While nothing beats a healthy diet and working out regularly, when it comes to fat loss, there are times that call for extreme measures to remove fat with the solution usually coming in the form of Liposuction. However, while it is a popular choice to opt for when it comes to fat loss, it is not a healthy choice since the patients have to face bruises after the procedure with quite a chance of successive operations to take care of lumps. Connecting tissues and nerves can also get damaged/removed in the process as well.
This is where University of California comes in with a new technique devised by nano-medicine expert Adah Almutairi and her brother Khalid, who is a plastic and reconstructive surgeon. Their methodology makes use of gold nano-particles which are used to meltdown fat before removing it. It would be unfair to call it a different approach than Liposuction; the right thing to say would be that this is an improvement to the current Liposuction approach being practiced.
The inspiration came from research that was performed earlier in order to target and eliminate cancer cells, gold nano-particles were targeted towards cancer cells and then by making use of near-infrared light, were heated up and that resulted in the cooking of cancer cells while all other cells were kept out of harm’s way. This led to the Almutairis to the belief that a similar approach could be used for the fat cells.
The result is a process where the gold nano-particles are first injected into fat deposits of the patient’s body. These particular areas are then exposed to near-infrared light and owing to the fact that fat has a lower temperature for melting, it melts before any other cell can be harmed. Now a liposuction needle is employed to suck out the melted fat along with the gold nano-particles. In the traditional liposuction, the needle is scraped back and forth in order to break the solid fat while sucking it out as well.
The test phase has begun with animals undergoing tests and human testing will begin later this year. The technology is being developed by a start-up firm eLux Medical and is being branded as NanoLipo. This could potentially improve the liposuction technique by many folds. Fingers crossed.
