Article re PGX fibre

Feeling full on a thimble of fibre
When a very rotund little boy grew into a slimmer doctor he wanted to find a
treatment for obesity.

He says he has.

On this day, Dr. Michael Lyon, 47, takes a pass on an artery-clogging lunch
buffet in favour of a Nicoise salad and orders a tomato juice, which ends up
being the centrepiece of his meal, much to the wonderment of the waitress
fluttering nearby.

Into the juice, Dr. Lyon dumps a thimble-sized scoop of a super fibre known
as PGX, an invention made by researchers at the University of Toronto. He
stirs the juice and then waits until it thickens into a tomato paste so
dense a spoon can stand up in it.

He chugs it down. By the time the fibre mixture expands in his stomach he is
so full he can barely finish his salad.

Dr. Lyon won't be hungry again until dinner.

For a formerly obese child who still has to watch his waistline, he says
it's a miracle.

A little thimble-full of the fibre, called PGX -- or PolyGlycopleX --
contains 2.5 grams of soluble fibre, which in itself is fairly remarkable.
More remarkable, it can absorb six times its weight in water, greater than
any other fibre or fibre blend ever studied.

With such huge absorption power, the 2.5 grams of fibre is the equivalent of
25 grams of another popular fibre, pysllium, or 75 grams of oat bran. You'd
have to eat 15 bowls of oat bran in one sitting to get the same amount of
fibre.

PGX was discovered by U of T researchers after 10 years of research, but was
never developed into a product. Their discovery needed to be refined so it
could be added to food. They had no way of doing that, so it just became an
interesting research paper in a scientific journal.

Then along came Dr. Lyon.

He became interested in nutrition, natural medicine and exercise because of
his childhood obesity, which he managed to beat back with a lot of hard
work. When he became a Calgary doctor, he specialized in sports medicine and
acted as the team physician for both the Canadian and Jamaican bobsled
teams.

"I was there mostly to run out onto the track when the sleigh flipped over,"
he deadpans.

But his ambition was always to turn back to nutritional medicine. Obesity
interested him most.

"There are two basic facts behind the increase in obesity in the last 20
years. Portion sizes are larger and we eat 200 to 300 more calories on
average a day. And we burn 200 to 300 less calories because of inactivity."

Juice glasses used to be shot-glass sized, but now we complain if they don't
come in beaker-sized. We drive everywhere, instead of walking.

Dr. Lyon was combing through the medical literature when he noticed a
discovery by the Risk Factor Modification Centre at St. Michael's Hospital,
part of the University of Toronto -- the same group that developed the
gylcemic index of foods, which helps determine the after-meal blood sugar
levels of different foods.

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Ottawa Citizen (Dec 5)