GUT "ORIGAMI": NO MORE STAPLING STOMACHS

SAN DIEGO, CA (Ivanhoe Newswire) -- It's being called the plague of the twenty-first century. 60 million adults are now obese.  It costs 147 billion dollars to treat it annually. Now, a new less invasive procedure is helping people who have tried everything, to finally get control of their weight.

It doesn't take long for costume designer Courtney Gileo to help actors transform.

"I'm altering a vintage dress for a dance piece for west side story," Courtney told Ivanhoe.

Now, Courtney is working to transform herself. Yo-yoing from 120 to 330 pounds, Courtney tried a new procedure at UC San Diego called stomach plication--think of it as stomach origami!

"Instead of dividing the stomach, in gastric plication, we take the stomach and we fold it in upon itself," Garth r. Jacobsen, M.D., FACS, a bariatric surgeon at UC San Diego, explained.

Unlike gastric bypass, it's reversible.  Surgeons don't use permanent staples to decrease the size of the stomach and they don't reroute the small intestine.  

"What we are seeking to do is to minimize that risk," Dr. Jacobsen said.

It's the most minimally invasive procedure to reduce the stomach's size by as much as 70 percent. After stomach plication, Courtney lost 40 pounds in five weeks.

"I'm not hungry. I don't have the same hunger signals," Courtney said.

She's happy and so is her husband.

"He's just really happy for me, so it's amazing," Courtney Gileo

There are some downsides to the procedure, like gastric reflux, but the doctor says it decreases over time. Doctors say most patients can expect to lose two pounds per week with stomach plication.