Cognitive Hypnotherapy, Counselling & Life Coaching

A new report from the department of gastroenterology at King’s College Hospital, London, published in the British Medical Journal, highlights the fact that Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) is a combination of "psychological" as well as physical factors, and that psychological therapies, including hypnotherapy, can be an alternative to medication.

Excerpt from the Daily Mail:

Hypnotherapy could be the latest weapon in the fight against irritable bowel syndrome, providing benefits that last up to five years.
Conventional treatment – including antidepressant and painkilling drugs – is ineffective, according to a report which says doctors should consider offering psychological therapies.
The report says the condition may have a partial "psychological basis".
...
Small trials have found hypnotherapy was successful as a means of managing symptoms, says a report published today in the British Medical Journal.
It found patients with IBS are more likely to suffer from depression and "abnormal" behaviour patterns including anxiety.
They also display somatisation – the conversion of emotional, mental, or psychosocial problems into physical complaints.

Excerpt from BBC News:

Hypnotherapy could help people with severe irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), researchers say.
Doctors should consider using this and other "psychological" treatments such as antidepressants to help sufferers, King's College London experts say in the British Medical Journal.
However, a shortage of therapists could hinder this, they add.
Experts said there was growing evidence that IBS cases have psychological as well as biological elements.
...
Dr Nick Read, a psychologist and adviser to the IBS Network, said he felt that the majority of IBS patients had a psychologists element to their condition.
He said: "There's now a lot of evidence that psychological therapies can be effective, but a lot of doctors remain sceptical, and carry on treating with drugs which have side-effects, and which basically don't work.
"I work with patients with IBS trying to understand what, for each patient, lies behind the illness."

At North Kent Hypnotherapy we specialise in helping people with IBS by treating the mental aspects contributing to their condition, and it is great for us to see the results we see every day being officially validated by scientists.

Read more about our approach to IBS here.

It seems hypnosis has been nearly everywhere over the past few centuries: onstage with entertainers swinging fat, gold watches; on couches with reclining psychoanalysis patients; in movies, books, and even children's cartoons. But the one gig hypnosis couldn't get was the scientific laboratory.

Until now.

The long-controversial practice of inducing a trancelike state through suggestion is getting a modern makeover by scientists armed with the latest neuroimaging tools and techniques. These researchers are beginning to offer evidence that, neurologically at least, hypnosis is entirely real.

"It makes sense that we are using modern tools of neuroscience research to understand what is a fascinating phenomenon," said David Spiegel, a psychiatrist at Stanford University. "It's good for hypnosis, and it's good for neuroscience."

Read the full article - (Seed Magazine - 20th October 2006)

According to research published in Science (Vol 314, p435), women led to believe that genetic factors cause female under-achievement subsequently perform much worse in maths tests than those told that social factors (such as teacher attention being given to boys) are responsible.

The two studies, undertaken by Steven Heine and Ilan Dar-Nimrod at the University of British Columbia, Canada, found that reminding a person that they belong to a stereotype causes them to behave accordingly - a process known as 'Stereotype Threat'. "As our research demonstrates, just hearing about that sort of idea is enough to negatively affect women's performance, and reproduce the stereotype that is out there," says Heine.

In the studies, women were given a maths test, then asked to read an article, and finally given a second maths test. There were four articles in total, making the following claims:

• No Gender Difference - an extensive meta-analysis across multiple countries revealed that males and females performed equally well on math tests.
  
• Standard Stereotype - the role of the female body in the arts was discussed with relation to women?s identity.
  
• Genetic Sterotype - males perform 5 percentile points better on math tests than women because of some genes that are found on the Y chromosome.
  
• Experiential Sterotype - males perform 5 percentile points better on math tests than women because teachers biased their expectations during early school formative years.

The impact on subsequent mathematics tests was pronounced, with those reading the Genetic Stereotype getting about half as many correct answers as those who read the Experiential Stereotype.

"Experiential accounts make people think they can overcome those experiences," says Heine. "Whereas the 'genes' group think of genes as the core of themselves, so ask: how can I overcome this, when this is part of who I am?"

Both Genetic and Standard Stereotype performed worse than those told there were no gender differences, highlighting the self-fulfilling nature of such negative stereotypical beliefs.

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

Two new studies presented at an international meeting of doctors, researchers, and academics in Los Angeles, as part of Digestive Disease Week 2006, showed hypnosis could help IBS patients who hadn't been helped by other treatments.

The hypnosis researchers included Magnus Simren, MD, of Sahlgrenska University Hospital's internal medicine department in Gothenburg, Sweden. Simren's hypnosis studies had a combined total of 135 IBS patients. The patients' average age was 41; most were women.

In both studies, participants were split into two groups. One group got 12 weekly one-hour hypnotherapy sessions focused on gut-related problems. For comparison, the second group didn't get hypnosis. In one study, the comparison group got 12 weeks of attention from doctors and nutritionists. In the other study, the comparison group got no special care.

The patients rated their gastrointestinal symptoms, quality of life, and depression at the study's start, immediately after 12 weeks of treatment, and again six and 12 months later.

"The hypnotherapy groups improved significantly in both studies regarding gastrointestinal symptoms and the control groups did not," Simren says.

Significant improvement (meaning improvement not likely due to chance) in gastrointestinal symptoms was seen in 52% of the hypnotherapy groups, compared with 32% of the comparison groups.

The improvements were mainly seen with symptoms of abdominal pain, distension, and bloating, rather than for bowel habits, the study shows.

(Web MD - 24th May 2006)

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)

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.

Scientists from Seattle Pacific University, and the University of Washington have disproved the old adage that the lower your expectations, the happier you should be following success and the less disappointed you should be following failure.

In fact, the opposite turned out to be true. Students were asked how well they expected to do in word association tests, and then questioned again afterwards. Of those who did poorly in the tests, those who expected to do well, but in fact performed poorly, felt better about themselves than those who expected to do poorly and were proved right...

The two tests performed in the study concluded that there was little evidence to support the old adage, and found that those people who thought they would do well tended to be more positive thinking in general.

(Cognition & Emotion, Volume 20, Number 1/January 2006)

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)

According to an article published in the New Scientist, complex decisions are best left to your unconscious mind to work out, and over-thinking a problem could lead to expensive mistakes.

The research suggests the conscious mind should be trusted only with simple decisions, such as selecting a brand of oven glove. Sleeping on a big decision, such as buying a car or house, is more likely to produce a result people remain happy with than consciously weighing up the pros and cons of the problem, the researchers say.

Thinking hard about a complex decision that rests on multiple factors appears to bamboozle the conscious mind so that people only consider a subset of information, which they weight inappropriately, resulting in an unsatisfactory choice. In contrast, the unconscious mind appears able to ponder over all the information and produce a decision that most people remain satisfied with.

(New Scientist - 16th February 2006)

The idea that hypnosis alone can be powerful enough to block out the pain of surgery may seem far-fetched. But research has provided clear indications that hypnosis can alter the brain?s perception of pain.
(The Times - 10th September 2005)

Swiss researchers say people can reduce their allergy symptoms by up to one-third just by thinking about a place that is free of allergens. The researchers at University Hospital in Basel, Switzerland, based their conclusions on 40 people they recruited and trained to hypnotize themselves for two years.
(United Press International - 6th July 2005)

Researchers found that volunteers under hypnosis experienced significant pain reduction in response to painful heat. They also had a distinctly different pattern of brain activity compared to when they were not hypnotized and experienced the painful heat. The changes in brain activity suggest that hypnosis somehow blocks the pain signal from getting to the parts of the brain that perceive pain.
(University of Iowa - 14th March 2005)

Childhood cancer patients suffer less pain when placed under hypnosis, scientists have claimed. Children who had been hypnotised in trials reported they had less pain from medical procedures as well as cancer-related pain.
(BBC News - 10th September 2004)

Hypnosis is more than just a party trick, it measurably changes how the brain works, says a UK researcher.
(New Scientist - 10th September 2004)