FACTS ABOUT SENSA WEIGHT LOSS

The Sensa weight-loss system claims to help you lose unwanted pounds while you continue to eat all of your favorite foods. While on the program, you use a sugar-free, calorie-free, gluten-free and sodium-free dietary aid to help you shed pounds without feeling deprived or having to alter your diet in any way.

Identification

The Sensa weight-loss system was created by psychiatrist and neurologist Dr. Alan Hirsch, director of the Smell & Taste Treatment and Research Foundation in Chicago, Illinois. After 20-plus years of clinically researching the impact of flavors and odors upon human behavior, mood and emotion, Hirsch developed the Sensa dietary aid to help people lose weight through a system that manipulates sensory emotional response. You participate in the program by sprinkling Sensa Tastants, a propriety blend of powdered natural and artificial ingredients that come in a small box, over all of your food before you eat a meal or snack.

advertisement

Theories/Speculation

As you eat food, the smell receptors in your nose and taste receptors in your mouth send messages to your brain. Your brain uses these messages to release hormones into your body to let you know when to stop eating. This process is called sensory specific satiety. Sensa Tastants claim to work by enhancing your sense of smell and accelerating your brain's delivery of the hormones into your body that let you know when you are full. Therefore, when you use Sensa Tastants as directed, you eat less food and lose weight, claims the diet's website.

Methodology

The Sensa weight-loss system is a six-month program that you purchase by the month or as a complete system. Each month contains a different blend of Sensa Tastants to ensure that your body does not grow "resistant" to the blend, which could thwart your weight-loss attempts. You receive a Sensa Tastant to use at home and one to take with you when you leave the house. Although no concrete rules apply to the amount of Sensa Tastants you are supposed to sprinkle over your food, all solid, cooked foods you eat throughout the day should be evenly covered with the dietary aid. You also sprinkle Sensa Tastants over reheated leftovers. Simply use your best judgment and avoid over thinking about the amounts, suggests the diet's proponents. However, you do not add Sensa to drinks, because liquids saturate and disable the Tastants. If you do not reach your target weight by the end of the six-month period, you are directed to begin the process again until you lose all of your unwanted pounds.

Considerations

Hirsch conducted a research study to determine the effects of Sensa Tastants on weight loss. In his study, 2,437 obese or overweight people used the dietary aid as directed for six months. Hirsch's staff recorded the participants pre- and post-study weights. At the end of the study, Hirsch says that the subject participates lost an average of 30.5 lbs. apiece. However, as of November 2010, no independent studies conducted by qualified U.S. medical researchers exist to validate Hirsch's claims.

Expert Insight

No scientific proof exists that Sensa works, says Dr. Pamela Peeke, a University of Maryland clinical professor of medicine, to ABC News. There is no magic sprinkle, says Peeke, and Sensa is not a diet, it is "just another pet rock." Furthermore, Peeke says that she believes Hirsch performed his study to justify his commercial product. Hirsch's subject participates weighed themselves and reported their own weight loss to Hirsch's staff. Hirsch's staff did not actually verify the subject participant's weight loss reportings, adds Peeke.