Patch Stops Cravings for Sweets in Trials
L O N D O N, June 25 -- For some people, chocolate can become an obsession that drives them to desperation.
"We used to sneak downstairs when my mum and dad were not looking and pinch chocolate bars," says Zoe Lindsey, a professed chocoholic. "[We had] chocolate for breakfast. Chocolate for lunch."
But researchers say they have developed a patch to stop the cravings for the creamy cocoa candy and other sweet things.
Liz Paul, inventor of Crave Control, manufactured by Aromacology Patch Co. Ltd., says she found the solution — ironically — at a restaurant, where she discovered chefs ordering takeout to avoid food they smelled all day long.
An Adhesive Action
She developed a vanilla-scented patch to be worn on the back of the hand, to help desensitize people of their desire to consume sweet things.
The concept behind the patch is that by pampering the sense of smell, the craving to eat will be diminished, according to Marketing Intelligence Service Ltd.
Lindsey, a lifelong chocoholic, who gained weight in college from overindulging, says the patch helped her.
"It was an amazing feeling," Lindsey says. "It made you feel quite nauseous eating something very sickly sweet. I stopped taking sugar in tea and coffee."
Lindsey lost 63 pounds using the patch and eating sensibly.
Study: Patch Helped People Lose Weight
Catherine Collins, a dietitian in London, says there's little scientific research about such products but, in her two-year clinical trial people who wore the patch ate less sweets and lost twice as much weight as those without it.
"We think what might be happening with the patch is that it is triggering some sort of positive, mood-enhancing benefit in the brain which actually suppresses the desire to eat," Collins says.
Collins' results were presented at an international conference in Edinburgh, last year, according to Reuters. The product has been available in Britain since September and the company plans on marketing it internationally soon.
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