NCT03934580

Postprandial Effects of a Hallucinatory Meal on Appetite Regulation

Postprandial Effects of a Hallucinatory Meal on Appetite Regulation: a Randomized Cross-over Pilot Trial

• Status: Completed
• Phase: N/A
• Study type: Interventional
• Enrollment: 8 (actual)
• Sponsor: University of Turin, Italy · Academic / Other
• Sex: Female
• Age: 45 Years – 65 Years
• Healthy volunteers: Accepted

Summary

Several and complex mechanisms are involved in the regulation of appetite and food intake in humans. By means of rapid hypnosis techniques, it is possible to induce some individuals to hallucinate a meal. The same meal (breakfast) is administered as i) a real meal and ii) is evoked as a hallucination under hypnosis in healthy postmenopausal women. The aim of this pilot randomized-controlled cross-over trial is to assess appetite sensation and the blood levels of the appetite-related hormones in the participants.

Detailed description

The regulation of appetite is crucial to control food intake and consequently body weight. Hypnosis has been successfully used to modulate gastrointestinal functions, by imagining eating food. In the present pilot trial, the investigators search to investigate the effects a hallucinatory meal by hypnosis on subjective appetite and appetite hormone blood levels. Hence, two different breakfast meals are randomly administered to eight healthy postmenopausal women, in a crossover design, consisting of i) a hallucinatory breakfast meal (HB) and ii) a real breakfast meal (RB). On each test day, participants undergo baseline measurements, including appetite sensation and blood sample, then the test meal is hallucinated or served. Subjective appetite is assessed each 30 minutes for 4 hours and half, while blood samples are taken at 20', 60', 90' and 180 minutes. At the end of each session, participants are instructed to fill in a food record for the following 3-days.

Conditions

• Change in Subjective Appetite Score (VAS)

Interventions

Type	Name	Description
OTHER	hallucinated meal	a breakfast meal (white bread plus ham and cheese with 250 ml still water) is hallucinated by participants under hypnosis
OTHER	Real meal	A real breakfast (white bread plus ham and cheese with 250 ml still water) is consumed by participants

Timeline

• Start date: 2017-10-01
• Primary completion: 2017-12-30
• Completion: 2019-02-28
• First posted: 2019-05-02
• Last updated: 2019-05-02

Locations

1 site across 1 country: Italy