It’s bad news for America. According to the 2010 Dietary Guidelines for Americans, 66% of all American adults, and 33% of all American children are now overweight or obese. In fact, it has been named “the single greatest threat to public health in this century”. The fight is well and truly on, however, and some 220,000 people will have bariatric surgery this year alone. This is done in one of three ways: Malabsorptive procedures, which means food doesn’t get digested or absorbed as well. Restrictive procedures, which means people can’t eat as much volume of food. A combination of the above. There are many different types of weight loss surgery…

The gastric balloon is a non-invasive weight loss procedure that is temporary in nature. Essentially, unlike with gastric surgery, the device is only installed for around six months at the time. The procedure is quite simple: a balloon is placed inside the stomach through an endoscopic procedure. Once in place, it is filled with a sterile saline solution, thereby reducing the amount of space available in the stomach. As a result, people are no longer able to consume as much food, with weight loss being the inevitable result. The gastric balloon was developed mainly to help people who are too heavy to manage weight loss through diet and exercise alone,…