A woman in the UK has reportedly lost 55 pounds in just a few weeks after being hypnotized to believe she had weight loss surgery.
35- year-old Marion Cornes was hypnotized and given the posthypnotic suggestion that surgeons had placed an adjustable gastric band around her stomach. Once under hypnosis, her therapist verbally led Cornes step by step through a complete surgery.
She was given a model of a stomach and a gastric band during the session, and authentic OR smells and sounds were piped into the hypnosis room to add realism to the proceedings.
After the procedure was complete, Cormes found herself incapable of eating more than a small portion of food – about the same amount as would be possible had an actual gastric band been introduced. She immediately started losing weight — up to 3 pounds a week – and has shown no ill effects from the hypnotherapy.
As far as we can determine, there are no formal studies of this phenomenon underway at this time. However, if at some point hypno-surgery like this does prove to be a useful therapy for the treatment of obesity, you can expect “hypno-sizing” to replace many forms of weight loss surgery. That would be good for patients, but it would also make a lot of weight loss surgeons – and the Weight Loss Surgery Channel – obsolete.
February 2nd, 2010 at 2:42 pm
I can’t wait to get started! My first appointment is next Friday!!!!!!!