Hypnosis: The Final Solution for Weight Loss?
Kevin Hogan
Hypnosis may be one of the final solutions to weight loss. Strategies to
control stress may just be the best tools to reduce weight for the long term.
Research released this week mirrors research I did from 1998-2000 with the
Minnesota Institute of Hypnosis and Hypnotherapy. Stress appears to be a major
cause of weight gain and reducing stress levels seems to have a cause/effect
relationship on people's weight.
UCSF researchers have identified a biochemical feedback system in rats that
could explain why some people crave comfort foods - such as chocolate chip
cookies and greasy cheeseburgers - when they are chronically stressed, and why
such people are apt to gain weight in the abdomen.
The finding, to be published this week on-line in the Early Edition of
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, focuses on a glucocorticoid
steroid hormone (corticosterone in rats, cortisol in humans) that plays a key
role in the stress-response system. In their study, the researchers determined
that 24 hours after activation of the chronic stress system - which stimulates a
flood of hormonal signaling from the hypothalamus to the adrenal glands –
glucocorticoids prompt rats to engage in pleasure-seeking behaviors, which
include eating high-energy foods (sucrose and lard). The animals develop
abdominal obesity, and the negative aspects of the chronic stress response
system, otherwise ushered in by the glucocorticoids, are blunted. The
researchers suspect that the metabolic signal to inhibit the stress system comes
directly from fat depots.
The finding offers an explanation into how chronic stress can be inhibited,
or curbed. While the body's acute response to stress - say to being cut off in
traffic by a speeding car - diminishes through a naturally occurring inhibitory
feedback mechanism of the adrenal stress system, its chronic response to stress
- in which a barrage of threats, scares or frustrations occur over days, weeks
or months -- becomes chronically excited. Over time, the elevated stress level
can initiate a host of deleterious effects on the body - a loss or gain of
weight, depression, obesity (associated with type II diabetes, cardiovascular
disease and stroke), and a loss of brain tissue.
"Our studies suggest that comfort food applies the brakes on a key
element of chronic stress," says study co-author Norman Pecoraro, PhD, a
postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of senior author Mary Dallman, PhD, UCSF
professor of physiology. And it could explain, he says, why solace is often
sought in such foods by people with stress, anxiety or depression. It also could
help to explain bulimic and night-binging eating disorders. Dallman, who has
spent years studying the regulation of the stress response system, developed the
new model of chronic glucocorticoid feedback.
Evolutionarily, the drive to eat comfort foods makes sense, says Pecoraro. In
the animal kingdom, it's an eat or be eaten world, and a body under constant, or
chronic, stress may preferentially eat high-energy foods to stay in the game.
Under the model that the research team has proposed, glucocorticoids would both
prompt vigilance to threats and send a signal to the brain of a chronically
stressed animal to seek high-energy food. If it were successful in finding such
food, stress and its attendant feelings would be terminated.
In regions of the world where people struggle with wars, epidemics of disease
and chronic food shortage, the need to seek out high-energy foods would be
great, as well. In the developed world, where stress is more often found in a
commuting office worker, people seem to be seeking the same solution –
and finding it at every street corner, says Pecoraro.
"If, after the near-miss on the freeway, you get into work and almost
lose your job during an argument with your boss, and have a fight at home that
night - and these types of events are relentless -- you're going to have
chronically elevated adrenal hormones [ie., chronic stress]," he says.
There has to be a brake on the system, and, for some, it's chocolate.
Importantly, there are other ways to treat chronic stress: exercise, yoga,
meditation, sex and baths all stimulate neurochemicals that activate regions of
the brain that stimulate pleasure. Relaxation techniques may work by reducing
the psychological drives on stress output, which can be the root causes of
stress. (Drugs and alcohol do not provide sufficient metabolic feedback, and may
even stimulate further stress, and its attendant compulsions for pleasure.)
As for the use of food, there are serious health consequences of a diet high
in fat and sugars -- abdominal obesity (which can lead to cardiovascular
disease, Type II diabetes and stroke), and cardiovascular disease itself.
"In the short term, if you're chronically stressed it might be worth
eating and sleeping a little more to calm down, perhaps at the expense of
gaining a few pounds," says Pecoraro. "But seeking a long-term
solution in comfort foods - rather than fixing the source of the stress or your
relationship to the source of the stress -- is going to be bad for you."
Stress, of course, is a strategy that evolved to enable the body to deal with
threats - those ranging from the crouched lion ready to pounce, to the
possibility of losing a job. It promotes quick, though somewhat inflexible,
physical and mental responses, vigilance and attention. In the immediate
response to a perceived danger, the body experiences the familiar
"adrenaline rush," in which the adrenal glands initiate a flood of
hormonal signals that quicken the heart rate, constrict the vasculature to
prevent bleeding to death, and provide energy to the muscles. Minutes later, a
slightly slower response is orchestrated by hormones from another region of the
adrenal glands, providing such defenses as an anti-inflammatory function. Once
an acute threat has subsided, these hormones are shut off through an inhibitory
feedback system.
During chronic stress, however, the system does not turn off, and
glucocorticoids, which were formerly inhibitory, have an over-riding excitatory
effect on brain stress networks. Glucocorticoids in the system remain elevated,
maintaining high levels of corticotropin releasing factor, which in turn
regulates adrenocorticotropin; both key inciting hormones in the chronic stress
response system. This creates a positive feedback loop between the stress
systems of the body and brain.
From their studies, the researchers concluded that rats with chronically
elevated glucocorticoids developed pleasure-seeking/or compulsive behaviors,
which included drinking sucrose (rather than saccharine), eating lard, running
on the wheel and taking a drug. They then observed changes that took place in
the stress response system in the aftermath of eating the comfort food - an
increase in abdominal fat and an end to corticotropin releasing factor and
adrenocorticotropin secretion. They also observed an inverse relationship
between abdominal fat and the expression of genes in the motor zone of the
hypothalamus, where the stress response is initiated.
"This seems to be the body's way of telling the brain, 'It's ok, you can
relax, you're refueled with high-energy food,'" says Pecoraro. The message
is clearly being transmitted in the middle-aged man or woman with a gut.
"This body type represents the classic distribution of fat from
stress." The new model may explain why losing weight is notoriously
difficult, he says. Losing weight is literally stressful, which makes a person
feel anxious, and stress hormones make a person crave high energy foods, which
blunt the feelings of stress and make one feel better.
The Dateline Weight Loss Challenge Results
The competitors:
- Weight Watchers
- Slim Fast
- Atkins diet
- Extreme exercise
- Hypnosis
- Jorge Cruise weight-loss program
The participant with the most impressive record was Marc, a pastry chef, who
used hypnosis to lose 13 pounds in a single week. You can read the complete
article here: MSNBC
With this program, Dateline demonstrated hypnosis and hypnotherapy to the
public. It was a terrific way for people to see the powerful and effective ways
that hypnosis can help program your mind for success.
Other results:
Lynne - extreme exercise and a daily 1,300-calorie diet.
Her weight did not change in three months.
Mark "Gio" - used the Slim Fast diet
After 1 week on Slim Fast "Gio" gained 3 pounds.
Kathy - did Weight Watchers, stayed under 20 points/day
Lost 4.8 pounds in one week ("I starved all week.")
Eleanor - at 300 pounds used an 8 min. weight workout
Eleanor lost three pounds in the first week.
Rick - followed the Atkins low-carb diet. Also exercise
Lost 13 pounds
Marc, using hypnosis, reported that he did not suffer while dieting. He was
happy. He felt good and it happened naturally.
After 3 months...
Kathy... lost 18 pounds.
Eleanor... lost 24 pounds.
Lynne... lost 14 pounds
Marc... lost 40 pounds
(And didn't suffer during that time.)
Marc reports that he's very happy with the hypnotist. He's motivated and
doesn't feel like anything is holding him back. He now enjoys exercising and has
developed a greater love for healthy, nutritious food. In fact, he says he wants
to, rather than feeling he ought to. All he wants now is healthy food, he says.
Dateline presented an objective look at the different weight loss methods
available to the public today. It was very interesting how hypnosis was
demonstrated to be effective and fast. Hypnosis is painless, and effective in
programming the mind to feel good and desire naturally good foods and healthy
diet and lifestyle.
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