When most people think about hypnosis, it is usually Derren Brown or the hypnotist character from the Little Britain TV show that spring to mind, complete with the immortal words, “look into my eyes…”

NCH registered Cognitive Hypnotherapists, Rob & Heidi Woodgate of Gravesend based practice North Kent Hypnotherapy say that neither gives a true picture of hypnotherapy, and think that these popular misconceptions of hypnosis might actually stop people seeking help for issues that could otherwise be overcome in just a few sessions.

Rob says, “We think it’s important to bring to the public’s awareness the difference between hypnosis and hypnotherapy. It has nothing to do with ‘looking into your eyes’ and more to do with looking into your behaviour.

Hypnotherapy is most often used for psychological problems like stress, anxiety, lack of confidence and low self esteem, and can also help with weight loss, phobias and obsessions. It has also been scientifically proven to be beneficial in smoking cessation and irritable bowel syndrome (IBS).

Heidi says, “Over a decade of scientific research has shown hypnotherapy to be an effective choice for alleviating the symptoms of irritable bowel syndrome. Hypnotherapy routinely produces positive results in over 80% of the people who use it.”

National Hypnotherapy Week is sponsored by The National Council for Hypnotherapy, who maintains the highest standards among its members and is regarded as the premier professional body in hypnotherapy within the United Kingdom.

Trying to cut out all thoughts of your favourite, fattening food may actually make you eat more, claims research.
Women who tried to stop thinking about chocolate ate 50% more than those who were encouraged to talk about their cravings.

This "rebound" effect could also apply to smokers, say the Hertfordshire University authors in Appetite journal.

Experts at Weight Watchers said a "varied diet" was the best way to lose weight.

Dr James Erskine, who led the project, recruited 134 students who were asked to either suppress all thoughts about chocolate, or talk about how much they liked it.

They were then asked to choose from two brands of chocolate, believing that it was this choice that was being recorded by the researchers.

However, the quantity they ate was recorded instead.

Women who had tried to suppress their cravings ate on average eight chocolates, while those who had talked freely about it ate five.

Men did not show the same effect, with the group told to talk about the snack eating more.
(BBC News, 22nd October 2007)

Wednesday 14th March is National No Smoking Day, which this year holds a special significance to many smokers faced with the reality of a total ban on smoking in public places coming later this year.

The Smoking in the Workplace Ban, which has already been implemented in Ireland, Scotland and Wales, comes into force in England on 1st July 2007. From that date all offices, factories, shops, pubs, bars, restaurants, clubs, public transport and work vehicles that are used by more than one person will be required to be smoke free by Law.

The good news is, if you really want to stop smoking, hypnotherapy could make it up to five times easier for you to quit!

Research comparing many different studies of hypnotherapy has shown that on average, smokers are over five times more likely to break the habit with hypnosis than by willpower alone. Hypnotherapy in general is also proven to be more than twice as effective compared with nicotine gum.

To mark National No Smoking Day, and help those smokers who want to beat the ban and quit before July, we are launching our new '5 Top Tips to Quit Smoking' programme which can help you quit all by yourself! Why are we doing this? Because although we are specialists in helping people to stop smoking, there are only so many people we can physically see in a day, and many smokers who are just too far away to come see us.

For those who prefer one-to-one help, find out how we could help you stop smoking in just 2 hours. Or if you are out of our area - why not visit your local ASDA supermarket on National No Smoking Day, as Hypnotherapists registered by the National Council for Hypnotherapy (NCH) will be on hand in most stores to help and advise you.

As NCH registered Hypnotherapists, we will be at ASDA Gravesend from 10am to 6pm on Wednesday 14th March (National No Smoking Day), so if you have any questions on how we can help you to be 'smoke free' or 'get unhooked', please feel free to come down and see us.

A review of non-drug pain relief therapies suggests that hypnosis and acupuncture may ease labour pain.

"There is too little research to assess how effective many complementary therapies will be with pain management in labour," said lead study author Caroline Smith. Further research is needed, she said, but "the results concerning acupuncture and hypnosis are encouraging."

In addition to hypnosis and acupuncture, the review examined the effects of massage, relaxation, aromatherapy, acupressure and white noise on pain relief. But the review did not turn up enough evidence to determine if any of the other therapies bring women significant comfort.

The meta-analysis compiles data from 14 studies that included more than 1,400 women. Five studies examined hypnosis, while three studies gauged acupuncture?s effect on pain relief.

"More robust research and more research trials have been undertaken for these two therapies versus the other treatments," said Smith, a research fellow at the University of Adelaide in Australia.

The review appears in the current issue of The Cochrane Library, a publication of The Cochrane Collaboration, an international organization that evaluates research in all aspects of health care. Systematic reviews draw evidence-based conclusions about medical practice after considering both the content and quality of existing trials on a topic.

Hypnosis reduces the need for drug pain relief in labour, lessens the need for medications that augment labour and increases the number of spontaneous vaginal births, according to the available data. The women treated with acupuncture reported more satisfaction with their labor pain management versus the mothers who did not receive that treatment, the review found.

(Newswise - 16th October 2006)

If you would like to learn self-hypnosis for childbirth, why not join one of our antenatal classes

Hypnotherapy could offer relief from severe chest pain that is not caused by a heart condition. Researchers found 80 per cent reported 'significant' relief from pain after undergoing the treatment.

About a third of people who have chest pain have no identifiable cause for why they suffer. Researchers believe that acid reflux or psychological problems could be to blame - and young women seem to be more prone to getting the pain.

(Daily Mail - 20th April 2006)

As we highlighted in a previous article, it pays to be an optimist. Take a look at the following letters:

HAPPINESSISNOWHERE

What did you read? Was it "Happiness is nowhere" or "Happiness is now here"?

According to an article in New Scientist, smokers with lung cancer who continue smoking may prevent the chemotherapy treament from working. Nor are patches the answer, as it turns out it is nicotine that causes the effect.

Srikumar Chellappan and colleagues at the H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center & Research Institute in Tampa, Florida, looked at how nicotine affected the performance of three anti-cancer drugs - gemcitabine, cisplatin and Taxol.

Nicotine protected the cancer cells by activating two genes called XIAP and survivin, which prevent the cell suicide normally induced by the drugs (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0509313103).

"Patients who continue to smoke have worse survival profiles than those who quit before treatment," says Chellappan. "Of course they have to be treated, but they should be undergoing smoking cessation programmes."

(Issue 2546 of New Scientist magazine, 08 April 2006, page 20)

Hypnotherapy is a safe, natural way to quit smoking, and is up to three times more effective than Nicotine Replacement Therapy (patches, gum etc). Please contact us for more information on how we can help you to quit.

Hypnotherapy is a drug-free, natural therapy with over 150 years of scientific research behind it.

Ironically, the first scientific experiments on hypnosis were performed by sceptical physician, James Braid, in an attempt to understand or debunk hypnosis, which was then the preserve of entertainers and known as 'Animal Magnetism'. His work turned hypnosis into a discipline accepted by the medical community and upheld by scientific experiment, and earnt him the title 'Father of Hypnosis'.

However, in the UK at present, it is almost impossible to obtain Hypnotherapy on the NHS, and there are only a handful of medical health insurance companies offering rebates or incentives for those wanting Hypnotherapy. It appears to be a similar story in the USA, as noted in a recent article in the New York Hospital Newspaper.

And yet, in the long term, Hypnotherapy could save the Government and private health insurers millions of pounds each year... as well as vastly improving the outlook for many patients (and stressed or overworked staff) by complementing medical approaches.

New research from the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine suggests that omega-3s can have a significant impact on mental health.

They found that people with low blood levels of omega-3 fatty acids were more likely to report mild to moderate symptoms of depression, more moodiness, and more impulsivity, which in extreme forms manifests as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Conversely, people with higher blood levels of omega-3s were found to be more agreeable, based on the results of standardized tests.

"Clearly, larger studies are needed to understand the relationship between behavior and these fats, but by following the American Health Association recommendations to eat two fish meals a week people may be protecting both their hearts and their mental health", says researcher Sarah Conkin, PhD, of the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine.

(Web MD - 3rd March 2006)

For many smokers wanting to kick the habit, National Stop Smoking Day on 8th March comes as a mixed blessing. For some, it acts as an encouragement to continue the good work they started at New Year; for others, it is a painful reminder that the "season of good willpower" is well and truly over.

Many smokers will be contemplating quitting now that the pressure of New Years is over, whilst others are vowing to stay at home and smoke twice as many cigarettes on the 8th as a mark of defiance...

The Gravesham and surrounding boroughs are organising a number of events to help smokers - according to Gravesend News Shopper, Carbon Monoxide tests and stop smoking advice will be available to the general public at Dartford Priory Centre from 10am - 4pm, all day at Asda in London Road Swanley, and at lunchtime for students and staff at North West Kent College's Dartford campus.

Gravesend's Town Crier will be telling (or is that yelling?) people about stop smoking stands at the Thames Way Asda store, The Grand on the High Street, and the North West Kent College's Gravesend campus.

As we mentioned in our previous blog, Hypnotherapy is three times more effective than patches or gum, so we want to do our bit to help local smokers quit this Stop Smoking Day.

According to Scotland Today, there are calls for hypnosis treatment for smokers to be funded by the NHS ahead of the public smoking ban.

According to research into the most effective methods to stop smoking, hypnosis was found to be three times more effective than Nicotine Replacement Therapy (i.e nicotine patches or gum). A New Scientist article (vol 136 issue 1845 page 6) confirms:

"To find the most effective method to stop smoking Frank Schmidt and research student Chockalingham Viswesvaran from the university of Iowa used a meta-analysis, utilising the results of more than 600 studies totalling nearly 72,000 people.

The results, which were published in the Journal of Applied Psychology and included 48 studies of hypnosis covering 6000 smokers, clearly showed that hypnosis, to use the same terminology as the quit counsellor, was three times more effective than NRT."

Smokers find it so hard to quit because their unconscious mind has a faulty program which believes smoking is serving a positive purpose. And because the unconscious mind is responsible for keeping you safe, it has many ways to override your conscious will. The combination of hypnosis and NLP is so sucessful in helping people to quit smoking because it effectively re-programs your unconscious mind to work with you to achieve your goal.

If you are trying to make that New Years resolution stick, but are finding the 'season of good will-power' is coming to an end, why not contact us to find out how we can help you stop smoking today.

With Christmas fast approaching, many smokers are mentally gearing themselves up to quit - once the festivities have finished, of course - determined to make sure that this year the New Years resolution will stick.

Certainly, as hypnotherapists, we see a marked increase in the numbers of clients wanting help to stop smoking around the end of February, once the "season-of-good-will-power" has ended.

New research from the American Society of Anesthesiologists indicates that Hypnosis could help soothe anxiety before surgery. They found that after one hypnosis session, patients were less anxious about their operation than they had been just half an hour before.

Medics at The University of Manchester have discovered a way to treat Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) using hypnotherapy.... With a success-rate of about 70% Professor Whorwell believes that, although labour-intensive, hypnotherapy could be an extremely effective treatment for the condition; and a less expensive alternative to new, costly drugs coming onto the market.
The University of Manchester (27th September 2005)