What Is Revolutionary About the Sensa Weight Loss System?

You can lose 30 pounds in six months and still eat everything you want, the makers of the diet sensation Sensa tell us. If the product has been featured in the New York Times and on NBC's Dateline, the headlines blaze in Sensa advertising, you know it can work. The makers of Sensa claim that their product works because it is a "revolutionary" approach to weight loss.


While skepticism is natural, the truth is that Sensa really is a different and effective approach to weight loss. And the experience of Texas resident Rick Broun (his name changed for privacy) is one more Testimonial that Sensa weight loss is real.

From 72-Ounce Steaks to a (Smaller) 42-Inch Waist

Like many other Texans, Rick Broun has a fondness for steak. On more than one trip from his home in East Texas to his vacation cottage in Colorado, Broun has stopped at the Big Texan restaurant in Amarillo to try to win a free 72-ounce (2 kilo) sirloin steak by eating the steak—and a baked potato and a dinner salad and a parfait glass of shrimp cocktail and a roll—in one hour or less. He has always winds up paying for his steak (diners who fail to eat the steak and side orders in one hour or less are charged $72 for their meal), but he's tried four times. Rick also has a fondness for chicken fried steak, top chopped steak, and hamburgers, the greasier the better.



By the age of 42, Rick Broun's fondness for steak and all the fixin's was definitely beginning to show on his 56-inch (142 cm) waistline around his 333-pound (150 kilo) body. And when he both found out he was diabetic and had a mild transient attack, also known as a mini-stroke, in the same week, Broun decided it was time to do something about his weight.

That was in February of this year. Eight months later, Broun has trimmed 14 inches (30 cm) and lost 48 pounds (22 kilos) without making conscious changes in his eating habits—although he has not made another trip back to the Big Texan restaurant for another 72-ounce steak. Broun is not yet thin, but he has made remarkable progress using Sensa to control his appetite.

How Scent Changes Appetite

The Sensa system uses the power of scent to regulate appetite. Dieters spread Sensa crystals on everything they eat, and the crystals increase the taste and aroma of food. The additional scent of food stimulates the olfactory bulb in the back of the nose, Sensa makers say, and the hypothalamus in the brain sends signals to the rest of the body that it has eaten enough.



Sensa is a mixture of silica, maltodextrin, tricalcium phosphate, and natural and artificial flavors. The reason it helps weight loss, says its inventor Dr. Alan Hirsch, a psychiatrist, neurologist, and founder of the Smell and Taste Research and Treatment Center in Chicago, is that the brain interprets the taste and smell of food as equivalent to having eaten the food. If you get a lot of smell and flavor from your food, your brain thinks you have eaten a lot of food, and it sends signals to the rest of your body that have eaten enough.

Dr. Hirsch's claims are based on over 20 years of scientific testing. And Sensa is not his first successful diet product.

The Sensational History of the Sensa System

Sensa has been on the market since 2007, but it was not Dr. Hirsch's first weight loss product. In the early 1990's, Dr. Hirsch recruited 3,193 dieters to carry inhalers filled with aromatic ingredients, which they were to inhale whenever they felt hungry. They were told to follow their usual diet and exercise habits, and at they were given a new inhaler each months. At the end of six months, the average participant in the study had lost 30 pounds (13.5 kilos). The aromatherapy ingredients used in this study became SlimScents, which are now marketed separately from Dr. Hirsch.


Dr. Hirsch's second product involved both scent and taste. In 2005, he gave 1,436 diet patients a product he called Tastant crystals. At the end of six months, the average weight loss was 30.5 pounds—slightly more than for SlimScents. Tastant Crystals are now marketed as Sensa.

You can see ads for Sensa on QVC and the Home Shopping Network as well as on late night television on other channels. Sensa is also offered from the company website. A one-month supply of the crystals is $59, with discounts for buying three and six months of the crystals in a single order. "Hundreds of thousands" of home dieters, according to Hirsch, have lost weight with Sensa.

Are There Other Products That Get Similar Results?

Dr. Hirsch is not the only investigator to find that aroma blunts appetite. Dr. Bryan Raudenbusch, an associate professor of psychology at Wheeling Jesuit University in West Virginia, recruited 40 people to try an experiment. These volunteers smelled peppermint or a placebo every 2 hours during the day for five days. Over the five days the study participants sniffed peppermint every 2 hours during the day, they ate a total of 1,800 fewer calories.

Long Beach, California life coach now markets Peppermint Happy Scent for just $5.50 a bottle. Users open the bottle and shake peppermint-soaked beads to kill hunger.

And the makers of SlimScents now offer it for free for six months or until the user has lost 2.5% of his or her body weight. "We have never had anyone who used the product properly who did not lose weight," SlimScents president Mark Cohen told the New York Times.

Still, not everyone who uses any of these products loses weight. And researchers at the NIZO Food Research Center in the Netherlands offer a different way to enjoy the full aroma of foods—take small bites, and hold the food in the mouth as long as possible while chewing thoroughly. The benefits of eating slowly seem to accumulate during the meal. Just eating more slowly—the opposite of the eating behavior displayed by Rick Broun at the Big Texas steak house over his 72-ounce steak—may be as beneficial as Sensa or other aromatherapy products for losing weight.

It's only common sense (that has been confirmed in laboratory research) that the smaller the bite, the less you eat. Eating less and eating more slowly also help dieters lose weight. But if you are a big food fan and you just can't keep yourself from digging into your food, try Sensa.