Holy Hypnosis, Batman! Gastric Mind Band Therapy

The concept of hypnosis as a weight loss tool isn't a new or alien one to most of us, what with the ads that abound in the meedja hyping the idea and Paul McKenna and his "I Can Make You Thin" codolog-er programme.

However the VHI reckons that, while hypnotherapy can be useful for helping people to give up smoking or overcome excessive anxiety, it's not necessarily the Holy Grail of slimming: people who undergo hynotherapy to fight the flab should only expect to lose a couple of pounds.

Marion Corns is a British woman who might take issue with the Voluntary Health Insurer's stance on the procedure - she claims to have lost a stone a month in the four months since being hypnotised, going from a size 22 down to a size 12-14. Apart from the scale (ho ho) of the weight she lost, what's a bit unique about Marion's experience is that she was hypnotised to believe she'd undergone surgery to have a gastric band fitted.

She was talked through every single step of the pretend procedure in a Spanish clinic, believed she was really going under the knife, and sound effects and aromatherapy were used to further enhance the illusion. Told that her stomach was just the size of a golf ball, she now says she feels full if she tries to eat more than a small portion of food in one sitting.

That's gastric mind band therapy, folks - sounds too good to be true, don't it?