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Further Information about Hypnotherapy
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Are You Ready To Use The Power Of Hypnosis
To Make Life Give You What You Want?
Take a look at these statistics…
Psychoanalysis: 38% Recovery after 600 Sessions
Behavior Therapy: 72% Recovery after 22 Sessions
Hypnotherapy: 93% Recovery after Only 6 Sessions
RECENT ARTICLE
My husband, Richard, smoked cigarettes for 50 years, having failed several attempts to quit on his own. When a friend told him in August 1994 that hypnosis had enabled her to quit, he decided to give it a try.
“It didn’t work; I wasn’t hypnotized,” he declared after his one and only session. But it did work; since that day, he has not taken one puff of a cigarette.
Gloria Kanter of Boynton Beach, Fla., thought her attempt in 1985 to use hypnosis to overcome her fear of flying had failed. “When the therapist brought me out, I said it didn’t work,” she recalled in an interview. “I told her, ‘I heard everything you said.’ ”
Nonetheless, the next time she and her husband headed for the airport, she was not drenched in sweat and paralyzed with fear. “I was just fine,” she said, “and I’ve been fine ever since.”
Like many others whose knowledge of hypnotism comes from movies and stage shows, my husband and Mrs. Kanter misunderstood what hypnosis is all about. While in a hypnotic trance, you are neither unconscious nor asleep, but rather in a deeply relaxed state that renders the mind highly focused and ready to accept suggestions to help you accomplish your goals.
Hypnosis has been mired in controversy for two centuries, and its benefits are often overstated. It does not help everyone who wants to quit smoking, for example; then again, neither do other kinds of treatments.
And the patient’s attitude is critical. In the words of Brian Alman, a psychologist who practices hypnosis in San Diego, “The power of hypnosis actually resides in the patient and not in the doctor.”
Roberta Temes, a clinical hypnotist in Scotch Plains, N.J., insists that hypnosis cannot make people do anything they don’t want to do. Hypnosis can succeed only in helping people make changes they desire, she said in an interview.
In her book “The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Hypnosis,” Dr. Temes points out that success in achieving your goal is the best proof that you were really hypnotized. She also suggests a second or third session if you didn’t quite reach your goal after the first try.
What Hypnosis Can Do
In effect, hypnosis is the epitome of mind-body medicine. It can enable the mind to tell the body how to react, and modify the messages that the body sends to the mind. It has been used to counter the nausea of pregnancy and chemotherapy; dental and test-taking anxiety; pain associated with surgery, root canal treatment and childbirth; fear of flying and public speaking; compulsive hair-pulling; and intractable hiccups, among many other troublesome health problems.
Writing in The Permanente Journal in 2001, Dr. Alman said that “useful potential” for benefiting from hypnosis “exists within each patient.” “The goal of modern medical hypnosis,” he said, “is to help patients use this unconscious potential.”
Dr. Alman described a 65-year-old concentration camp survivor who repeatedly choked when she tried to swallow, though examinations of her esophagus revealed no obstruction. After three hypnotherapy sessions, her problem was solved. “I was liberated from my esophagus,” the patient said.
Ellen Fineman, a physical therapist in Portland, Ore., had had five surgeries to repair a retina that kept detaching. Hoping that a sixth attempt would hold, she used a hypnosis tape prepared by Dr. Temes for patients undergoing surgery.
The hypnosis tape “was very calming and reassuring,” Ms. Fineman said in an interview. “It told me that I would be in the hands of professionals who would take good care of me and that I’d have minimal swelling,” she said. “This time the surgery went superbly — no inflammation, no swelling and no more detachment. The surgeon was amazed and asked what I had done differently this time.”
While not everyone is easily hypnotized, nearly everyone can slip into a therapeutic trance, Dr. Temes maintains. Another of her patients, Dr. Susan Clarvit, a New York psychiatrist, thought she could not be hypnotized — she was too scientific, too rational a person, she said.
“But I was desperate,” Dr. Clarvit said in an interview. “I was pregnant with my second child and too nauseated to be alive. Dr. Temes asked me what I held most often, and I said a pen. She hypnotized me so that when I held a pen I had an overall feeling of wellness. I held a pen all the time, even while driving, and didn’t feel nauseated.”
Under hypnosis, Dr. Clarvit was given a posthypnotic suggestion that linked holding a pen to feeling well. Such suggestions enable people to practice a new, desired behavior after being brought out of the trance.
Someone trying to overcome snacking on sweets might be told, “When you are hungry, you will eat vegetables.” The suggestion to a smoker might be “you will drink water when you want a cigarette,” and someone terrified of public speaking might be told “you will do deep breathing when you feel scared.”
Many patients are also taught to practice self-hypnosis to reinforce the new behavior. Dr. Karen N. Olness, a professor of pediatrics at Case Western Reserve University who is the president of the International Society of Hypnosis, said that “self-hypnosis training in children is an effective and practical strategy to prevent migraine episodes.”
Indirect Benefits
Sometimes patients with well-established illnesses can benefit indirectly from hypnosis. Dr. Alman told of a woman with multiple sclerosis who was treated with hypnosis for depression that had failed to improve with antidepressants. Almost immediately, he reported, not only did the woman’s depression ease, but her gait and speech improved markedly.
He explained that for many patients the medical problem is so complex that specific directions and commands may be ineffective. The benefit from hypnosis may rely more on unleashing unconscious processes within the patient. He suggested that there exists “a wealth of material in the patient’s unconscious that can be used in healing” but lamented the fact that although medical hypnosis can often produce rapid change even in difficult cases, it is “underutilized as a therapeutic tool.”
As with any other profession, some hypnotherapists are more talented than others. Dr. Temes suggests that word of mouth may be the best way to find someone practiced in hypnosis for the kind of problem you’re trying to solve.
Minding the Pain
Mind-body therapy combats chronic pain
By Bob Stott
Anthony squints at himself in the bathroom mirror, the sensation of a knife stabbing sideways through his lower back. The empty bottle of Oxycontin stands on the lip of the sink, offering none of its usual assistance. He had hoped the last Vicodin after dinner would have held him over until morning when he could finally refill his prescription.
However, the piercing pain at 2:38 a.m. has Anthony hobbling out of bed and scouring the medicine cabinet for a “quick fix” – the last five pills from Timmy’s bottle of children’s aspirin.
For Anthony, life after the car accident has revolved around one thing: a rotary of painkillers taking up residence on his beside table, in his glove compartment, even at his desk at work. Initially, he tried to tough it out. He had seen what opiates had done to his father after his construction-site accident, and Anthony had no intention of putting his family through the midnight sweats, vomiting, and mood swings that came from eventual withdrawal.
However, when each morning began with crippling back pain that kept him from returning to work, Anthony felt he had no choice but to give into the medication.
Contrary to popular belief, pain can kill. Physical pain produces high levels of hormones, which stress the heart and lungs. Intense pain can also cause blood pressure to spike erratically, creating a higher susceptibility for heart attacks and strokes.
The body’s various chemical reactions to counteract pain can also consume so much of the body’s energy that the entire immune system begins to degrade, allowing other illnesses and bacterial infections to take residence. Severe, chronic pain sometimes can lead to depression in patients, and in extreme cases, suicide.
Many healthcare professionals prescribe a number of opioids – OxyCotin, Dilaudid, Vicodin, and Percocet – to dull a patient’s pain until a definitive cure can be found. However, without a cure in sight, many patients simply continue to depend on painkillers, which may diminish their available working hours or prevent them from returning to work altogether.
Seeking to overcome both chronic pain and drug dependency, many patients are turning to branches of complementary therapy in order to return normalcy to their lives.
A Mindful Approach
For many individuals, pain is a purely physical disorder – a synaptic response residing completely within the body and, therefore, completely out of a patient’s control. However, if the classic adage of “mind over matter” has any validity, pain is entirely within a person’s sphere of control.
In the face of chronic pain, medicine has lapsed in its ability to identify and neutralize the mechanisms behind an epidemic affecting nearly 130 million Americans; many professionals are beginning to question how interrelated the physical expression and mental perception of pain has become.
Following this thinking, a wide array of mind-body therapies has arisen to tackle chronic pain – what some healthcare professionals have labeled an “untreatable” disorder.
According to Ellen Adelman, PhD, a Philadelphia-based psychologist and founder/director of The Sage Healing Institute, mind-body therapy “is a systematic psychological approach that addresses both emotional and physiological healing. [It] combines mindfulness meditation techniques, mindful movement techniques, healing meditation practices, and Western and Buddhist psychology. It is based on the premise that there is a therapeutically accessible interface between mind and body.”
Chronic pain is serious problem, even more so for people who cannot allow their bodily senses to become dulled by painkillers if they are to continue to work. Professional athletes, office workers, truck drivers, accountants, high-steel construction workers. and those operating heavy machinery are just some professionals who would would need a firm grasp on their cognitive abilities.
Mind-body approaches to pain include a gamut of therapies, such as cognitive behavioral therapies, mindfulness-based approaches, thought field therapy, Reiki, guided imagery, psycho-dynamic approaches, and relaxation therapies.
“Researchers are now viewing chronic pain as a disease in and of itself,” says Michael Ellner, DD, CHT, MSH, a certified medical hypnotist. “Chronic pain is not only unnecessary, it can seriously undermine ones health, and even reduce the effectiveness of rehabilitation and/or other therapies. There are many mind-body approaches that are very effective for helping people learn how to take the suffering out of their painful conditions or experiences.”
Working Toward Acceptance
Like other complementary rehabilitation techniques, mind-body therapy has been slow to reach acceptance among more traditional healthcare professionals. However, the lack of suitable alternatives – including the dead-end solution of painkillers – has promoted an open-minded perspective in those chronic pain sufferers who refuse to settle for merely ignoring or muffling their symptoms.
“From the medical perspective, [healthcare professionals] see increasing interest in the field of ‘psycho-neuroimmunology’, the impact of the mind on the functioning of the sympathetic nervous system, and the effects of stress on the body’s ability to cope with disease,” says Adelman.
“Significant decreases in psychiatric symptoms, such as anxiety and depression, has [been shown]. In general, both patients and normal subjects have demonstrated significant benefits through increased quality of life, decrease in pain symptoms, and increase in sleep quality”
Among the individuals who cannot afford to settle into painkiller dependency are many of today’s athletes, several of whom have acquired chronic pain symptoms either during sporting events or during the course of their training.
Working with this particular demographic is Ming Chew, LPT, a Manhattan, N.Y.-based physical therapist and soft-tissue specialist who manages pain by stretching and strengthening the body’s connective tissues called the fascia.
With a combination of an anti-inflammation diet, which includes fish oils, glucosamine sulfate, and filtered water, – plus spinal decompression stretches, and self-therapy techniques – Chew has worked with various professional athletes to reduce pain without the use of painkillers.
“I get many queries all the time from therapists that want to know about my techniques,” says Chew. “Usually when they hear how fast my patients [recuperate], it makes them very curious. Others who are not aware of other techniques – other than the ones taught in physical therapy school – may be a bit more skeptical, but that usually doesn’t last long once I explain to them the theory behind it.”
Battling Pill Dependency
One of the most difficult aspects of mind-body rehabilitation that therapists are confronted with is the patient’s dependency on opiods and other painkillers. Some patients are so addicted to pain pills that they believe they simply cannot survive without them.
Also, many patients in severe pain have already put their hopes in previous practitioners experimenting with ultrasound techniques or exploratory surgery, only to be disappointed again and again. Eventually, several of these patients develop the demeanor of helpless victims or evolve into skeptical and help-rejecting nit-pickers.
“These patients are usually very difficult to treat,” says Chew. “They have extremely high levels of pain. Their medications already mask the pain to some degree, so the actual amount of pain is greater. I usually ask the patient to go back to the [physician] to see if it is appropriate to be weaned off, or to get off the medications entirely."
Chew continues, "Medications have many serious side-effects so it’s usually a good idea to consider reducing [them] with the approval of [their physician]. Also, medications make it difficult to assess the true level of pain and damage, and – more importantly – it clouds my ability to assess how the therapy is going.”
A survey in a recent issue of The Journal of Pain reports that there are only an estimated six board-certified pain specialists per 100,000 chronic pain sufferers in the United States. Pain practitioners are scarce in rural areas, and not all pain specialists treat chronic pain conditions, creating a sizeable lapse in healthcare.
Due to this, many primary-care physicians are forced to take on the additional burden of managing patients with chronic pain, usually turning to painkillers or experimental invasive treatments due to a lack of alternatives.
“Most of my pain clients have had chronic pain for more than a year before they find their way to me,” says Ellner. “The unwanted and limited benefits of the drugs are why these people are seeking relief. Millions of people are running around desperate for pain relief, but even though they are going through the motions, they often have given up hope that they will find it.”
Ellner continues, “I am able to help these clients help themselves as soon as they understand that their suffering is caused by the way they are reacting to a signal. As they begin to understand [this], they discover that they are able to change the way they react to the signal, which takes the ‘suffering’ out of the painful signals and really improves their quality of life.”
— Bob Stott is a staff writer for Therapy Times. Questions and comments can be directed to bstott@therapytimes.com.
Enhance Healing Through Guided Imagery
Aristotle and Hippocrates believed in the power of images in the brain to enliven the heart and body. Today, research shows they were right. Guided imagery is helping patients use the full range of the body’s healing capacity, according to the January issue of Mayo Clinic Health Letter.
Guided imagery is more than listening to relaxing sounds. It’s a learning process to listen to someone’s voice, relax the breathing and consciously direct the ability to imagine. The effect of guided vivid imagery sends a message to the emotional control center of the brain.
From there, the message is passed along to the body’s endocrine, immune and autonomic nervous systems. These systems influence a wide range of bodily functions, including heart and breathing rates and blood pressure.
Guided imagery has been shown to benefit patients by:
∑ Reducing side effects from cancer treatment
∑ Reducing fear and anxiety prior to surgery. Studies
∑ have shown that surgery patients who participated in
∑ two to four guided imagery sessions required less pain
∑ medication and left the hospital more quickly than
∑ those who hadn’t used imagery.
∑ Managing stress
∑ Managing headaches. Studies have shown that guided imagery may aid in reducing the frequency of migraine headaches as effectively as taking preventive medications.
Adapted from materials provided by Mayo Clinic.
Doctors may soon offer what alcoholics need
(if not what they want)
By Melissa Healy, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
British songstress Amy Winehouse, who croons "no, no, no" to rehab, has a lot of American company this time of year -- both in her heavy-drinking ways and her unwillingness to spend weeks in a specialized facility to get sober.
But experts say there may be new hope for rehab refuseniks like Winehouse and an estimated 5.7 million alcoholics in the United States who are not in treatment -- hope that could be as close as the family doctor.
ARTICLE IN THE L.A. TIMES
New research and a growing arsenal of medications have set the stage for a major shift in the treatment of alcoholism, from specialized clinic to the "primary care office setting," the Journal of the American Medical Assn. reported in its Dec. 5 issue.
But if the promise of "office-based" treatment of alcoholism is to become a reality, the nation's 337,000 general-practice physicians -- and the systems within which they work -- will have to undergo some transformation themselves, addiction experts say.
Doctors must overcome their reluctance to broach the subject of drinking and learn how best to intervene when they suspect alcoholism. Medical practices may need to add staff to help counsel recovering patients. And insurance companies and federal insurance programs will need to be persuaded to reimburse patients for medication that can be costly and to pay physicians for taking on a new role in patients' care.
Several new drugs are making office-based treatment a realistic prospect. In April 2006, a monthly injectable form of the drug naltrexone won approval from the Food and Drug Administration. Marketed as Vivitrol, the new formulation of a long-available drug can be started after only four days of abstinence and appears to cause less nausea than pills taken daily -- features that make it easier for patients to start and stay on the treatment. It joined two other medications approved to curb alcohol cravings.
Evidence is growing for the effectiveness of these and other addiction medications, such as the anti-convulsive drug topiramate, which, although not FDA-approved for this purpose, is also widely prescribed off-label to help alcoholics stay away from drink. And more FDA approvals for drugs that treat alcohol dependence are on the horizon.
At the same time, studies published this year underscored the effect that a few frank words from the doctor can have on patients whose drinking appears to have become excessive.
These developments could be the "tipping point" into a new era of alcohol treatment, says Mark Willenbring, director of treatment and recovery research at the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. With new confidence in their powers of persuasion and new pharmaceutical tools in their black bags, primary care physicians -- who have been notoriously shy of confronting patients about their drinking habits -- may grow more willing to flag an alcohol problem, offer medication and dispense advice during routine office visits, Willenbring says.
In turn, as patients grow more confident that they can curb their drinking without the time, expense and stigma of a stay in a clinic, more will likely step forward for help.
Parallel with depression
"In many ways, we are with alcoholism where we were with depression 30 years ago," Willenbring says. As a new generation of antidepressants came to market in the early 1980s, physicians on the front lines of patient care grew more attentive to the signs of depression and more willing to treat it. Patients with protracted bouts of blue mood turned to their family doctors for help in increasing numbers.
In the process, depression was transformed from a highly stigmatized mental illness that was rarely treated before a suicide attempt or outside a psychiatric hospital to a condition for which 80% of patients turn first to a general medical practitioner.
A similar shift in the treatment of alcohol-related disorders won't happen overnight, Willenbring says. But with 19.5 million Americans thought to have alcohol-related disorders in 2006, and only 1.6 million getting specialized treatment, he says, "we have to start thinking creatively about how to provide more accessible, appealing and creative options" to encourage patients with drinking problems to get the help they need before they hit the skids.
Experts warn, however, that as general-care physicians armed with medications shoulder a greater role in treating alcohol dependence, patients and public officials must ensure that the sickest patients do not suffer in a rush to treat alcoholism more economically.
In that regard, not all experts see depression treatment as an encouraging example. Medication has worked wonders for many depressed patients. But a study published in 2001 found that only about one-quarter of depressed patients seeing a general practitioner got appropriate care. Meanwhile, insurance companies keen to reduce spending for depression care have limited patients' access to costly psychotherapy, despite studies showing that patients improve most when such therapy is paired with medication.
As anti-alcoholism drugs show gains in effectiveness, many fear that insurance companies and federally supported programs will rely largely on medications and the brisk medical management of primary-care doctors.
That, they fear, could deny alcoholics who need the extra support of intensive rehabilitation the care they need to quit.
"You'd have to be naive not to be a little concerned that that will happen," says Mitchell Karno, UCLA's alcohol treatment researcher.
Doctors, too, will have to make changes if this new era of "office-based" alcohol treatment is to become a reality, experts say -- and some aren't convinced that the changes will easily happen.
Brain Response Differences
In The Way Women With IBS
Anticipate And React To Pain
Science Daily (Jan. 12, 2008) — UCLA researchers found that women with IBS cannot effectively turn-off a pain modulation mechanism in the brain, which causes them to be more sensitive to abdominal pain, compared to women without IBS.
The findings may lead to a greater understanding of irritable bowel syndrome and new treatment approaches.
Irritable bowel syndrome affects 10 to 15 percent of the U.S. population and causes discomfort in the abdomen, along with diarrhea and/or constipation.
Currently there is no cure and treatments only lessen symptoms.
"A large number of patients with irritable bowel disease suffer major decrements in their quality of life," said Dr. Emeran Mayer, study author* and professor of medicine, digestive diseases and physiology, David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA.. "Our research team studies the brain activity underlying the pain experience in patients with chronic pain disorders like IBS."
Previous research in the field has shown that the brain can prepare for pain in ways that either inhibit or amplify the sensory experience. When expected pain is predictable, tolerable, inescapable and will result in a reward -- like a doctor's injection to improve your health -- most people tell their brain to inhibit the intensity of the pain experience. One way they do this is by turning down the gain within brain circuits that process the pain signal --- similar to turning down the volume on a stereo amplifier -- in order to make the body's perception of pain less acute.
When anticipated pain is perceived as escapable and potentially dangerous -- such as burning your hand on a hot stove -- most people tell their brain to amplify the pain response, which is like increasing the volume on a stereo amplifier, in order to react faster and minimize possible tissue damage.
The current study showed that IBS patients cannot turn down the amplifier of the pain response, even when expected pain is not dangerous, which makes them more sensitive to even mild discomfort.
UCLA researchers used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to record brain activity of 14 women with IBS and 12 healthy women during cued anticipation and mild abdominal pain stimulus.
During anticipation of pain, subjects without IBS decreased activity within brain areas involved with pain and emotional arousal, including the insula, amygdala and brainstem. IBS patients could not deactivate these circuits effectively, although they also knew the pain was not dangerous.
"The abdominal hypersensitivity that is a hallmark of IBS may represent an inability to downregulate pain and emotional arousal circuits, said Steven Berman, lead study author and a senior research scientist at UCLA. "IBS patients may have an inability to inhibit the competing tendency to upregulate emotional arousal in order to escape pain faster."
As expected, IBS patients reported lower pain thresholds and more anxiety than healthy women. Anxiety correlated with more brain activity during anticipation, but not receipt of pain.
"Negative emotions like anxiety and anger may interfere with the brain's ability to strategically downregulate pain arousal pathways, in situations where such an increased sensitivity is maladaptive," said Berman.
Both groups of women increased activity in pain arousal areas during receipt of pain, but IBS patients showed greater boosts in several brain structures. The lower degree of anticipatory inhibition was associated with more activity during pain in executive cortical areas of the brain, which are associated with pain coping.
"We found that the lower the brain response during anticipation in the arousal circuits, the less the dampening effect of the cortex on pain sensitivity during the actual pain stimulus," said Berman.
Researchers note that explaining this phenomenon in IBS leads to the classic chicken and egg debate: How much of the anticipatory brain dysfunction was produced by the long history of abdominal pain in patients, and how much did it predate and cause their symptoms"
"Additional research may reveal that some pain patients have a primary difference in their brain's reaction to pain," said Mayer, director of the UCLA
Center for the Neurobiology of Stress. "If we can identify receptors and genes associated with these abnormal brain responses, we should improve both identification of predisposed patients and development of effective remedies."
Several converging findings from UCLA and other research groups support the importance of this research for better understanding IBS and other functional pain syndromes, such as fibromyalgia. Female patients show greater abnormalities than their male counterparts in this early brain response, and genetic factors have been identified which may predispose to an altered responsiveness of emotional arousal circuits.
*The full research article appears in the January 9 issue of the Journal of Neuroscience. Additional study authors include: Bruce Naliboff, Brandall Suyenobu, Jennifer S. Labus, Jean Stains, Gordon Ohning, Lisa Kilpatrick, Joshua A. Bueller, Kim Ruby, and Johanna Jarcho. Authors are from the UCLA Center for Neurovisceral Sciences & Women's Health, the Departments of Physiology, Psychiatry & Biobehavioral Sciences and Brain Research Institute, David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior at UCLA; and VA Greater Los Angeles Healthcare System.
The study was funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIDDK and NCCAM) and in part by Novartis Pharmaceuticals. Dr. Mayer has received research grants from Novartis and has previously served as a consultant.
Adapted from materials provided by University of California - Los Angeles.
Brain of Hypnotized People Undergoes Measurable Changes
Israeli researchers have shown that hypnotism actually produces measurable changes in the brain, refuting suggestions that it does not result in an altered state of consciousness.
Sceptics argue that hypnotism —commonly used to treat pain, anxiety, and phobias — is an exaggerated form of social compliance, where subjects suspend their critical faculties to do whatever a hypnotist asks of
them.
However, Prof Yadin Dudai, a researcher at The Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, insists that brain scans of people taken after a hypnotic suggestion to forget have revealed that parts of the brain really are affected.
During the study, two groups of volunteers — people susceptible to hypnotic suggestions, and individuals who were not — were shown a documentary depicting a day in the life of a young woman.
After a week, the participants were placed in a brain scanner. They were then induced into a hypnotic state, and given a posthypnotic suggestion to forget the movie, along with a reversibility cue that would restore the memory.
The researchers tested the subjects for their recall after they had come out of the hypnotic state. They then gave the participants the reversibility cue, and tested their recall again.
A compared to the hypnosis-non-susceptible group, the hypnosis-susceptible group showed reduced recall of the movie.
When the researchers analysed brain scans of the subjects, they found distinctive differences in specific brain areas — namely, occipital, temporal, and prefrontal areas — among participants in the two groups.
"The surprise for us was that activity was raised during memory suppression in one specific region in the frontal cortex," the Telegraph quoted Dudai as saying.
In effect, he added, it probably told the other brain regions "don't even think about retrieving that memory".
"The one thing we can say for sure is that hypnotism worked under the conditions we used," said Prof Dudai, adding that the findings were different from those seen in people who attemptted to deceive.
"We are therefore highly confident that this is not an artifact," he added.
The researchers believe that their insights into memory suppression and recall may help understand the mechanisms underlying some forms of amnesia, besides explaining how people suppress distressing memories or things.
However, study co-author Avi Mendelsohn admitted that further studies were required to determine whether the new findings gave insights into how the brain stores memory.
Embracing Alternative Care
Top hospitals put unorthodox therapies into practice
By Avery Comarow
"To be blunt, if my wife and I didn't think it was helping him, we wouldn't have continued with it," says Dan Polley. He's talking about Mikey, the Polleys' 2_-year-old in the next room, who was diagnosed with acute lymphocytic leukemia when he was 6 months old. Chemotherapy, radiation, and a bone marrow transplant have been crucial elements of Mikey's treatment. But the "it" his father speaks of is nothing like these aggressive, costly, and heavily researched exemplars of western care—it is a kind of touch therapy, from the camp of alternative medicine. Gentle and benign, "healing touch" is intended to rebalance the energy field that its practitioners believe surrounds the body and flows through it along defined pathways, affecting health when disrupted. Several times a week, therapist Lynne Morrison spends 20 minutes unblocking and smoothing Mikey's energy field, which energy healers like Morrison say they can feel and correct.
Before a recent session, Mikey was grouchy, drawing up his legs and issuing periodic yowls. His stomach hurt, said his father. But as the little boy nestled in his father's arms and Morrison moved her hands around his body, lightly resting them here and then there, his tenseness loosened and he quieted for a few minutes at a time. The Polleys believe that the therapy not only calms their son but is aiding his return to health.
The setting for the unorthodox therapy—an academic medical center—would have been startling just five or 10 years ago. Morrison is on the staff of Children's Memorial Hospital in Chicago, a hard-nosed, tough-cases, research-oriented emblem of western medicine. It perennially ranks among America's premier hospitals and is the principal pediatric teaching hospital for Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine. And Mikey is only one of many children there receiving care that not long ago was called alternative medicine. Now it is more often called CAM, for complementary and alternative medicine, or integrative medicine, to avoid the loaded "alternative." The message the new labels are meant to convey is that the therapies more often go hand in hand with traditional medicine than substitute for it.
Children's Memorial is just one of many academic hospitals where unconventional therapies have found a home. Elite centers like the Mayo Clinic, Duke University Medical Center, and the University of California-San Francisco now offer acupuncture, massage, and other CAM services. All 18 hospitals on U.S. News's most recent "America's Best Hospitals" superselective Honor Roll provide CAM of some type. Fifteen of the 18 also belong to the three-year-old Consortium of Academic Health Centers for Integrative Medicine, 36 U.S. teaching hospitals pushing to blend CAM with traditional care.
Thicket of therapies. Each center has its own notion of CAM and how best to fit it into the medical mix, which can be challenging. "There is rarely a consensus among CAM experts on the optimal product, dose, or intended users," states a report from the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, an arm of the National Institutes of Health charged with doling out research funds and tidying the thicket of therapies deemed to fall within CAM's broad reach.
At one extreme are found techniques such as yoga and massage, acknowledged by the most hard-line skeptics to have some benefit, if only to lower stress and anxiety. At the other are therapies that even many who applaud CAM's newfound academic popularity call "woo-woo medicine" because of the sheer implausibility of their rationale. Homeopathy, which involves remedies often lacking a single molecule of active substance, is the poster child; some would add energy therapies such as healing touch. The broad middle takes in acupuncture, herbal medicine, and other CAM approaches that seem to benefit some people with certain conditions.
Until the mid-1990s, most academic centers treated CAM like a pack of scruffy mutts, noisy and unworthy of notice. A large pot of federal and foundation research funds—now close to $250 million per year just from NCCAM and the National Cancer Institute, plus tens of millions more from private donors such as the Bravewell Collaborative—helped turn that sniffy attitude into solicitous attention, says longtime CAM commentator Donald Marcus. "The funding gave them respect from the medical school community," says Marcus, a professor of medicine and immunology at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, where he has long taught a CAM course. A survey of hospitals found that 27 percent offered CAM in 2005, up from 8 percent in 1998. At the Cleveland Clinic, for example, NIH money is behind a clinical trial to see whether reiki, another energy therapy, can reduce stress and anxiety in prostate cancer patients.
The integrative medicine program at Children's Memorial got off the ground in 2003 with $1.7 million in foundation seed money and is now chasing NIH grants. David Steinhorn, a pediatric intensivist and medical director of the hospital's CAM program, says several privately funded trials, including Mikey's, are underway or in the works. Steinhorn is a passionate champion of investigating CAM therapies, no matter how unlikely, if he believes they may help patients and are safe. "I'm a very serious, hard-core ICU doctor, but I have seen these therapies benefit my patients, even if I don't know how," he says.
Patient access. CAM's ascendance isn't entirely driven by money—researchers make frequent references to obligation. "We want patients to have access to these therapies in a responsible fashion," says Lisa Corbin, medical director of the Center for Integrative Medicine at the University of Colorado Hospital. That implies a public clamor for such services, and patients may indeed talk about and ask for CAM more than they used to (although that isn't clear). But surveys showing widespread use—like one issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 2004 reporting that 62 percent of adult Americans had used some form of CAM in the previous year—are highly misleading. The big numbers reflect activities such as prayer, which few would consider CAM, and meditation, now routinely prescribed to help lower high blood pressure. The Atkins and Zone diets ("diet-based therapies") were counted in the CDC survey, too. A more selective reading indicates that about 5 percent used yoga, 1.1 percent acupuncture, and 0.5 percent energy therapy, to pick three more-representative offerings.
The purpose of Mikey's trial is to put his touch therapy to the kind of test demanded by CAM critics: Prove that it can produce medical results beyond simply reducing stress or anxiety. Children having a bone marrow transplant are being divided into two groups. One will receive the therapy before and in the weeks after the marrow transplant. The other group will be visited on the same schedule by staff or volunteers who talk, read, or color with them. (The investigators won't know which children are in which group.) The working presumption, says Steinhorn, is that the energy-therapy group will take up the transplanted bone marrow stem cells more readily and with fewer complications, allowing those children to leave the hospital sooner. Early findings should be available by the end of this year.
Most academic hospitals are fairly conservative when it comes to CAM; the usual menu offers acupuncture, yoga, meditation, and variations on massage such as reiki. This tracks the philosophy of Andrew Weil, founder of the University of Arizona Program in Integrative Medicine and CAM's public face, if there is one. "I teach and urge people to use a sliding scale of evidence," says Weil. "The greater the potential to cause harm, the greater the standard of evidence should be."
A few CAM treatments have demonstrated at least modest results. Massage shows promise for relieving postoperative pain. It was once part of routine postsurgical care, in fact, but was gradually shelved as other demands on nurses' time took priority. And studies demonstrate that acupuncture is somewhat effective at relieving nausea from chemotherapy or surgery and discomfort from dental procedures. It is used at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, among others, for relief of chemotherapy-related nausea, and at many centers for chronic pain—from arthritis, for example.
Damaged and arthritic knees drove Joan Pettit in 2006 to see an acupuncturist at the University of Maryland School of Medicine Center for Integrative Medicine. The 51-year-old suburban Baltimore resident had been a competitive athlete from her high school days and played tennis until about eight years ago, when both knees would swell and throb painfully. "I'm always looking for something that doesn't have serious side effects," says Pettit, "so the idea of trying acupuncture was very appealing."
The pain and swelling lessened somewhat, and Pettit, a lawyer, returned for repeat sessions—partly, she admits, because they were so soothing: "It's a very pleasant experience. You lie down, they put a nice warm lamp on you, you fall asleep for half an hour, nice music." But she knew the acupuncture was treating the symptoms, not the cause, and she would ultimately face knee replacement. "I still think it gives some pain relief when there's a flare-up," she said last month, "but I've given up. I'm having replacement surgery in April."
Varied results. Disconcertingly, some of acupuncture's claimed successes seem related to the nationality of study authors. A 1998 analysis of 252 published trials found that 51 of the 52 studies conducted by researchers from Asian countries, where acupuncture is uncontroversial, were positive—a 98 percent success rate. Only 53 percent of the trials run by U.S. investigators showed success, and the rate plummeted to 30 percent in studies involving Canadian, Australian, and New Zealand researchers.
Herbals and dietary supplements are getting considerable attention from researchers, and they're employed at Maryland's integrative medicine center and the Osher Center for Integrative Medicine at the University of California-San Francisco, among other academic hospitals. The effectiveness of most herbal remedies and supplements is largely an open question, and there are issues of toxicity, side effects, and interaction with other medications. Actual dosages in off-the-shelf herbal medications and supplements often are far different from those shown on the label, and the pills may be tainted with heavy metals such as lead and mercury. Yet many of today's powerful medications, among them aspirin, statins, and anticancer drugs, were originally unearthed from trees, fungi, and other natural sources. NCI-backed CAM projects include a test of a six-herb combination, used in traditional Chinese medicine, for its ability to prevent lung cancer, and addition of mistletoe extract to chemotherapy to treat solid tumors.
Yoga, a physical activity, has understandable benefits for cancer patients, in whom it helps restore strength and flexibility to muscles weakened by treatment. Alicia Chin has been taking a weekly yoga class for cancer patients at the Osher Center. "Yoga reteaches the muscles how to work, and it makes me feel good," says Chin, a 46-year-old San Franciscan. She had a lumpectomy and had two lymph glands removed last March, followed by radiation, and now is enrolled in a clinical trial of a new chemotherapy regimen. "You get all these drugs pumped into you, you don't want to do anything," says Chin, a paralegal. She still doesn't have the strength to reach up and paint a ceiling, as she puts it, "but it really makes a difference."
Most CAM therapies remain relatively untested, and the majority of academic centers tiptoe around those that seem especially shaky. "We should always insist on a high standard," says Brent Bauer, director of the Mayo Clinic's complementary and integrative medicine program. CAM therapies for cancer patients at Memorial Sloan-Kettering "have to be rational, and they have to be evidence-based," says Barrie Cassileth, chief of the integrative medicine service and coauthor of the Alternative Medicine Handbook for physicians and other caregivers. Homeopathy is "absurd," she says. "It's like a religion." Nor does she put much faith in energy healing: "Manipulating someone's energy field is nonsense." And while acupuncture is offered at Sloan-Kettering, "we don't do it thinking we're stimulating a vital force—we know we are releasing substances from the brain that make people feel better."
Why not try? Still, some academic hospitals give patients access to highly controversial therapies. Thomas Jefferson University Hospital in Philadelphia and Maryland's integrative medicine center, for example, provide homeopathic services. And patients at Oregon Health and Science University Hospital in Portland and the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center can see a naturopath, generally a non-M.D. who advocates nonmedical aids such as proper nutrition, colonic irrigation (a polite term for enemas), and special water baths to stay healthy without drugs or surgery.
standards of western medicine should not block its use. Just because all of the evidence isn't in, says Donald Abrams, director of clinical programs at ucsf's Osher Center, "should I never try these therapies with my patients?"
A counterargument posed by many critics is that the risks of some therapies are real and the benefits illusory—a placebo effect. That is, even a treatment that does nothing genuine is likely to make you feel better (or worse) if you think it will.
The phenomenon is hardly unique to CAM. Physicians used to hand out inert pills routinely to treat aches and pains. Many still do. A new study found that almost half of the doctors at three Chicago-area medical schools who responded to a survey said they had used a placebo in their practice at least once for anxiety, pain, and other problems. About 1 in 12 reported having done so more than 10 times in the past year.
If CAM's successes are due mostly to placebo, writes biostatistician R. Barker Bausell in Snake Oil Science, a just published book that turns an analytical eye on CAM, not everybody who seeks some form of CAM for a throbbing hip or chronic headache will be happy if he paid (probably out of pocket) for care that only fooled him into feeling better. Health insurers generally cover only a few types of CAM, such as acupuncture, and then only for certain conditions.
As research director of the University of Maryland's CAM center from 1999 to 2004, Bausell became disillusioned when none of several rigorous trials that he helped design demonstrated any benefit to CAM. "The results were no better than placebo," he says. "Zip. So I started asking myself, 'What if there's nothing to this?' "
Here is where the argument gets sticky, because the placebo effect often is, well, effective, notes Don Price, a neuroscience professor at the University of Florida who has made the phenomenon his specialty for more than 30 years. In a major review of the placebo effect published this month, he cites two telling studies reported in 2005 and 2007. In both, patients with various aches and pains received either real acupuncture or a sham procedure that felt like acupuncture; the patients didn't know which one they had gotten. Patients in one study were asked if they thought they had received real or fake acupuncture. Pain relief was greater for those who thought they had gotten the real thing, even if they hadn't, than for patients who thought they had gotten the sham version. In the other study, patients were asked how strongly they believed that acupuncture would help them. The stronger their belief, the better the results—whichever treatment they got.
"These folks are very careful to make the distinction between what is based on evidence and what is based on anecdotes," says John Munce, a 53-year-old management consultant from Charlotte, N.C., who is receiving reiki and acupuncture at the Duke Center for Integrative Medicine following surgery for neck cancer in October. "But I don't care. If it's a placebo, give me the damn placebo." The reiki sessions have restored much of the mobility in his shoulder after a nerve had to be cut during surgery, he says, and he values the psychic benefits equally. "I feel as if the reiki is aligning me to heal," says Munce.
CAM frequently gets undeserved credit because of the natural course of illness, say experts. Most of those who seek out CAM, says Bausell, have chronic problems, perhaps arthritic knee pain or frequent headaches, that follow a predictable cycle: build, peak, and recede. Sufferers tend to seek help when their pain is building, and when the pain, as if by magic, begins to recede after they are treated, it is natural to connect the improvement with the therapy.
Won over. Cycles and disputes over illusory cures don't grab Tracy Gaudet. If a treatment works and isn't harmful, says the Durham, N.C., obstetrician-gynecologist, be thankful. Before having a golf-ball-size mass removed from her neck about three years ago, Gaudet prepped with acupuncture, art therapy, and hypnosis to relieve her symptoms and mentally prepare for the operation. She awoke pain free and never took so much as a Tylenol afterward.
As executive director of Duke Integrative Medicine, Gaudet was especially receptive to CAM. "She was incredibly relaxed," says Duke otolaryngologist David Witsell, Gaudet's surgeon. "It took very little anesthetic to get her to sleep." And while it can take six months after this procedure to relearn how to swallow and speak, "she was smiling and talking and drinking and laughing the day after surgery," says the surgeon. He and Gaudet recently discussed making the program's CAM services available to all preoperative patients. "That experience with her turned me on to integrative medicine," says Witsell.
"From where I sit," says Gaudet in the center's light-filled lobby, "if we could figure out a way to elicit a full therapeutic response to a placebo, that's not a bad thing—that's a good thing." She considers briefly, then smiles. "I'd call it an 'activated healing response,'" she says.
Smoking Cessation
BEN AFFLECK is helping titan OPRAH WINFREY prompt Americans to stop smoking by talking about the reasons behind his decision to quit after 20 years. The movie star/director appeared on Winfrey's show on Tuesday (22Jan08), which was aimed at those struggling to give up nicotine. He revealed he once smoked a pack of cigarettes a day and that became "part of who I was". Affleck said, "I finally decided to quit smoking when I was going to have a child. That was the thing that sort of put it over the top for me." The Pearl Harbor star used hypnosis to kick his habit after best pal Matt Damon urged him to try the method that helped him quit. Affleck recalls, "You sit in, like, a Barker lounger (chair) and he (hypnotist) sips water and just talks to you for an hour, and explains how nicotine is poison. "All of a sudden, you thought' 'This is asinine that I've been doing this to myself for all these years.' "My last cigarette was on November 10th, 2005... I feel a huge difference in my health now that I don't smoke. I feel like I'm in better shape than I was five years ago."
FROM THE IRS WEBSITE,
ABOUT WHAT DEDUCTIONS ARE COVERED:
HYPNOTHERAPY IS TAX DEDUCTIBLE
Medical Services
You can include in medical expenses amounts you pay for legal medical services provided by:
∑ Physicians,
∑ Surgeons,
∑ Specialists, or
∑ Other medical practitioners.
Stop-Smoking Programs
You can include in medical expenses amounts you pay for a program to stop smoking. However, you cannot include in medical expenses amounts you pay for drugs that do not require a prescription, such as nicotine gum or patches, that are designed to help stop smoking.
Therapy
You can include in medical expenses amounts you pay for therapy received as medical treatment.
Weight-Loss Program
You can include in medical expenses amounts you pay to lose weight if it is a treatment for a specific disease diagnosed by a physician (such as obesity, hypertension, or heart disease). This includes fees you pay for membership in a weight reduction group and attendance at periodic meetings. You cannot include membership dues in a gym, health club, or spa as medical expenses, but you can include separate fees charged there for weight loss activities.
Depression drugs no better than placebos
LONDON (USATODAY.com) - Best-selling anti-depressants like Prozac and Seroxat are barely more effective than placebos in treating most people with depression, a study led by a British university said Tuesday.
The research, which analyzed 47 clinical trials, breaks new ground by incorporating data not previously released by drug companies which researchers obtained under U.S. freedom of information laws.
Its findings prompted some academics and mental health campaigners to question whether people with mild and moderate depression should be prescribed drugs like Prozac, which has been taken by 40 million people worldwide.
"The difference in improvement between patients taking placebos and patients taking anti-depressants is not very great," said Professor Irving Kirsch of Hull University, in northern England, who led the team.
"This means that depressed people can improve without chemical treatments.
"Given these results, there seems little reason to prescribe antidepressant medication to any but the most severely depressed patients unless alternative treatments have failed to provide a benefit."
The study, published in the journal PLoS (Public Library of Science) Medicine, looked at Prozac, Seroxat, Effexor and Serzone and found the drugs were only better than a placebo for some people with severe depression.
Kirsch's team said it was one of the most thorough probes into the impact of new generation anti-depressants or selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors.
But drug companies strongly questioned the findings.
A spokesman for Eli Lilly, which makes Prozac, said that "extensive scientific and medical experience" had shown it is "an effective anti-depressant."
And GlaxoSmithKline, which makes Seroxat, said the study had not acknowledged the "very positive benefits" of the drugs.
"Their conclusions are at odds with what has been seen in actual clinical practice," a spokesman said. "It is widely recognised by experts in the field that studies in depression are challenging and very difficult to conduct."
One leading academic who has studied why drug companies only publish some of their data on new drugs said in the wake of the findings they should be obliged to provide full details.
Doctor Tim Kendall, deputy director of Britain's Royal College of Psychiatrists research unit, said the study was "fantastically important."
"I think it's too dangerous to allow drug companies - where profit is a key factor - to be able to withhold data which shows that a drug is ineffective or harmful," he said.
Alison Cobb, of British mental health charity Mind, hailed the findings as "a serious challenge to the predominance of drugs in treating depression."
"Anti-depressants do help many people but by no means all and some people experience severe side-effects with them," she said.
"Nine out of 10 GPs (general practitioners) say they've been forced to dish out drugs because they don't have proper access to 'talking treatments' such as cognitive behavioral therapy, which are recommended as the first-line treatment for mild to moderate depression."
Another mental health charity, Sane, warned the findings "could remove what has been seen as a vital choice for thousands," adding people should not stop taking their drugs immediately.
As the study was published, the British government published details of a $335 million program to improve access to counselling and therapy for people with depression.
Officials say this should see 900,000 more people receiving such treatments over the next three years.
Hypnosis for Functional Abdominal Pain
& Irritable Bowel Syndrome
Source: Vlieger AM, Menko-Frankenhuis C, Wolfkamp SC, et al. Hypnotherapy for children with functional abdominal pain or irritable bowel syndrome: a randomized controlled trial. Gastroenterology.
Question: Among children with functional abdominal pain, can hypnotherapy improve quality of life and decrease pain?
Study Design: Randomized controlled trial
The purpose of this study, conducted in the Netherlands, was to examine the effectiveness of hypnotherapy compared to standard medical care in a pediatric population with functional abdominal pain (FAP) or irritable bowel syndrome (IBS).
Patients ages 8–18 years with either FAP or IBS were randomized to either hypnotherapy or standard medical care. Hypnotherapy was conducted at a site distant from the academic center by a registered nurse with years of training and experience in hypnotherapy. The hypnotherapy intervention consisted of six age-appropriate 50-minute sessions over a three-month period.
The goal of the hypnotherapy was to provide suggestions for general relaxation, sleep improvement, and "ego-strengthening." Standard medical care consisted of physician-directed education, dietary advice, extra dietary fiber, and pain medication in addition to six half-hour sessions of "supportive therapy" conducted over a three-month period.
Patients in both groups maintained a pain diary card on which they recorded the daily frequency and intensity of abdominal pain and other somatic symptoms such as headache. Outcomes were assessed at baseline, one, four, eight, and 12 weeks after randomization and again six and 12 months post-therapy.
Gastrointestinal pain scores decreased significantly.
SMOKING CESSATION
Smoking link to hearing loss risk
Smoking and obesity could both cause permanent hearing damage,
Say scientists.
Either could threaten blood flow to the ear, they say, with damage levels clearly linked to the level of obesity or the length of a smoking habit.
However, the Antwerp University-led study found that high levels of work noise remained the biggest risk.
In a separate study, smoking in middle age was linked to worse memory, which could hasten the arrival of dementia.
Once the damage is done, it's done. It does not repair.
Dr Erik Fransen - Antwerp University
A link between smoking and hearing problems has been suggested by others, but the conclusions of the latest research, involving more than 4,000 men and women aged between 53 and 67, offer the most convincing evidence to date.
All the study participants were given a hearing test, then asked about their lifestyle and where they worked.
Dr Erik Fransen, of the University of Antwerp in Belgium, one of the lead researchers, said that the ability to pick out high frequency sounds was damaged in smokers and the obese, although to not as great an extent as those exposed to very loud noise in the workplace.
He said: "The hearing loss is proportional to how much you smoke and your body mass index (BMI).
"It starts getting worse once you have smoked regularly for more than one year."
He said that, unlike some parts of the body, once damage had occurred, there was no prospect of recovery.
"Once the damage is done, it's done. It does not repair."
Blood flow
The theory behind the hearing damage is similar to the reason smoking and obesity can harm other organs.
Both can disrupt the flow of blood around the body, and Dr Fransen suggested that the resulting lack of oxygen, coupled with the failure to remove toxic waste from the ear, can be damaging.
Amanda Sandford, from the pressure group Action on Smoking and Health (ASH), said that the results, published in the Journal of the Association for Research into Otolaryngology, should serve as a warning particularly to younger smokers.
She said: "There are so many young people who think that they can give up in middle age and escape some of the other diseases associated with smoking.
"In this case, some of the damage may already have been done."
The study was part-funded by the Royal National Institute for the Deaf (RNID), and Dr Mark Downs, from the charity, said that, with an ageing population, age-related hearing loss could be a major problem.
"Losing your hearing in later life can make it harder to maintain contact with friends and families and lead to isolation and depression, so making small concessions now could have an enormous effect in the long term."
A separate research project involved more than 5,000 civil servants, who completed memory and reasoning tests and then repeated them five years later.
It found that smoking in middle age was linked to a decline in memory and verbal reasoning ability.
Memory problems at this age have been linked to a swifter onset of the symptoms of dementia.
This study was conducted jointly between the University of Paris and University College London.
The Weekly Spin, June 4, 2008
Thanks to Chantix, Quitting Smoking May Be Hazardous, Too
Source: Wall Street Journal (sub req'd), May 29, 2008
The pharmaceutical company Pfizer "is preparing an advertising and public-relations campaign to counter concerns about its antismoking drug Chantix, once trumpeted as a potential billion-dollar-a-year blockbuster." So far, Pfizer has "run ads in five major newspapers in which its medical director explains Chantix's risk-benefit balance." The drug company will soon "start hosting round-table discussions on Chantix for members of the media." The Pfizer campaign comes after an independent study linked Chantix "to 988 serious side effects in the last quarter of 2007." According to Senator Charles Grassley, who has asked the U.S. Food and Drug Administration about the drug's safety, Chantix has had "more reports of serious adverse events in this country than any other prescription drug." Some of the side effects reported for Chantix aren't currently listed in the drug's warnings. The Institute for Safe Medication Practices, which conducted the Chantix study, receives drug company funding, but not from Pfizer, according to the Center for Science in the Public Interest.
THE NEW YORK TIMES
June 10, 2008
Editorial
Hidden Drug Payments at Harvard
Three prominent psychiatrists at the Harvard Medical School and its affiliated Massachusetts General Hospital have been caught vastly underreporting their income from drug companies whose fortunes could be affected by their studies and their promotional efforts on behalf of aggressive drug treatments. Their failure to divulge their conflicts is striking proof that today's requirements for reporting payments from industry - essentially an honor system in which researchers are
supposed to reveal their outside income to their institutions - needs to be strengthened.
What makes this case particularly troublesome is that the Harvard group's research has helped fuel an explosion in the use of powerful antipsychotic drugs to treat children, as was described in The Times on Sunday by Gardiner Harris and Benedict Carey. Although supporters praise the most prominent of the trio, Dr. Joseph Biederman, as a visionary who has saved many lives, critics complain that the Harvard studies have been too small and loosely designed to provide conclusive results. Critics say they also were subject to biased interpretation through use of a subjective rating scale.
The previously unknown payments to the researchers were pried loose by Senator Charles Grassley of Iowa, the ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, whose staff reviewed what the researchers disclosed on conflict-of-interest forms at their institutions and prodded the university to verify the data as accurate. Under pressure, two of the researchers acknowledged receiving $1.6 million apiece in consulting fees from drug companies between 2000 and 2007 and the third reported earning more than $1 million. That was far more than the researchers had originally reported, a number that Mr. Grassley pegged at a couple hundred thousand dollars apiece. Even the updated numbers left out other payments that drug companies reported separately that they had made to the trio.
At this point, it is not clear whether the researchers inadvertently failed to comply with reporting rules or consciously sought to hide their sizable incomes from drug companies. But it is clear that relying on researchers to report their outside incomes and on universities and hospitals to police the disclosures won't suffice. Senator Grassley and Senator Herb Kohl, Democrat of Wisconsin, have introduced a bill that would require drug and device makers to report annually any payments to doctors that exceed $500 a year. That is the best way to ensure that conflicts of interest are transparent to all.
Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company
St. Petersburg Times
A Times Editorial
Medicine research corrupted
In print: Tuesday, June 10, 2008
The pharmaceutical industry's corrupting influence on medical research has reached a new low with a case that has stained the reputations of Harvard University and three of its top researchers in child psychiatry. It took a congressional investigation to uncover a conflict of interest that could violate federal and university rules. As a result, the credibility of a supposed breakthrough in treating childhood bipolar disease is now in doubt.
Dr. Joseph Biederman and two colleagues - who have promoted the use of antipsychotic drugs to treat bipolar children - withheld information about payments they were getting from drugmakers. While the Harvard faculty members were doing their research, some of it paid for by taxpayers, they were quietly taking millions of dollars from drug companies such as Johnson & Johnson, Eli Lilly and others that profited from the findings, the New York Times reported.
The researchers were supposed to report earnings in excess of $10,000 as consultants for drug companies, but they failed to do so. Even after Senate investigators forced Biederman to disclose his income, he reported receiving less than the drug companies say they gave him. In all, the three researchers accepted drug company payments of at least $2.6-million over the past seven years.
Did such hefty inducements affect the outcome of their research? It's a question that so far is unanswered. The doctors' findings have been influential but controversial, with 500,000 bipolar children being prescribed antipsychotic drugs. Some doctors say the medication saves young lives, though the side effects can be serious. Others say it is an experimental treatment that hasn't been proved effective over time.
There is no doubt what effect the scandal has had on the medical research field, which relies on a voluntary honor system. "The price we pay for these kinds of revelations is credibility, and we just can't afford to lose any more of that in this field," said Dr. E. Fuller Torrey of the Stanley Medical Research Institute.
Neither the pharmaceutical industry nor the medical researchers they try to influence can be trusted under the current system. Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, wants to create a national registry of drug research to keep track of such payments. Maybe a new bureaucracy isn't the answer, but something has to be done before people are injured and the public loses all trust in medical research.
Brain In The News: The Incredible Brain!
"Brain in the News" is a weekly commentary on how brain science relates to the news. The brain is involved in everything we do. Wherever there are human stories the brain is involved. From the impact of war and natural disasters on the brain to drug abuse scandals to courtroom dramas to politics the brain is in the news, and you can read about it here.
The Incredible Brain!
I'm very pleased to see the continued interest in brain health sweeping our nation. My first PBS television special, Change your Brain, Change your Life, continues to air nationwide with wonderful response. I am pleased to announce that I have 2 new PBS brain-related specials in the works, one scheduled to air late this year and another in early 2009. I'll keep you informed as the schedules are firmed up.
Let's a take a few minutes to consider this amazing organ we have that literally affects everything we do. Your brain is the most complex, mind-boggling organ in the universe. It is estimated to be only about 3 pounds, which is usually around 2 percent of your body’s weight. Unbelievably, given that it is the bedrock of your personality, some think even your soul, it is 85% water! The brain uses 20% of the oxygen we breathe and about 20% of the calories we consume. When whole body scans are performed on people, the brain is so active, compared to the rest of the body, that it looks like a small, powerful heater, while everything else appears almost ghostlike.
It is estimated that we have over 100 billion neurons (also called nerve cells or brain cells), which is about the number of stars in the Milky Way Galaxy. Here are also trillions of supportive cells in the brain called glia. Each neuron is connected to other neurons by up to 40,000 individual connections (called synapses) between cells. Multiplying 100 billion neurons times 40,000 synapses is equivalent to the brain having more connections in it than there are stars in the universe. A piece of brain tissue the size of a grain of sand contains 100,000 neurons and 1 billion synapses, all "talking" to one another.
Many people have heard that we only use 10 percent of our brains. Nonsense! You may not use every neuron in your brain at the same time, but each is important. The brain never turns off or even rests through your entire life. It is very active at night, especially during dreaming.
Brain development is a fascinating construction tale, where genes and environment collaborate to make us who we are. At times during pregnancy, the baby’s brain makes 250,000 new nerve cells per minute. Babies are born with 100 billion neurons; however, only a relatively small number of neurons are connected. In the first decade of life, a child’s brain forms trillions of connections.
Brain development is especially rapid during the first year. Brain scans show that by twelve months, a baby’s brain resembles that of a normal young adult. By age three, a baby’s brain has formed about 1,000 trillion connections—about twice as many as adults have. Also, the areas of the brain that develop early, such as vision, are the first areas to become myelinated (wrapped in myelin), which helps that part of the brain become more efficient.
The “years of promise” between three and 10 are a time of rapid social, intellectual, emotional and physical development. Brain activity in this age group is more than twice that of adults, and although new synapses continue to be formed throughout life, never again will the brain be able to easily master new skills or adapt to setbacks.
At age 11, the brain begins to prune extra connections at a rapid rate. The circuits that remain are more specific and efficient. The brain is one of the best examples of the “use it or lose it” principle. Connections that are used repeatedly in the early years become permanent; while those that are not used are pruned.
During late adolescence and into the mid 20s, the front third of the brain, called the prefrontal cortex (PFC) or executive brain, continues to develop. Even though we think of 18 year olds as adults, their brains are far from finished. Myelin continues to be deposited in the PFC until age 25 or 26, making the executive part of the brain work at a higher and more efficient level. Were you more mature at 25 than 18? I sure was. It is ironic that the car insurance industry knew about maturity and brain development long before society. Typically, car insurance rates change at 25 because drivers are more thoughtful and get into significantly less accidents.
After about 25, just as we reach peak development the brain starts slowly shrinking. Some research has suggested that the male brain shrinks faster than the female one. I think it is because men do more stupid things to their brains, such as they have more problems with alcohol, play tackle football and hit soccer balls with their heads. In college, 70% of football players and 62% of soccer players get at least one concussion per year.
When it comes to the brain SIZE MATTERS. The stegosaurus brain was about the size of a walnut. The adult human brain weighs about 1,300 to 1,400 grams. The average cat brain weighs only about 30 grams. This is why human curiosity helps invent space travel and cures for cancer, while curiosity requires cats to have nine lives.
If, as it says in the New Testament of the Bible, that the body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, certainly the brain is the inner sanctum. The brain is involved in everything we do and must be considered whenever we look at the motivation or reason behind human behavior.
As a neuropsychiatrist for 25 years my clinics have amassed the world's largest database of brain scans related to behavior, more than 43,000. I can tell you this for sure ... your brain affects your work, your relationships, your physical well-being and your attitude about everything.
Knowledge is power and the more you know about your brain the better equipped you'll be to have a better life - isn't that what we all want?
To your brain health,
Daniel Amen, M.D.
CEO, Amen Clinics, Inc.
Distinguished Fellow, American Psychiatric Association
ALLERGIES
ALLERGIES? IT'S ALL IN YOUR MIND!
Anne King
Could it be possible that allergies are "all in your mind" --- a psychosomatic condition? We are certainly programmed to "believe" in allergies as a fact of life -- we either have allergies or know people who are allergic to something --- perhaps even multiply- allergic. It seems that more and more people are buying into the idea that allergies are "normal." (If you were born in the 50's or before, you probably can't remember childhood friends with allergies. There were no television commercials promoting Claritin and other allergy remedies.)
Yes, the body does physically react to certain substances …. but as hypnotists, we understand "anchors" and "association" and "accepted suggestions." We know the subconscious mind can trigger all kinds of physical and emotional responses to various stimuli -- regardless of whether the stimuli it is real or imagined. What is dangerous about pollen, or animal dander, or dust? Nothing unless you believe you are allergic. When I discovered Robert Dilts' NLP technique for allergy elimination in 1998, it resonated with me because I had always believed that no one had to be allergic to anything. I have always told myself (and anyone who told me an occasional sniffle or cough was probably an allergic reaction) that I was definitely not allergic to anything. This was based on the Unity Church principles of "Denials and Affirmations," but regardless of what you call it, self-hypnosis is self-hypnosis. I believed that I didn't have to buy into the allergy idea and therefore would always remain allergy free. Then, while doing research for the One-Session Allergy Elimination Program, I got a blood test to screen for common allergies in my geographical area (both airborne and ingested) and was surprised to see a few substances listed to which I was considered to be slightly allergic, since my body had never responded to the substances in an allergic way.
After I converted Dilts' basic information into a hypnotic program, I called for "guinea pigs" from my reservoir of friends, associates, and students (not hard to find since most people believe they have allergies). I was surprised and delighted to see success after success -- with a variety of allergies being eliminated with only one session. These included allergies to cigarette smoke, wood smoke, mold, dust, wood ivy, cedar pollen, nickel (in jewelry), cat and dog dander, and wheat. I was even more surprised to hear back from hypnosis students who attended the first Allergy Elimination class I taught, telling me they were still allergy-free a year or more later as a result of the "practice session" with another student.
The technique itself is very simple. I begin by using waking suggestions prior to the session, inducing hypnosis to an alpha state, then guiding them through the session using suggestion, visualization, anchoring, dissociation and integration with a "healthy" image of self. The whole thing usually takes about an hour, the actual hypnosis time is about 45 minutes. I also furnish a self-hypnosis recording to be used as reinforcement. I was told the success rate is about 80%, but find it closer to 90% with my own clients. The offer of a money-back guaranty helps to achieve the "believability" and "expectancy" that is necessary. I also have them sign a contract stipulating the terms of the guaranty and their part in the process. The main drawback is that you can only eliminate one allergy at a time, but since each session with a client becomes shorter as they get used to the process, after awhile you may find that be taught to do the technique themselves!
Self-Hypnosis Relapse Prevention Training with Chronic Drug/Alcohol Users: Effects on Self-Esteem, Affect, and Relapse
This study evaluated the effectiveness of a self-hypnosis protocol with chronic drug and alcohol patients in increasing self-esteem, improving affect, and preventing relapse against a control, a transtheoretical cognitive-behavioral (TCB), and a stress management (attention-placebo) group. Participants were 261 veterans admitted to Substance Abuse Residential Rehabilitation Treatment Programs (SARRTPs). Participants were assessed pre- and postintervention, and at 7-week follow-up. Relapse rates did not significantly differ across the 4 groups at follow-up; 87% of those contacted reported abstinence. At follow-up, the participants in the 3 treatment conditions were asked how often they practiced the intervention materials provided them. Practicing and minimal-practicing participants were compared against the control group for each of the 3 interventions via MANOVAs/ANOVAs.
Results revealed a significant Time by Groups interaction for the hypnosis intervention, with individuals who played the self-hypnosis audiotapes "at least 3 to 5 times a week" at 7-week follow-up reporting the highest levels of self-esteem and serenity, and the least anger/impulsivity, in comparison to the minimal-practice and control groups. No significant effects were found for the transtheoretical or stress management interventions. Regression analyses predicted almost two-thirds of the variance of who relapsed and who did not in the hypnosis intervention group. Hypnotic susceptibility predicted who practiced the self-hypnosis audiotapes. The results suggest that hypnosis can be a useful adjunct in helping chronic substance abuse individuals with their reported self-esteem, serenity, and anger/impulsivity.
Answer
Here is brief review of the research evidence:
90.6% Success Rate Using Hypnosis
Of 43 consecutive patients undergoing this treatment protocol, 39 reported remaining abstinent at follow-up (6 months to 3 years post-treatment). This represents a 90.6% success rate using hypnosis.
95% Success Rate Using Hypnosis With NLP
A comparison of hypnosis to quit smoking and hypnosis combined with NLP reported a 95% success rate using hypnosis combined with NLP and 51% using hypnosis alone.
87% Reported Abstinence Using Hypnosis
A field study of 93 male and 93 female CMHC outpatients examined the facilitation of smoking cessation by using hypnosis. At 3-mo. follow-up, 86% of the men and 87% of the women reported continued abstinence using hypnosis.
81% Reported They Had Stopped Smoking
Thirty smokers enrolled in an HMO were referred by their primary physician for treatment. Twenty-one patients returned after an initial consultation and received hypnosis for smoking cessation. At the end of treatment, 81% of those patients reported that they had stopped smoking, and 48% reported abstinence at 12 months post-treatment.
Hypnosis Patients Twice As Likely To Quit
Study of 71 smokers showed that after a two-year follow up, _patients that quit with hypnosis were twice as likely to still be smoke-free than those who quit on their own.
Hypnosis Most Effective Says Largest Study Ever: 3 Times Effectiveness of Patch and 15 Times Willpower.
Hypnosis is the most effective way of giving up smoking, according to the largest ever scientific comparison of ways of breaking the habit. A meta-analysis, statistically combining results of more than 600 studies of 72 000 people from America and Europe to compare various methods of quitting. On average - hypnosis was over three times as effective as nicotine replacement methods and 15 times as effective as trying to quit alone.
Hypnosis Over 30 Times as Effective for Weight Loss
Investigated the effects of hypnosis in weight loss for 60 females, at least 20% overweight. Treatment included group hypnosis with metaphors for ego- strengthening, decision making and motivation, ideomotor exploration in individual hypnosis, and group hypnosis with maintenance suggestions. Hypnosis was more effective than a control group 17lbs vs. 0.5 lbs on follow-up.
2 Years Later Hypnosis Subjects Continued To Lose Significant Weight
109 people completed a behavioral treatment for weight management either with or without the addition of hypnosis. At the end of the 9-week program, both interventions resulted in significant weight reduction. At 8-month and 2-year follow-ups, the hypnosis subjects were found to have continued to lose significant weight, while those in the behavioral-treatment-only group showed little further change.
Hypnosis Subjects Lost More Weight Than 90% of Others and Kept it Off
Researchers analyzed 18 studies comparing a cognitive behavioral therapy, such as relaxation training, guided imagery, self monitoring or goal setting with the same therapy supplemented by hypnosis.
Those who received the hypnosis lost more weight than 90 percent of the non hypnosis, and maintained the weight loss two years after treatment ended.
Hypnosis More Than Doubled Average Weight Loss
Study of the effect of adding hypnosis to cognitive- behavioral treatments for weight reduction, additional data were obtained from authors of 2 studies. Analyses indicated that the benefits of hypnosis increased substantially over time.
Hypnosis Showed Significantly Lower Post-Treatment Weights
Two studies compared overweight smoking and non-smoking adult women in an hypnosis-based, weight-loss program. Both achieved significant weight losses and decreases in Body Mass Index. Follow-up study replicated significant weight losses and declines in Body Mass Index. The overt aversion and hypnosis program yielded significantly lower post-treatment weights and a greater average number of pounds lost.
Hypnotherapy group with stress reduction achieved significantly more weight loss than the other two treatments.
Randomised, controlled, parallel study of two forms of hypnotherapy (directed at stress reduction or energy intake reduction), vs dietary advice alone in 60 obese patients with obstructive sleep apnoea on nasal continuous positive airway pressure treatment.
Hypnosis can more than double the effects of traditional weight loss approaches
An analysis of five weight loss studies reported in the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology in 1996 showed that the " … weight loss reported in the five studies indicates that hypnosis can more than double the effects" of traditional weight loss approaches.
Weight loss is greater where hypnosis is utilized
Research into cognitive-behavioral weight loss treatments established that weight loss is greater where hypnosis is utilized. It was also established that the benefits of hypnosis increase over time.
Showed Hypnosis As "An Effective Way To Lose Weight"
A study of 60 females who were at least 20% overweight and not involved in other treatment showed hypnosis is an effective way to lose weight.
Reference
Hypnosis Reduces Frequency and Intensity of Migraines
Compared the treatment of migraine by hypnosis and autohypnosis with the treatment of migraine by the drug prochlorperazine (Stemetil)_Results show that the number of attacks and the number who suffered blinding attacks were significantly lower for the group receiving hypnotherapy than for the group receiving prochlorperazine. For the group on hypnotherapy, these 2 measures were significantly lower when on hypnotherapy than when on previous treatment. It is concluded that further trials of hypnotherapy are justified against some other treatment not solely associated with the ingestion of tablets.
Hypnosis Reduces Pain and Speeds up Recovery from Surgery
Since 1992, we have used hypnosis routinely in more than 1400 patients undergoing surgery. We found that hypnosis used in patients as an adjunct to conscious sedation and local anesthesia was associated with improved intraoperative patient comfort, and with reduced anxiety, pain, intraoperative requirements for anxiolytic and analgesic drugs, optimal surgical conditions and a faster recovery of the patient. We reported our clinical experience and our fundamental research.
Hypnosis Reduces Pain Intensity
Analysis of the simple-simple main effects, holding both group and condition constant, revealed that application of hypnotic analgesia reduced report of pain intensity significantly more than report of pain unpleasantness.
Hypnosis Reduces Pain of Headaches and Anxiety
The improvement was confirmed by the subjective evaluation data gathered with the use of a questionnaire and by a significant reduction in anxiety scores.
Hypnosis Lowered Post-treatment Pain in Burn Injuries
Patients in the hypnosis group reported less post treatment pain than did patients in the control group. The findings are used to replicate earlier studies of burn pain hypnoanalgesia, explain discrepancies in the literature, and highlight the potential importance of motivation with this population.
Hypnosis Lowered Phantom Limb Pain
Hypnotic procedures appear to be a useful adjunct to established strategies for the treatment of phantom limb pain and would repay further, more systematic, investigation. Suggestions are provided as to the factors which should be considered for a more systematic research program.
Hypnosis Has a Reliable and Significant Impact on Acute and Chronic Pain
Hypnosis has been demonstrated to reduce analogue pain, and studies on the mechanisms of laboratory pain reduction have provided useful applications to clinical populations. Studies showing central nervous system activity during hypnotic procedures offer preliminary information concerning possible physiological mechanisms of hypnotic analgesia. Randomized controlled studies with clinical populations indicate that hypnosis has a reliable and significant impact on acute procedural pain and chronic pain conditions. Methodological issues of this body of research are discussed, as are methods to better integrate hypnosis into comprehensive pain treatment.
Hypnosis is a Powerful Tool in Pain Therapy and is Biological in Addiction to Psychological
Attempting to elucidate cerebral mechanisms behind hypnotic analgesia, we measured regional cerebral blood flow with positron emission tomography in patients with fibromyalgia, during hypnotically-induced analgesia and resting wakefulness. The patients experienced less pain during hypnosis than at rest. The cerebral blood-flow was bilaterally increased in the orbitofrontal and subcallosial cingulate cortices, the right thalamus, and the left inferior parietal cortex, and was decreased bilaterally in the cingulate cortex. The observed blood-flow pattern supports notions of a multifactorial nature of hypnotic analgesia, with an interplay between cortical and subcortical brain dynamics. Copyright 1999 European Federation of Chapters of the International Association for the Study of Pain.
Hypnosis Useful in Hospital Emergency Rooms
Hypnosis can be a useful adjunct in the emergency department setting. Its efficacy in various clinical applications has been replicated in controlled studies. Application to burns, pain, pediatric procedures, surgery, psychiatric presentations (e.g., coma, somatoform disorder, anxiety, and posttraumatic stress), and obstetric situations (e.g., hyperemesis, labor, and delivery) are described.
Significantly More Methadone Addicts Quit with Hypnosis. 94% Remained Narcotic Free
Significant differences were found on all measures. The experimental group had significantly less discomfort and illicit drug use, and a significantly greater amount of cessation. At six month follow up, 94% of the subjects in the experimental group who had achieved cessation remained narcotic free.
Hypnosis Shows 77 Percent Success Rate for Drug Addiction
Treatment has been used with 18 clients over the last 7 years and has shown a 77 percent success rate for at least a 1-year follow-up. 15 were being seen for alcoholism or alcohol abuse, 2 clients were being seen for cocaine addiction, and 1 client had a marijuana addiction
Raised Self-esteem & Serenity. Lowered Impulsivity and Anger
In a research study on Self-hypnosis for relapse prevention training with chronic drug/alcohol users. Participants were 261 veterans admitted to Substance Abuse Residential Rehabilitation Treatment Programs (SARRTPs). individuals who used repeated self-hypnosis "at least 3 to 5 times a week," at 7-week follow-up, reported the highest levels of self-esteem and serenity, and the least anger/impulsivity, in comparison to the minimal-practice and control groups.
Hypnosis For Cocaine Addiction Documented Case Study
Hypnosis was successfully used to overcome a $500 (five grams) per day cocaine addiction. The subject was a female in her twenties. After approximately 8 months of addiction, she decided to use hypnosis in an attempt to overcome the addiction itself. Over the next 4 months, she used hypnosis three times a day and at the end of this period, her addiction was broken, and she has been drug free for the past 9 years. Hypnosis was the only intervention, and no support network of any kind was available.
Healed 41% faster from fracture
Healed significantly faster from surgery
Two studies from Harvard Medical School show hypnosis significantly reduces the time it takes to heal. Study 1: Six weeks after an ankle fracture, those in the hypnosis group showed the equivalent of eight and a half weeks of healing. Study 2: Three groups of people studied after breast reduction surgery. Hypnosis group healed "significantly faster" than supportive attention group and control group.
Surgery
Would you take a pill that promised to speed you through surgery? Would you take a pill that's been tested on hundreds of surgical patients and all but one of them maintained stable vital signs during their operation - no sudden high blood pressure- and all needed far less pain medication than patients who did not take the pill-much reduced pain after surgery, and there's more. The surgeons were able to complete the operation quicker in the patients who had the pill.
I suspect if there was such a pill every HMO would insist upon it. After all, they'd save money on medications and on time spent in the operating room. The 'pill' that's been proved to have this effect is hypnosis!
In the April 29, 2000 edition of the scholarly medical journal, the Lancet, Dr. Elvira Lang of Harvard University published her study of clinical trials using hypnosis before surgery. People who had been hypnotized prior to surgery needed less pain medication, left the operating room sooner, and had more stable vital signs during their operation.
Children and Surgery
Prior to surgery twenty six children were hypnotized and twenty six others, who were the same age and having the same surgery, were not hypnotized. The hypnosis group was taught self-hypnosis (guided imagery) and given the hypnotic suggestion that they would recover easily and quickly. After all the children were recovered it was determined that those who had been hypnotized had less pain, needed fewer pain killers, and went home days earlier than those in the non-hypnosis group. Also, those in the hypnosis group were calm, while those in the other group were anxious, even after the surgery.
This study was done by Sally Lambert at the Rainbow Babies and Children’s Hospital in Cleveland, Ohio.
Kids and Spinal Taps
Dr. Christina Liossi, from the University of Wales, documents a study of 80 hospitalized children who had cancer and were having lumbar punctures. Half of the kids were hypnotized to control pain and then taught self-hypnosis, too. The hypnotized group reported far less pain during the procedure and also suffered less cancer-related pain.
Hair Pulling
A study of children with trichotillomania appeared in the medical journal, Acta Paediatrica, 88 (4) pp. 407-410. Children who were hypnotized to stop pulling their hair remained able to refrain from doing so for 16 months, after just a few hypnotic sessions. The authors, H. Cohen, A. Barzilal, and E. Lahat at the Pediatric Ambulatory Center, in Petach Tikva, Israel, suggest that doctors consider hypnosis and not medication as the primary treatment for compulsive hair pulling.
Research was done to determine the effectiveness of hypnosis in treating trichotillomania, compulsive hair pulling, in children. The children were hypnotized and then taught self-hypnosis so they could re-hypnotize themselves at home on a daily basis. The children who had trichotillomania without depression recovered well. Those who had depression were only partially successful.
This study was done by Dr. Daniel Kohen, University of Minnesota in Minneapolis.
Your Brain, Hypnotized
Positron Emission Tomography (PET scans) show us that hypnosis actually alters brain processes. In one study, hypnotized subjects immersed their hands in very hot, almost boiling, water. They were hypnotized to believe the water was lukewarm. Their brains processed their perception as if there were no pain and also altered blood flow in the pain-related parts of the brain. In another study people were hypnotized to believe they were looking at a colorful pattern when they were actually shown only a black and white page. Not only did they all believe they saw color, but they activated the parts of their brain that get activated during color perception.
Headaches
Patients with migraine headaches had a group hypnosis session and then were given pre-recorded self-hypnosis tapes to take home. On the self-hypnosis tapes they were given imagery of wearing a helmet that was very cold because it had freezer coils inside it. They were also taught how to relax themselves using hypnosis. Before joining this research study all the patients agreed to keep written records for three months. During those three months they listed every migraine they had and how long it lasted, how severe it was, and how much medication they needed.
For three months the patients listened to their hypnosis tapes, which put them into a hypnotic state. At the end of three months the data from the first three months was compared to the data of the three months during which they used self-hypnosis.
During those last three months:
∑ The headaches occurred less often
∑ When the headaches did appear they went away quicker
∑ The headaches were less severe
∑ Medication use was cut in half
Irritable Bowel Syndrome
Fifty patients suffering from irritable bowel syndrome were asked to fill out questionnaires about their symptoms. Half of the patients were hypnotized and half were not. After a few months new questionnaires determined that the patients who had been hypnotized had less abdominal pain, less bloating, less nausea, less gas pain, and fewer backaches. Additionally, the hypnotized patients said they felt more in control of their lives and did not call in sick as often as they did before having the hypnosis. Also, they did not need to visit their doctors as often as they did before the hypnosis. The patients in the study who did not receive hypnosis did not show these improvements. This study proves that hypnosis not only relieves symptoms of irritable bowel syndrome, but also improves quality of life for those patients.
This study was conducted by Dr. Whorwell, University Hospital of South Manchester, in the United Kingdom.
(This next study replicated the results of a previous, similar research study)
Patients suffering from irritable bowel syndrome were treated with hypnosis. Eighty two percent of the patients improved. Patients were less anxious, had less abdominal pain, less bloating, less constipation and less gas. Even those patients who were not very hypnotizable had good results.
Hypnosis is an effective treatment for irritable bowel syndrome.
Psoriasis
Patients suffering from psoriasis were hypnotized and some patients had quite an improvement. The patients who improved were those who were very hypnotizable. Those who were moderately hypnotizable did not improve. Hypnosis may be useful with psoriasis patients who are very hypnotizable.
Fertility
Prof. Levitas, of Soroka Hospital in Israel, studied a group of women having in-vitro fertilization (IVF). In the group selected for hypnosis, right before the embryos were being transferred into the woman's uterus, she was hypnotized to relax during the implantation procedure. In this study twice as many women in the group who were hypnotized actually became pregnant. In the group where the women were told to relax but were not hypnotized, half as many became pregnant.
Pre-Term Labor
Pregnant women who begin to go into labor long before their ninth month are said to have preterm labor. Patients who had preterm labor were hypnotized and given suggestions to keep their cervix firm and hard to hold the baby in the uterus. Hypnosis was continued until the contractions stopped. Patients were seen for hypnosis two or three times each day and then given audio tapes to play several times a day. Seventy percent of the hypnotized patients were able to prolong their pregnancies. Only twenty percent of the women who were not hypnotized were able to prolong their pregnancies. Hypnosis can help prevent premature births.
Bereavement
Hypnosis has been used to help bereaved people get through mourning. In this article a widow is treated with hypnosis. Hypnotic relaxation is recommended for the first stages of grief, then supportive suggestions, and finally a new way to look at her relationship with her husband is recommended. All the above is done with the aid of hypnosis, and then the patient is hypnotized to strengthen her ego and look toward the future.
Hypnosis is an effective tool in bereavement counseling.
Orthopedics
Patients who were healthy, but had a broken bone in their foot, were recruited from an orthopedic emergency room. They all received regular orthopedic care, but half of them were given hypnosis, too. The hypnosis consisted of individual sessions and a hypnosis audio tape to be played at home. After 9 weeks, x-rays and clinical assessments of the foot showed that the patients who were hypnotized were healing faster. The hypnotized patients had improved ankle mobility, an easier time walking down stairs, and had a decreased need for painkillers. Hypnosis can be used to enhance fracture healing.
Pain
Before having dental surgery patients listened to a 20 minute hypnosis audio tape. The tape put them into a hypnotic state and then told them that during the procedure they would be able to control bleeding from their gums, they would heal rapidly, and would easily cope with pain. Patients were told to listen to their tape every day for one week prior to the surgery. The dental surgeon performed similar operations on patients who listened to the tape and patients who were not given a tape. The dentist did not know which patients had tapes and which did not. After the surgery it was determined that patients who had been hypnotically prepared experienced less anxiety, and needed much less pain medication. This study proves that a properly designed audio tape can be an effective intervention.
This study was conducted by Bjorn Enqviast, DDS, in Stockholm, Sweden.
Severely burned patients were hypnotized to feel less pain, in addition to receiving their regular dosages of | | | |