Hypnosis may promote weight loss in severe obesity: Study

Italy: Habitual hypnosis may help in weight loss, but self-hypnosis is not associated with any significant change in the weight in obese individuals, states study results published in the Obesity journal. 

Globally, approximately 13% of adults are obese. Obesity (body mass index >30 kg/m2) diminishes almost every aspect of health and is associated with an increased risk of type 2 diabetes, hypertension, hyperlipidemia, and cardiovascular disease. Usually, overweight/obese individuals resume wrong lifestyle habits, such as overeating, unhealthy diets, and physical inactivity, so most obese individuals who lose weight after lifestyle educative treatments, soon regain it.

Many studies have supported the benefits of mindfulness-based interventions to control some obesity-related behaviors. Hypnosis (also referred to as hypnotherapy or hypnotic suggestion) is a trance-like mental state in which people experience increased attention, concentration, and suggestibility. Hypnosis has been used as part of the treatment plans for many medical conditions. Self-conditioning techniques borrowed from hypnosis (self-hypnosis) increase self-control and self-management of emotions, with the patient being fully awake and conscious. Recent hypnosis techniques with a rapid-induction phase allow the patient to go into hypnosis in a few minutes and could be applied to improve lifestyle habits in obese individuals. However, the usefulness of the rapid-induction techniques of hypnosis as an adjunctive weight-loss treatment has not been defined.

Simona Bo, University of Turin, Italy, and colleagues conducted a randomized controlled trial to evaluate the contribution of self-conditioning techniques (self-hypnosis) added to lifestyle interventions in weight loss (primary outcome), changes in metabolic and inflammatory variables, and quality of life (QoL) improvement (secondary outcomes) in severe obesity.

Researchers enrolled individuals (with BMI = 35-50 kg/m2) without organic or psychiatric comorbidity and randomly assigned them to the intervention (n = 60) or control arm (n = 60). All received exercise and behavioral recommendations and individualized diets. The intervention consisted of three hypnosis sessions, during which self-hypnosis was taught to increase self-control before eating. Diet, exercise, satiety, QoL, anthropometric measurements, and blood variables were collected and measured at enrollment and 1 year (trial end).

Key findings of the trial data,

• A similar weight loss was observed in the intervention (−6.5 kg) and control (−5.6 kg) arms.

• Habitual hypnosis users lost more weight (−9.6 kg) and greatly reduced their caloric intake (−682.5 kcal) in linear regression models.

• At the end of the trial, the intervention arm showed lower C-reactive protein values, higher satiety, and better QoL.

Researchers conclude that Self-hypnosis is not associated with weight loss but it improved satiety, QoL, and inflammation in obese patients. The study also showed that habitual hypnosis leads to greater weight loss.

Reference:

Simona Bo,Farnaz Rahimi,Ilaria Goitre,Bice Properzi,Valentina Ponzo,Giuseppe Regaldo,Stefano Boschetti,Maurizio Fadda,Giovannino Ciccone,Giovanni Abbate Daga et al.   First published: 17 September 2018 https://doi.org/10.1002/oby.22262