that there are many different procedures for treatment of varicose veins that are less invasive than this one. However, it is a vein treatment that has been used regularly in the past.
The treatment can apparently also be used to alter the body's production of ghrelin, a hormone that directly impacts how hungry you feel and therefore how much you are likely to eat. This means that it can be used as a weight loss procedure and one that would be considerably less invasive than the weight loss surgeries that are commonly used today.
Question of the Day: How is that a varicose vein treatment could be used as a weight loss tool?
