Intragastric balloon (imaginary!) loses weight –

The big day has arrived: architect Vitória Torres (fictitious name), 28, is ready for the procedure that promises to rid her of those extra pounds. At the ready, the doctor and assistants are talking quietly. She smells the strong odor of antiseptics and anesthetic. Tum-tum, tum-tum, the sounds of heartbeats echo in the air, joining the hiss of the pressure monitor. Slowly, a voice explains the procedure, step by step: “You are sedated. A deflated silicone balloon now begins to be introduced, through the mouth, into her stomach. Okay, it’s already there. Now, with the help of a catheter, it is being filled with saline. Okay, it’s full and takes up almost half of your stomach. From today, the feeling of hunger will be less because there is less room for food. You will eat less, much less than before. And you will be satisfied. He will take control of the food, resisting the second piece of cake. You will lose weight and never regain the lost weight.”

The scene looks real, but it’s not. What you have just read is a description of a hypnosis session – a nearly perfect simulation of the actual procedure. In it, the physician introduces an intragastric balloon into the patient’s digestive tract by endoscopy. For this, he uses a tube, with a deflated silicone balloon and a microcamera at the end, which enters through the mouth and travels to the stomach.

The next step is to fill the device with saline so as to steal a good amount of space from the food and curb the appetite.

Returning to Vitória’s experience, she says: “I didn’t sleep. I was awake, aware, in a state of deep relaxation and knowing that I was being hypnotized. It was something stronger than pure and simple imagination. I practically saw, heard and felt everything that was being suggested at that moment.” The session was conducted by Vania Calazans, a clinical psychologist and cognitive hypnotherapist from São Paulo, who has been using the hypnosis technique based on cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) for six years to treat obesity, depression, anxiety and phobias, among other underlying problems. emotional. “Hypnosis helps the patient to identify distorted beliefs and thoughts that she has about herself in order to then generate new patterns of behavior”, explains the therapist.

quick result

Vitória Torres, who measures 1.56 meters and now weighs 57 kilos, lost 13 kilos in just three months. “I want to make it to 52 and continue doing self-hypnosis sessions to keep the weight off,” she says. She learned the technique and went into a trance on her own after the fifth office session. The support material consists of CDs with the voice of the psychologist. She says phrases that guide the imagination, reinforce positive thoughts and ward off negative feelings. There are also handouts with strategies to avoid thoughts that sabotage the weight loss plan, and self-assessment exercises, which lead the person to observe whether or not he is in control of challenging situations. Did you resist the milk pudding and preferred the fruit salad? Great sign. Thus, you will condition yourself to adopt attitudes capable of changing old habits and crystallizing new ones.

This change in thinking, essential for weight loss, does not happen instantly, as if by magic. But it is a quick process, which lasts about ten weeks – from the initial consultation to the “introduction” of the balloon. “Emotions have everything to do with weight gain,” explains Vania Calazans. “On a scale of 0 to 10 to measure feelings related to uncontrolled eating, those who come to the office declaring themselves incompetent to resist food in general are between 8 and 10. But, as the person rethinks the reasons that led to making a negative assessment of herself and her relationship with food, drops to 6.” In two sessions, guarantees the hypnotherapist, the anxiety, which makes him attack the ice cream pot, drops by 70%. “A result that psychiatry can take two or more years to achieve – and with the help of a lot of anxiolytics”, emphasizes Vania.

change of habits

Administrator Andréa Magalhães (fictitious name), 43 years old, is in the preparation phase for the placement of the balloon by hypnosis. At 1.62 meters and 92 kilos, she has already lost 3 kilos since starting therapy, about a month and a half ago. And she completely changed her ways. She was crazy about sweets. After a few sessions, the compulsion passed. “Today, when I see a chocolate cake with brigadeiro frosting, I’m dying to eat an apple”, she says, having fun. “Before the therapy, I only bought bananas and avocados to feed the birds and monkeys in an environmental protection area close to my house. Now, not a day goes by without assorted fruits. If I put a candy in my mouth, it feels like the sugar burns my throat. The feeling is horrible!”

From being a sedentary woman, Andréa became an assiduous gymnast. “I hated physical activity and now I’ve become a gym rat. I just don’t go on Sundays because it’s closed. If I lose sleep at dawn, I jump out of bed and go for a walk or a bike ride,” she says. She remembers the session where the psychologist encouraged her to review her negative thoughts about exercise. “When simulating aerobic gymnastics, I felt my heart beat faster and I even sweated, as if I had been running for real.”

Vitória and Andréa, who had always taken amphetamine-type drugs, such as amfepramone, fenproporex and mazindol, were free of these chemical substances, with strong side effects and results that left something to be desired – the extra kilos always ended up returning.

doctors approve

Gynecologist Osmar Ribeiro Colás, who is also a cognitive behavioral psychotherapist, has been coordinating a hypnosis study group at the Federal University of São Paulo, Unifesp, for 14 years. He points out that the method is still not considered scientific, as its results have only been observed empirically, that is, in practice, through experiences and experiences. “From a medical point of view, there is no scientific evidence to recommend the balloon technique to an obese person. However, it might work.” He highlights three conditions for success: “The patient has to be susceptible to hypnosis, the therapist needs to be competent and trust in this professional must be absolute so that the hypnotic trance leads to hypermnesia, which is the clear memory of the past and scenes that may be related to the problem that the person is experiencing.”

Colás points out that hypnosis is a medical tool, recognized by the Federal Councils of Medicine and Psychology. “Thus, it can be used by physicians of any specialty and also by psychologists.” There are people who are easily taken by hypnosis, while others are immune to it. “This is detected in the first session”, explains Osmar Colás. Artists in general, whose emotional and intuitive side is more on the surface, tend to be more capable of transforming imagination into reality than mathematicians, for example, who are more rational.

Why does hypnosis work? One of the most accepted hypotheses is that, during trance, the limbic system, the region of the nervous system responsible for images and emotions, stops sending information to the cortex, the region of the brain that takes care of consciousness and reasoning. Thus, our conscious side is left unreserved – and therefore totally vulnerable to the hypnotist’s suggestions. The brain starts focusing on one thing and disconnects from the rest, as happens when you read a book, watch a movie or listen to music.

Transformed into a circus show, hypnosis gained a bad reputation and lost credibility. Today, it is recognized as an important therapeutic resource by renowned institutions, such as Hospital AC Camargo, specialized in the fight against cancer, to alleviate the side effects of chemotherapy, and Hospital das Clínicas, both in São Paulo, in the treatment of pain. chronicles. Vania Calazans calculates that she has implanted the imaginary balloon in around 200 people. “I lost contact with many of these patients, which is common after reaching the weight loss goal.” But she celebrates: “Among the 80 who still send news, none has gained weight again!”.