JEAN D. STOUFFER, CHt, HBCE
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Hypnosis A safe and potent pain reliever

 
[Excerpted]:  Discomfort during certain medical procedures can be reduced with the help of hypnosis. In a study in Wales of 80 cancer patients ages 6 to 16, for example, those who received hypnosis from a therapist reported less pain and anxiety, and demonstrated less
distress than those who received only standard care when undergoing painful spinal cord punctures. A review of nine earlier studies, published in the June 2004 Journal of Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics, concluded that there was enough positive evidence to warrant larger-scale investigations of the use of hypnosis in children with cancer.
 
Hypnosis may also relieve procedure-related pain in adults. A small trial of patients undergoing angioplasty, an invasive heart procedure, found that the sedative effect of hypnosis was slightly better than that of the drug diazepam (Valium). Clinical trials have also found that hypnosis can help adult patients control other forms of pain, relieve gastrointestinal problems, stimulate weight loss, clear up skin problems, and accelerate the healing of bone fractures and surgical wounds. And the newest guidelines from the U.S. Headache Consortium, a coalition of seven medical groups, include hypnosis
among the non-drug measures most proven to help prevent headaches.

NOT FOR EVERYONE
 
Hypnosis doesn't work for everything or everyone. Though often promoted as a smoking-cessation tool, it was not found to be very helpful for would-be quitters in a review of 59 studies published in 2000.
 
The technique may work best for people who are imaginative, trusting, able to focus their attention, and willing to do the follow-up exercises that often accompany it - including listening to self-hypnosis tapes at home.  Side effects are rare, chiefly headache or lingering relaxation, and can be worked on in subsequent visits.

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Hypnosis and Broken Bones
 
If you broke your ankle, would you think of hypnosis as a possible treatment?  Most people would not, but according to a study published in Alternative Therapies in Health and Medicine (March, 1999), using hypnotherapy in treating a broken ankle made a significant difference.
 
Those patients who had hypnotherapy (in the form of individual sessions and audio tapes) found that their bones healed more quickly than those of the patients in the control group.  In addition, they felt less pain, used fewer painkillers, and were able to walk farther and
bear more weight on their injured legs than those who used crutches, casts, and painkillers.
 
The study's author is Carol Ginandes, Ph.D., who is a clinical psychology instructor at Harvard Medical School.  According to her data, the hypnosis group had greater mobility at 9 weeks.  "The x-rays support this," she explained.  "At 6 weeks, the fractures appeared to be almost 9 weeks healed."
 
Another benefit exists in using hypnosis:  helping patients deal with the emotional issues as well as their physical symptoms. Frequently, when a person has broken a bone and is on crutches, that person may feel depressed or even angry, and hypnosis can help with such
symptoms.
 
While the sample size of the study was small (12 patients), the data does indeed suggest that hypnosis may be capable of enhancing both anatomical and functional healing.  Clearly, further investigation of hypnosis to accelerate healing is warranted.
 
 
 
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