science

Tongue Patch Diet

Tongue Patch Diet is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Tongue Patch Diet rather than just read about it. In short: Tongue Patch Diet (also known as The Weight Reduction Patch, Chugay Patch and Miracle Patch) is a fad diet that involves attaching a patch to the top of the tongue that makes eating painful in order to cause the person to avoid eating solid food. After being launched in 2009 by Nikolas Chugay, the diet was criticized by health experts and media outlets.

Key takeaways

Tongue Patch Diet belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Tongue Patch Diet to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Tongue Patch Diet from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Tongue Patch Diet (also known as The Weight Reduction Patch, Chugay Patch and Miracle Patch) is a fad diet that involves attaching a patch to the top of the tongue that makes eating painful in order to cause the person to avoid eating solid food. After being launched in 2009 by Nikolas Chugay, the diet was criticized by health experts and media outlets.

History Tongue Patch Diet was developed by Chugay, a plastic surgeon in Beverly Hills, in 2009. Chugay got the idea of the diet from a friend who was doing a similar procedure in Mexico. Chugay introduced the tongue patch diet as an alternative to invasive weight loss methods such as gastric bypass or Lapband surgery. In 2011, a similar procedure was introduced in Venezuela. However, the procedure gained more popularity in Venezuela as compared to the USA. As of 2014, Chugay is the only surgeon in the USA who offers this treatment and it has not been approved by FDA.

Procedure In the Tongue Patch Diet, a patch is stitched to the tongue of the dieter to make the consumption of solid food painful. The patch is made of Marlex, a polymer composed of polypropylene and high-density polyethylene. The procedure for stitching the patch to the tongue takes about ten minutes. Since consuming solid food is painful, the dieter has to resort to a restrictive 800-calorie liquid only diet developed by Chugay. The patch can be removed any time by snipping the sutures. However, it should be removed within a month or the tongue may start growing on the patch. Some patients have had the mesh in place up to 60 days without untoward effects. In the days subsequent to the procedure, the patient takes antibiotics for 3 days to minimize the risk of infection and washes with an antiseptic mouth wash to decrease the bacterial count. According to Chugay, the diet can help a patient in reducing 30 pounds in one month. Chugay and his son Paul Chugay published a study in the American Journal of Cosmetic Surgery that said 70 percent of their patients lost an average of 16 pounds and kept it off for eight months. After the patch has been applied, the 30-day regimen also includes 45 minutes of daily exercise, in addition to limiting caloric intake.

Risks Patients may have a swollen tongue or difficulty speaking for the first 72 hours after the procedure. Chugay claims that the diet has no severe risks or side effects. Critics of the diet have labelled it as dangerous claiming that it could cause infection, swelling or nerve damage.

In mass media After being launched, the diet has received considerable media attention, with health experts criticizing the diet. Many media outlets have also reviewed the diet negatively with Good Magazine writing that "in essence it's nothing more than a modern version of wiring one's jaw shut, forcing the "patient" to literally starve themselves."

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Tongue Patch Diet

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Tongue Patch Diet claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Tongue Patch Diet before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Tongue Patch Diet ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Tongue Patch Diet

In research: Tongue Patch Diet appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Tongue Patch Diet in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Tongue Patch Diet is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Diets, Fad diets, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Tongue Patch Diet outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Tongue Patch Diet in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Tongue Patch Diet means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Tongue Patch Diet out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Tongue Patch Diet in simple terms?

Why does Tongue Patch Diet matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Tongue Patch Diet?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Tongue Patch Diet.