In general the most surefire way to prevent weight gain is to eat healthy and exercise, but people are always on the hunt for a slightly quicker or even more miraculous option. Diet pills have never been considered a completely safe or effective alternative, but one new diet drug might be about to change the game.

The drug called fexaramine works differently than other diet drugs do. Instead of relying on stimulants to speed up the metabolism, this drug works by tricking the body into thinking that it just ate an entire meal. When that happens, the body starts burning fat to make space for the next meal. The drug works specifically in the intestines and does not go through the blood stream, so the safety potential is much higher than in some of the other alternative options.

The findings so far have been carried out on mice at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies and were published in the journal Nature Medicine. The effects were so positive in the initial round of trials that they are going to extend them to primates next. If all goes well with the primates then human trials could be approved and started within the next couple years.

In addition to spurring the burning of fat, the drug also reduced the resistance to insulin in the body. It also helped to grow more of the brown type of fat which scorches calories, and even reduced the inflammation of certain cells. There are no calories taken in and no changes to the appetite when the drug is taken, simply an increase in fat burning. All of these aspects have positive benefits towards fighting obesity.

Fexaramine works by sticking to farensoid X receptors (FXRs), which have been studied for the past ten years. There are other pharmaceutical drugs that have been developed with the aim of effecting FXRs, but those drugs have tended to have a variety of side effects. FXRs are found all over the body, not just in relation to the appetite, so some of them directly affect receptors in unnecessary places like the kidneys and the liver.

The drug has the potential to offer an alternative to some of the more extreme surgical methods like gastric bypass surgery that morbidly obese people undergo to lose weight. Those surgical options can be effective, but they are not without risk and massive lifestyle changes. Currently more than one third of the people in the United States are considered obese, so the demand for an alternative is quite high.

There is also hope that the drug might be able to help diabetics due to its ability to affect the insulin levels in the body. The mice in the study showed significantly lowered levels of blood sugar, cholesterol, and blood pressure in addition to faster metabolism action.

The drug would not be appropriate for people with only small amounts of weight to lose however, and there are still human trials to get through before it might be available on the market.