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[King DZA]

If such a thing was possible, I wouldn't object to people using it. Primarily because if I did, I'd then have to start objecting to all the other shit people do with their bodies that I don't agree with, and I simply don't have enough fucks to spare for that.

Normal exercise is the way I got fit, and I'm far from a health nut, so that's what I recommend to people. However, ever since becoming nigh-fatally ill when I was just a wee lad, it seems almost impossible for me to put on any excess weight. So such a recommendation to those who are trying to lose weight might be a tad unfair, considering it is not a problem I've had to put up with myself.

[kaijyuu]

I don't see why anyone would object to an easy way to lose weight for those who are obese.


My concern would be side effects.

[Wayward Device]

But properly rendered human fat already burns with a clear, bright light! All we need is some sort of opt out harvesting program and a specially designed furnace! It could be so....

*reads thread*

Weird. Ok, whether its burning fat in the human body to reduce fat-looking-ness or using human fat as a fuel to alleviate the energy crisis I'm cool with it and with anything on the whole spectrum in between. This thread kinda reminds me of the time I asked my ex, in all seriousness, if she would be happy living in a world with robots just as intelligent as people. She started out by saying that such a thing would be impossible and then decided that they would never be real people. It was so close to racism that it shocked me. I guess that you just cant tell how people will react to these advances in technology.

How would people feel about a booth that let you control a giant boot that kicked the homeless? I'd feel guilty, but I can't say I wouldn't be tempted....

[fqllve]

How would people feel about a booth that let you control a giant boot that kicked the homeless? I'd feel guilty, but I can't say I wouldn't be tempted....

...what? Why the homeless? Next someone is going to propose an engine powered by an orphan's sadness.

[kaijyuu]

Never underestimate the untapped potential in the screams of the damned.

[MaximumZero]

How would people feel about a booth that let you control a giant boot that kicked the homeless? I'd feel guilty, but I can't say I wouldn't be tempted....

Only if they can kick you back. The last people who need kicking are those who are already down. 

[JoshuaFH]

How'd the idea of a homeless kicking machine come up anyhow?

[Jervill]

I don't know, but that machine should at least have the right to basic shelter.  Leaving a poor kicking machine out in the cold like that.

[Mr. Palau]

Well what I can think of is amybe a little back pack that contains a slew of chemicals and filters. The first thing it would do would be to release Epinephrine into your body's blood stream, which is one of the chemicals that can stimulate the break down of fats. (You would have to be monitered closely in regards to heart rate, as the other name for Epinephrine is adrenaline and it is responsible for increases in heart rate. It would also make you anxious, so you would need a calming environment. And it could cause pulmonary edema, so have a doctor with you at all times.) Then there would have to be a system of nutrient injection and filtration of excess glycerol and fatty acids, with glucose kept in circulation because your brain and other important organs can only metabolize that. You should not eat during this period to prevent intake of more fats, so that is why there is a system of nutrient injections, or transfusions. Tehn of course teh machine would have to emptied and refilled every once in a while. Take the fat and use it for something... feed it to cows, so it goes back to where it came from?

[Araph]

Well... fat burning machine. I have no qualms with the idea except for one stipulation: the populace can only acquire the services provided at clinics with doctors trained to administer the treatment.

Mechanically speaking, I can only think of two ways to actually retrieve the fat, both of which have been mentioned. Using hormones to cause fat to leave cells where it is then some way or another eliminated from the bloodstream, or an incredibly invasive surgery involving slicing open adipose tissue. Given how if people were willing to go the second route, they'd probably be fine with surgery, I guess we're all agreeing that only the first way would be feasible for everyday treatment.

My main concern is how the increased fat in the bloodstream would affect the health of the patient. While I don't have the scientific background of some people here, it does seem to me that if a hormone is added to the blood that stimulates the release of fat, the body rest of the body wouldn't be prepared -- I assume that when actions like that are taken naturally, there are some changes in the blood vessels and tissue the nutrient is being directed to. I would think it would cause increased risk of strokes and other afflictions related to clogged blood vessels, so the machine would have to be operated in very small increments. Assuming that this is taking place in a medical setting, as mentioned before, I would expect it to be nearly as much of a time waster as going to the gym, without even the other health benefits of working out. It also would cost more for the patients, given how they'd have a doctor charging them for the time spent have fat removed.

[Bauglir]

You could conceivably do some sort of dialysis and centrifuge thing to keep fat in the bloodstream down if you used a hormone treatment to trigger fat release and other medications to control the side effects of the hormones, but it'd take far longer than exercise, be very expensive (requiring the service of a least one physician and a few nurses or technicians, on top of the medications and machinery), and just be generally inefficient. Albumin is a hella good emulsifier, so your centrifuge is going to have to be obnoxiously powerful, and that's assuming I know how the chemistry here actually works (I do know that your plasma can go cloudy from excess lipids if you've eaten a fatty meal, but I'm assuming a lot of analogies here because it's been a while since biochem).

[GlyphGryph]

Time-wise, the benefit would be that you could conceivably dedicate a whole day to it, read or watch tv while you wait, and lose a significant amount of weight.

Sure, you can lose over 15 pounds a day through exercise alone, but most people would never be able to pull that sort of effort off - the benefit of a machine like this is that you aren't limited by the ability of your muscles to keep up.

Also, is the release of fat through hormones actually a real danger? Doesn't the body do that normally during extended exercise anyways? I wasn't aware of, say, marathon runners having significant problems with fat buildup.

[Neonivek]

I commented elsewhere that I didn't understand why they hadn't yet invented a machine that burned fat in a way similar to how the human body does it. Obviously, the body moves those energy bits around to where they are needed, and I'm not entirely sure why we couldn't hook ourselves up to some sort of dialysis machine equivalent and just burn that fat away - acting, essentially, as if the machine were some sort of giant muscle.

Some people, such such as LoWhi, are opposed to such a machine!
Others, such as myself, see it as an amazing good! (Lets face it, exercise at least is a a lot easier to keep up when you aren't ridiculously fat)

What do you think?

Is this a joke thread? because they invented these quite a few times.

[Bauglir]

Also, is the release of fat through hormones actually a real danger? Doesn't the body do that normally during extended exercise anyways? I wasn't aware of, say, marathon runners having significant problems with fat buildup.

It's actually getting properly processed, is the thing, so you do need a mechanism for extracting it from the bloodstream. I mean, you can pump a fat emulsion into the bloodstream directly (we do it all the time with people on central venous nutrition, aka people who can't eat so we have to pump a diet directly into their blood), so it's more about having a way to accomplish the machine's purpose than preserving your health, but it'd be fairly difficult I think. And the hormones have their own side effects that need to be managed.

[GlyphGryph]

Neonivek, examples plox?