In Pain? Call the Medical Hypnoanalyst
Pain
Pain. We all suffer it at one time or another. Migraine headaches. Back pain. Chronic pain from illness or injury. Birthing pains. Pain from surgery or other medical procedures. Whenever we're in pain we want relief - fast. So we call the doctor and he prescribes medication. We take it and most of the time it helps. But other times it doesn't help... enough... or for long enough. And sometimes we just don't want to take medication.
Is there an alternative? Is there a safe way to get pain relief without medication? Today more and more people are asking this question. A two hundred year old technique - hypnosis - is gaining in strength as a modality of choice for pain relief in treatment of a variety of medical conditions from migraine headaches to chronic back pain to cancer symptoms.
Managing Pain
Most hypnotherapists work with pain problem primarily in conjunction with appropriate healing arts professionals. This is because pain often is a symptom of a problem rather than the problem itself. A headache might be migraine; it also might be a brain tumor. A medical diagnosis is important.
However, properly used hypnosis can reduce pain, alleviate anxiety, remove fears of dentistry or surgery, eliminate or reduce the need for injections or other applications of chemical anesthesia, promote comfort and healing and expedite recovery. It is becoming more common in dentistry, obstetrics, burn treatment and emergency room trauma. In accomplishing the above it is evident that Medical Hypnoanalysis can prove dramatically effective in dealing with medically-related stress situations
Areas of Application in Dentistry
- Analgesia (as premedication to reduce chemical anesthesia)
- Anesthesia (instead of chemical anesthesia and/or for post operative pain)
- Anxiety & fear reduction
- Bruxism
- Denture problems
- Gagging control
- Hemophilia patients
- Operative Hypnodontics
- Pediadontics
- Phobias
- Preparation for anesthesia
- Promotion of healing
- Salivation control
- Thumb sucking
- Tongue thrusting
- Vascular control of bleeding
Taken from Hypnotic Induction & Suggestion: 1988
Edited by D. Corydon Hammond, PhD
Published by the American Society of Clinical Hypnosi
Medical Hypnoanalysis Soothes Recurrent Indigestion
Hypnosis appears to calm a stomach plagued by a widespread digestive disorder better than an equivalent amount of supportive therapy or drug treatment, as reported By Alison McCook in (Reuters Health).
Dr. Peter James Whorwell of Wythenshawe Hospital in Manchester, UK, and his colleagues tested the usefulness of 16 weeks of Medical Hypnoanalysis in patients with functional dyspepsia (FD), a form of chronic indigestion that affects up to 25% of the population. Patients' symptoms include bloating, nausea, vomiting and feelings of fullness.
Compared to patients given a stomach acid-suppressor or a placebo plus supportive therapy--during which patients spoke to and were counseled by a clinician--those who received Medical Hypnoanalysis experienced a superior development in their symptoms and quality of life more than a year afterward. Medical Hypnoanalysis patients, on average, scheduled fewer doctors' visits throughout the 40 weeks following treatment than those given other treatments.
In addition, Whorwell and his group report that not any of the patients given Medical Hypnoanalysis required medications throughout the follow-up phase following treatment. In contrast, the majority of those who received supportive therapy or medication for the duration of the study took a mixture of drugs, together with antacids and antidepressants.
These results imply that Medical Hypnoanalysis can be an efficient and inexpensive way to calm indigestion in people with FD. "Medical Hypnoanalysis is highly effective in the long-term management of FD," Whorwell and his team write. "Furthermore, the dramatic reduction in medication use and consultation rate provide major economic advantages."
This is not the first study to reveal the benefits of Medical Hypnoanalysis for an assortment of conditions, as well as those that involve digestion. For example, the authors recently showed that Medical Hypnoanalysis can ease symptoms of a common intestinal disorder known as irritable bowel syndrome.
Other researchers reported that the method can benefit people with asthma and mothers in labor. During the present study, reported in the December issue of Gastroenterology, Whorwell and his group asked a collection of 126 patients with FD to experience Medical Hypnoanalysis, supportive therapy or drug treatment for 16 weeks, then followed them for an extra 40 weeks recording their evolution.
Patients who received Medical Hypnoanalysis and supportive therapy spent the same amount of time with health professionals--twelve 30-minute visits--while those given the acid-suppressor ranitidine (Zantac) attended only four visits.
Whorwell and colleagues found that, while receiving the diverse treatments, Medical Hypnoanalysis patients reported added improvements in symptoms than did those given drugs or supportive therapy. 73% of Medical Hypnoanalysis patients said their symptoms had improved, relative to 34% of those given supportive therapy and 43% of those given drugs. Nine out of 10 patients given medication required other drugs during the follow-up, as did 82% who received supportive therapy. No patient given Medical Hypnoanalysis required added medication during the 40 weeks following treatment.
Dr. William E. Whitehead of the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, wrote an accompanying editorial, said he believed the present findings are "fairly dramatic," and recommended that "it would benefit physicians to incorporate hypnosis much more frequently than it is now."
However, he noted that major obstacles must be conquered before FD patients and others have effortless access to Medical Hypnoanalysis. Few patients are at this time offered hypnosis for their pain, Whitehead said, many get no reimbursement for the service from their insurers. Furthermore, relatively few health professionals are trained to administer Medical Hypnoanalysis, he and his colleague, Dr. Olafur S. Palsson write.
Nevertheless Whitehead noted that he believed patients with other types of gastrointestinal problems might benefit from Medical Hypnoanalysis,--such as people suffering from rectal pain, milder forms of indigestion, and nausea or vomiting. "We think it can help people with milder forms of functional dyspepsia," he said. SOURCE:
Gastroenterology 2002;123:1778-1785, 2132-2147.
Hypnosis in addition to regular medical treatment has several advantages in pain management. First, it requires no drugs. In fact, studies show that patients with chronic diseases who practice hypnosis (as taught by a hypnotherapist trained in pain management) required fewer analgesics to maintain pain relief. They also suffered less anxiety about their pain and greater comfort during medical procedures. In a study at at Case Western Reserve University Medical Hypnoanalysis was found useful as a pain management tool following such surgical procedures as hysterectomy, coronary by-pass, hemorrhoid surgery and abdominal surgery.
The test patients also had shorter hospital stays less nausea and more rapid healing. Twelve studies have proven Medical Hypnoanalysis to be the preferred treatment for reducing migraine headache attacks. With such impressive results, why do we reach for the aspirin bottle instead of the natural, relaxing, healing capacities within our own minds? The answer is obvious. Most of us don't know how to practice self-hypnosis. Many of us are not aware of its proven successfulness.
Still others of us hold outdated, fearful notions that hypnosis involves "mind control" or loss of our own conscious will to another person. That's unfortunate because hypnosis - or Medical Hypnoanalysis as it is often termed today to indicate the growing acceptance of its therapeutic value - is a resource that should be explored by all who suffer pain.
It provides an ongoing method of pain management that, once established, can be monitored and adjusted by the patient him or herself. It returns a sense of control back to the patient and it has no side effects - except an overall increased relaxation
Applications in Medicine
Compiled by William C. Wester, II, Ed.D.
- Addictions & Alcoholism
- Allergies
- Amenorrhea (absence or abnormal stoppage of the menses)
- Anesthesia for Surgery
- Arthritis/Rheumatism
- Bladder irritability
- Bleeding control
- Blushing
- Burns
- Cancer, Cardiac Neurosis
- Cardiovascular disorders
- Cerebral palsy (persisting qualitative motor disorder appearing before the age of three due to nonprogressive damage to the brain)
- Condyloma (an elevated lesion of the skin)
- Coronary disorders (psychosomatic)
- Coughing
- Crohn's Disease
- Cyst copy (assisting in the visual examination of the urinary tract with a cyst scope)
- Diabetes
- Dietary problems
- Eczema
- Ego-strengthening
- Encopresis (incontinence of feces not due to organic defect or illness)
- Enuresis (Bed wetting)
- Epilepsy
- Genitourinary disorders
- Geriatrics (problems of the elderly)
- Headaches
- Hemorrhage (Bleeding)
- Hemodialysis (removal of certain elements from the blood by virtue of difference in rates of their diffusion through a semi permeable, membrane while being circulated outside the body)
- Herpes
- Hiccoughs
- Hyperemesis gravidarum (the pernicious vomiting of pregnancy),
- Hypertension (persistently high arterial blood pressure),
- Hyperthyroidism
- Hyperventilafcion (abnormally increased pulmonary ventilation, resulting in reduction of carbon dioxide tension, which if prolonged, may lead to alkalosis)
- Itchyosis (any of several generalized skin disorders marked by dryness, roughness, and scaliness)
- Infections
- Infertility
- Laryngology (Problems having to do with the throat, pharynx, larynx, nasopharynx, and tracheobronchial tree)
- Mammary augmentation
- Menstrual disorders
- Metabolic diseases
- Migraine headache
- Nausea
- Neurodermatitis (itching presumed to be due to emotional causes)
- Nutrition
- Obesity
- Obstetrics & high-risk pregnancy
- Oncology
- Orthopedics
- Otology (dealing with the ear)
- Pain
- Phantom Limb Pain
- Psychosomatic Gastrointestinal Disorder
- Raynaud's Disease
- Rhinology (diseases of the nose)
- Sleep disorders
- Smoking
- Surgical preparation
- Tinnitus (a noise in the ears)
- Torticollis (wryneck; a contracted state of the cervical muscles, with torsion of the neck)
- Uterine bleeding
- Vasectomy
- Vomiting
- Warts
- Wound healing
Reference Links
Hypnosis: A safe and potent pain reliever
Physical pain may begin in the mind, study shows
Hypnosis shown to substantially help cancer patients tolerate treatments, side effects