Hypnosis is used to reduce the amount of intravenous anaesthesia required to perform liposuction surgery. The patient listens to a hypnotic audiocassette tape intraoperatively.

This explains the procedure to the patient. First, relaxation techniques are used to comfort and relax the patient. The patient is then guided to experience his or her favourite place and then progressed through future positive imagery. Posthypnotic suggestions for healing and recovery are incorporated and distraction techniques are used to dissociate the patient from the procedure. The doctor has used this hypnotic tape for more than 300 patients and there has either been a marked reduction in the amount of intravenous medication needed, or frequently no intravenous medication has been needed at all. The patient returns to the recovery area fully awake and ready for discharge.

Hypnosis has been shown to be an effective method for controlling cancer pain. The techniques most often employed involved physical relaxation coupled with imagery that provides a substitute focus of attention for the painful sensation. !0-years follow-up of a randomised trial involving 86 women with cancer showed that a year of weekly “supportive/expressive” group therapy significantly increased survival duration and time from recurrence to death. This intervention encourages patients to express and deal with strong emotions and also focuses on clarifying doctor-patient communication. Numerous studies suggest that suppression of negative effect, excessive conformity, severe stress, and lack of social support predict a poorer medical outcome from cancer.

A way to put a person in a hypnotized state is through induction, a deeply relaxing and beneficial state to anyone suffering from anxiety. Next, the hypnotherapist will use suggestions for relaxation, such as feeling restful heaviness in the body or the use of imagination.

The ability for a patient to become hypnotized depends on “hypnotizability”—which refers to how hypnotized a person can be. Absorption and “belief” in hypnosis are related to the amount of resistance the person may experience, and how beneficial the hypnosis session will be.

Some people are naturally more hypnotizable than others. Research has found evidence that the ability to be hypnotized is linked with different traits and abilities. For example, people who tend to get more absorbed in their thoughts are more likely to be hypnotizable. Other studies have shown that imagination also plays a role.

Ultimately, those who are more hypnotizable have more efficient use of cognitive resources.

Studies have shown that hypnosis may be related to better concentration and a more efficient use of cognitive resources when dealing with information.

Despite advances in molecular biology and therapeutics, cancer continues to be a major source of morbidity and mortality. The diagnosis and treatment are often stressful, and high levels of psychological and psychiatric disorders have been reported consistently over the last 20 years. However, there is evidence that much of this distress is preventable by providing a support service that is open-access and fully integrated functionally and geographically with other parts of cancer services. One study has a proven evidence that relaxation therapy, guided imaginary and hypnotherapy can be very beneficial in helping patients cope with the diagnosis and treatment. Intriguingly, there is some evidence that they may prolong life, although further studies are required to clarify this. In the meantime, however, it is clear that much can be done to prevent, as well as treat, cancer-related problems.

Hypnosis and hypnotherapy in handling Unfinished business in Bereavement.

For many years hypnosis and hypnotherapy are used to help people to overcome their grief and sorrow triggered by the loss of their loved ones.

Kim suffered from complicated bereavement due to her husband’s sudden death in a traffic accident and her mother’s suicide a within a few months. Hypnosis was used with deep relaxation and grief psychotherapy to achieve imaginative involvement, subjective reality, and constrictive memory to help her to complete the unfinished business. After only two hypnotic sessions, there was significant improvement in her emotional distress and fixation. On the grief journey, Kim was able to achieve a psychological closure to the multiple losses. She learned to let go of sorrow and to divert energy to other positive life aspects. (Ho, Salina. Nov.2007)

Uses of hypnotherapy in chronic pain reduction.

Hypnosis has been described as “attentive receptive focal concentration” with

the trance state being a “normal activity of a normal mind” which occurs

regularly, as when reading an absorbing book, watching an engrossing movie,

daydreaming, or performing monotonous activity. A common assumption is

that, during hypnosis, the subconscious mind is in a suggestible state while the

conscious mind is distracted or guided to become dormant.

The evidence for hypnosis in chronic pain management has improved

significantly over the past 20 years. Studies have shown that hypnosis therapy

is highly effective in the reduction of pain, although outcomes may vary

between individuals. Hypnosis treatment can lead to long-term changes in

how the brain processes sensory information in a small group of patients’

studies. These results have important implications for how clinicians can help

their clients experience maximum benefits from hypnosis and the treatments

that include hypnotic components.

Under hypnosis, singer warbles through throat surgery to protect vocal cords

REUTERS

PARIS – A professional singer said she sang through a throat surgery carried out under hypnosis in France to ensure that doctors did not harm her vocal cords.

Alama Kante, 31, who is from Guinea and specializes in traditional African songs, revealed the operation more than two months after it took place in April, saying earlier this week she was now fully healed.

“I remember (during surgery) this voice singing all the time, my voice going around in my head because I said to myself it is out of the question that I lose my voice,” said Kante, who lives in France and is the niece of Guinean singer Mory Kante.

The procedure to remove her thyroid gland, whose cells had become enlarged and was thus a cancer risk, was unorthodox. The operation is usually conducted under anesthetic, with a tube inserted down the throat.

Recognizing that the tumor extraction might truncate Kante’s singing range and that the tube might damage vocal cords and important nerves, Dr. Gilles Dhonneur opted for medical hypnosis to allow the patient to remain awake and able to respond during the procedure.

Dhonneur, head of anesthesiology at the Henri-Mondor de Cretail Hospital outside Paris, has been perfecting the technique of medical hypnosis for two years. “The pain of such an operation is unbearable if you’re conscious,” Dhonneur told Le Parisian daily. “Only medical hypnosis would allow someone to tolerate such an ordeal.”

Kante remembers the hypnotist telling her that the pain she felt was that of childbirth, and remembers the song lyrics she sang to help control it: “Fight, never give up . . .”

“There was a moment where I really felt pain . . . and it passed, the pain passed and afterwards it was normal, as if I were in a dream,” said Kante.

Hypnobirthing proved such a big success for one mother she decided to become a instructor.

Emma-Jane Cunningham, from Northampton, is a mum to three children; James, seven, Thomas, four, and Benjamin, two.

She used the hypnobirthing method for her third son’s delivery and claims it made a huge difference and was ‘relaxing’.

Emma says the experience was ‘truly life changing’ so she decided she wanted to make other women’s labours as free from pain and stress-free as possible.

On her website, www.beautiful beginning.co.uk, she states: “Hypnobirthing with Beautiful Beginning is a complete antenatal education programme, a fresh and modern approach to teach yourself and your birthing partner the  specialised skills of self-hypnosis, relaxation, breathing, imagery and soothing stroke techniques (alongside the theory!), for a calm and more comfortable pregnancy, labour and birth and yes a pain-free labour and birth is possible!

“A lot of people still have the  pre-conception that hypnobirthing is just for natural births but the classes I teach are just as much for a calm and relaxed pregnancy as it is for labour and birth. Therefore, which ever path your birthing  experience takes, you will be able to put the techniques you have learnt into practice.

“By attending my classes and with continued practice in your own time your mind, body, partner and baby will all be very well prepared for your imminent birth.”

Expectant mums can start taking the hypnobirthing course from 20 weeks into their pregnancy.

They, along with their partners, attend four sessions each of which lasts about one hour.

Emma explained hypnobirthing was first used in the 1960s but in the last decade has become more and more popular, especially in America.

She explained one of the worst things about giving birth was women thinking it was going to be painful and would hurt.

She said this feeling caused the body to tense, the muscles to not relax and for the expectant mother to hit what she described as ‘panic mode’.

Emma feels using hypnobirthing makes the experience more  comfortable, relaxing and something they would remember with joy.

She said: “All my three babies were born at home in a birth pool.

“You get taught how to be in  control, to be deeply relaxed and to breathe.

“The message we want the ladies to take on board is to think they are at a holiday cottage by the seas and are looking out on a cove of  confidence.

“We want all their fears and  anxieties to go away in a pool of confidence.

“We want them to feel calm and be happy.

“Why should the uterus become tense when it should be relaxed as its one main aim was to help give birth,

“When I used the hypnobirthing tapes they made a huge difference.

“What the sessions do is teach them to breathe properly during labour and to take away the fear they could have about any pain.

“We do not want to have them  hitting the panic mode which then causes them to panic and lose  control.

“I tried the hypnobirthing tapes during my second pregnancy but did not do it correctly.

“When I did use it properly it made a huge difference.”

Gastric Banding article in the Irish Times

Alan Gilchrist has been practising hypnotherapy in Belfast for almost three decades. Since then, he has seen it all, and helped people with everything from Troubles-related trauma to phobias about false teeth and spiders.

Five or six years ago he started getting requests for a new form of treatment: the virtual gastric band. Instead of opting for the real thing – a drastic form of surgery for weight loss, in which a silicone strap is clamped around the top of the stomach, reducing the amount of food the patient can eat – you could bypass the cost, the pain and the risk by persuading yourself, under hypnosis, that you have actually had the operation.

“It’s simple really,” says Gilchrist. “You trick the mind into thinking it can’t eat a big meal.” Now it is one of his most requested procedures, and, according to Gilchrist, it can be done in one 30-minute session.

Confident, personable and tanned from his frequent work trips abroad, Gilchrist likes things to happen fast.

“When I started, I worked in the area of analytical hypnotherapy, regressing back to childhood,” he says, “but then I developed my own techniques, focusing on people’s current problems. That’s where my fast-track hypnosis comes from: people want to get over their problem as fast as they can and get on with their lives.”

Depending on the nature of their difficulty and how deeply embedded it is, patients usually attend between one and four sessions with Gilchrist.

On the couch

A large black leather couch, low to the ground, dominates his clinic. His voice is soothing and reassuring. It is not hard to imagine being lulled into a profound state of relaxation, a pleasant dream state in which the mind becomes open, porous and susceptible to change.

It is one thing though to alter bad habits, such as smoking or nail-biting, by implanting positive suggestions in the unconscious, but I’m struggling with the idea of fooling your body into believing – quite literally, at a gut level – something radically false about itself. It seems almost too good to be true: a fast and easy solution to obesity with none of the risks.

Clinics across Ireland offer similar treatments, and there are numerous self-help versions of the “virtual band” hypnotic process.

Davina Taylor, from Co Wicklow, is a believer. “I have always struggled with my weight, so when my sister suggested hypnotherapy, I thought I’d try it. Afterwards, I did something that’s never happened before: I went to get some chocolate from the kitchen and came out with a bowl of chopped fruit instead.

“At work, I have a drawer full of goodies in my desk, but I found I didn’t want to take anything from it. It motivated me to exercise more, too. After three weeks, I’d lost 9lb.”

Did she believe she had actually undergone the operation? “No, I didn’t think of it like that. It was a physical thing. It was like your mind telling you that you didn’t need all that food.”

However, Taylor found that the effects of the treatment wore off with time. “I think for it to work, you would really need weekly top-ups, but I have no doubt that if I had stuck to it, I’d be a size eight today.”

Paul Hughes, a hypnotherapist in the south of England, argues that quick-fix techniques do not get to the bottom of a person’s relationship with food, therefore cannot be expected to solve the real problem.

“People get overweight for a reason, and it’s largely because they are emotionally dependent on food,” he says. “Weight loss takes effort on the part of the client, and the virtual band removes that responsibility. People need to find out why they allowed themselves to get into that state.”

Gilchrist measures his own success in testimonials. The walls of his waiting room are filled with handwritten hymns of praise from former clients, stories of the kilograms dropping off, week by week.

However, as he points out, while many prospective clients come in asking for the virtual band procedure, the vast majority opt for his standard weight- control programme, which uses visualisation techniques to promote a healthier approach to fitness and vitality, and implants the idea that low-calorie foods are more appealing.

Whether your gastric band is real or imaginary, it seems there is no answer to weight loss that does not involve effort and willpower. The mind may be powerfully suggestible under hypnosis, but it’s still up to you to do the work.

Hypnosis to help sleep

THURSDAY, June 19, 2014 (HealthDay News) -- A short session of hypnosis might lead to a better night's sleep, says a team of Swiss researchers.

After listening to a sleep-promoting audio tape containing hypnotic suggestion, women who are suggestible to hypnosis spent two-thirds less time awake, and about 80 percent more time in deep sleep compared to those who slept without the hypnotic suggestion.

"There have been many reports that hypnosis can be a good thing for promoting sleep," said study co-author Bjorn Rasch, a professor with the department of psychology in the division of biopsychology and methods at the University of Fribourg in Switzerland.

"However, usually they've been based on people just subjectively indicating how well they feel they've slept as a result," Rasch noted.

The new study is the first to assess via measures of brain-wave activity "the positive impact hypnosis has on deep sleep and to show that it is, in fact, real," he said.

At issue is the desire to boost so-called deep sleep, also known as slow-wave sleep.

This type of sleep "often correlates with the most restorative sleep -- it's a time for your brain to process and rejuvenate from the challenges of the day," explained Dr. Kim Hutchison, assistant professor of neurology and sleep medicine at the Oregon Health and Science University in Portland.

"Over the course of people's lives, with age, the amount of deep sleep drops off significantly. And by the time you're 50 or 60 you hardly have any, depending on the person," said Hutchison, who was not involved in the new research. "With age, non-refreshing sleep becomes a very common complaint, and one of the reasons can be not getting enough slow-wave sleep."

To explore how hypnotic suggestion might help improve deep sleep, the Swiss team enlisted 70 healthy Swiss women aged 18 to 35. All participated in a series of five in-laboratory experiments, successively staged once a week for five weeks.

None of the participants had any history of sleep trouble. None were taking any kind of sleep medication. Some of the women, however, were deemed (in pre-study testing) to be "highly suggestible" to hypnosis, while others were categorized as "low suggestible" patients.

For each experiment, the women were outfitted with electrodes to monitor brain-wave activity and sleep patterns.

While lying in a bed with the lights off, the women were exposed to varying audio tapes of about 13 minutes in length. Some provided a hypnotic suggestion to sleep deeper, while others were designed to be neutral in content.

The women were allowed to fall asleep during or after the audio feeds, and all were woken up after they had spent a total of 90 minutes napping.

Hypnosis did not improve sleep in those deemed low-suggestible to hypnosis, the study found. However, women in the highly suggestible group slept 67 percent more and saw their "deep sleep" time rise by roughly 80 percent following exposure to audio hypnosis.

Other phases of sleep did not appear to be affected by hypnotic suggestion. However, the team further observed that slow-wave activity during the deep sleep phase was "significantly enhanced" following hypnosis. This suggests that not only does hypnosis boost deep sleep quantity, it may also improve deep sleep quality.

The team acknowledged that the study only included female participants. This was by design because men have a tendency to be less suggestible to hypnosis overall. However, men who are highly suggestible would probably derive similar sleep benefits from hypnosis, Rasch's team said.

And given that roughly half the general population is believed to be moderately suggestible to hypnosis, the team concluded that hypnosis could ultimately prove to be a very useful -- and side-effect free -- way to help improve sleep.

"I have to emphasize that we did not focus on sleep-disorder patients," said Rasch. "These were all healthy people. So while our findings are really promising, we do not yet have proof that hypnosis will help people who suffer from sleep disturbances. I would say it would. But it's not yet proven," he added.

"Also, although the impact of hypnosis on suggestible people was really clear and, I would say, amazing, I do not think that hypnosis would ever completely replace the need for sleep medication for those who need it," Rasch said. "It could certainly reduce the need. But I don't expect miracles from hypnosis. It's a technique to consider. But in really strong cases of sleep disturbance a medical intervention might be necessary."

Hutchison believes hypnosis can play a role in helping some people sleep better.

"I have found hypnosis can be helpful, even for non-susceptible patients," she said. "Because it gives them something to focus on, and helps them to relax and quiet their mind before sleeping."

Hutchison added that "there's anecdotal evidence that the relaxation achieved can help improve sleep quality. In fact, I have been recommending sleep hypnosis phone apps for about the past five years."

Findings from the study were published this month in the journal Sleep.

Read more at http://www.philly.com/philly/health/topics/HealthDay688758_20140619_Hypnosis_May_Help_Improve_Deep_Sleep.html#3JJLHi3WQg1arZ4s.99

Children born to mothers who smoke during pregnancy have smaller brains and are more likely to suffer from anxiety and depression, according to research just published.

The findings published by Neuropsychopharmacology magazine last night in New York and London, followed research into more than 200 six to eight-year-old Dutch children.

The study found that tobacco affects the development of the foetus’s nervous system, partly because it interferes with the growth of neurons and partly because smoking narrows the blood vessels of the foetus.

Half of the mothers selected for the research smoked and half did not but the brains of the children of those who continued smoking were significantly smaller up to eight years later.

Equally, they showed greater levels of anxiety and depression because their brains’ superior frontal cortex, which regulates mood swings, had developed more poorly.

The study did “not demonstrate” a clear link between the number of cigarettes smoked, which varied from between just one a day to more than nine, but the length of time a mother continued to smoke was critical. Seventeen smokers quit when told that they were pregnant, though the research found that children were unaffected by their mothers’ habits if they quit early enough.

“Importantly, brain development in offspring of mothers who quit smoking during pregnancy resembled that of [mothers who never smoked] with no smaller brain volumes and no thinning of the cortex,” said the research led by Hanan El Marroun at Rotterdam’s Erasmus University Medical Centre.

The children selected for the research in September 2009 were subjected to MRI scans: “Children exposed to tobacco throughout pregnancy have smaller total brain volumes and smaller cortical grey matter volumes.

“Continued prenatal tobacco exposure was associated with cortical thinning, primarily in the superior frontal, superior parietal and precentral cortices. These children also demonstrated increased scores of affective problems,” according to the findings.

Responding to the research, Dr Simon Newell of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health in London said: “What was striking about this study was the alarming effect smoking had on the brain over six years later.”

Mothers-to-be should not smoke at all during pregnancy, he said.

Tue, Oct 8, 2013, 01:00

First published: Tue, Oct 8, 2013, 01:00

Smoking effects child's intelligence

When cancer clients/patients come into our consulting rooms they may expect miracles from hypnosis . Hypnosis is not magic, but its positive effects may sometimes seem nothing short of miraculous for the cancer client/patient in the way that it can help the patient cope with the diagnosis and treatment of cancer, and increase their self-efficacy. This paper will outline the use of psychological intervention and more specifically hypnosis with cancer clients/patients.

It is based on the workshop presented at the Australian Society of Hypnosis Congress in 2012 on Daydream Island. The workshop was divided into two parts. The first part was presented by Dr Norman Shum and discussed Zen Buddhism and meditation, and how meditation fits within Buddhist philosophy . It also included some aspects of psychological intervention, such as pain control, which for brevity purposes was included in this section . The second part focused exclusively on cancer and the use of hypnosis with cancer clients/patients, and was presented by Dr Sue Stefanovic.

Under hypnosis, singer warbles through throat surgery to protect vocal cords

On the couch

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