Dr Kathy Sykes investigated hypnosis from a personal viewpoint.  She wondered whether she was hypnotisable, how effective this hypnosis really was and whether there was any scientific proof to its methods.  Self-admittedly, she is a bit of a control freak.

To begin with, the observation.  Sykes watched a comedy stage hypnotist at work first of all, which she found entertaining but wasn’t convinced it was a real experience.  She then saw a policeman hypnotised to quit smoking (a free service from the police service now) and a lady in a weight loss class be hypnotised to think of corned beef rather than chocolate.

Wondering whether this was purely suggestive power at work, she then decided to seek some more scientific evidence.  Meeting a gentleman from the University of Hull, he showed her the research we discussed last week, proving that different parts of the brain can be activated under hypnosis in different types of suggestion.

A more cynical viewpoint, a scientist in America, who was also a magician, showed Sykes a few magic tricks that seemed to prove that it was all about what the mind focuses on suggesting that hypnosis and hypnotherapy is therefore about focusing the mind.

This same gentleman then proceeded to place Sykes into a hypnotic state and tried various suggestion techniques on her.  She was disappointed to find it didn’t work and wondered if she was merely not suggestible enough, although she did enjoy the experience and the feeling of hypnosis.

Continuing the observation but from a more thereapeutic point of view, Sykes then visited Scotland to watch a lady have her two front teeth, removed, drilled and replacements fitted, all without the use of anaesthetic.  It made gruesome viewing but the lady didn’t feel a thing.

Further experiments involving pain and hypnosis ensued to discover how important the placebo effect was in all of this.

Bearing in mind this was a one hour opening episode of a series that aims to test alternative therapies using both experiments and science, it was a long ride.  They fit a lot into that hour and sometimes it did drag a little.  There wasn’t too much science, but then it was meant to Sykes experiencing these things for herself and observing how others reacted.

As is normal with any examination of hypnotherapy, Sykes didn’t come up with any conclusive thoughts or proof, probably because hypnotherapy works differently with different kinds of people.  As she said, Sykes thought there was definitely something there and some usful therapeutic benefits, but as we thought, nothing conclusive.

Brain scans showed that the part of the brain used to see colour was activated, showing that they were able to ’see’ colour in their minds.

The full story will be shown on Monday 17th March on BBC2 in their Alternative Therapies series. The programme will also show Kathy Sykes, Professor of Science and Society at Bristol University, discovering hypnosis for herself.

When you’re stressed, extra immune cells are released and it is thought that these may be what kills certain liver cells.  It is  also thought possible that these inhibit the flow of blood between the brain and the liver, worsening liver disease.

Anti-stress therapies, such as hypnotherapy, acupuncture, even a massage, can stimulate a nerve called the vague nerve, which helps to counter the stressful effect on the liver.

To help minimise the effects of stress on the liver, you should eat lecithins, contained in foods such as egg yolk, soy beans and sunflower seeds – and of course, have plenty of de-stressing therapy.

You can read the full story online

The study showed that when the patients were x-rayed six weeks after the break, they were three weeks ahead in the healing process than patients who only had the traditional plaster.

The study appears to suggest that hypnosis could help bones to heal faster.

75 adults were split into three groups.  One group was put on a ten week waiting list whilst their symptoms were monitored.  Another group received the standard cognitive behavioural therapy and a third group received a therapy session once every four weeks over four months, where they practiced relaxation and problem solving techniques for their own use.

Unsurprisingly, groups two and three showed significant improvement, and Lackner reported the results at a meeting of GI professionals.

A pair of Swedish studies was also presented at that same meeting, which involved hypnosis.  Patients received gut-directed hypnotherapy and showed great improvement.  UNC’s Palsson noted that hypnosis has improved the symptoms of the majority of IBS patients in all studies where it was included and went further to say that if a patients suffered from irritable bowel syndrome that had shown no improvement through the diet and drug approach, he would recommend either hypnosis or CBT.

Palsson went a step further to state that if a patient wanted substantial relief from IBS symptoms then he believed hypnosis to be the better choice according to the research literature, whereas CBT was equally or possibly better for the mental wellbeing with coping with the illness.

Read more in the APP article

Often the anxiety and stress associated with the treatment of cancer can be worse than the cancer itself, and one particular young girl of just eight years old was struggling to cope with the stress leading up to her chemotherapy treatment.

Eight year old Holly was taught several self-hypnosis techniques to distract her from both the pain and the stress.

A 1991 study in the Oncology Nursing Forum showed that children have the ability to learn self-hypnosis much faster than adults, probably because they use their imagination more often and have not yet developed the analytical skills that can stand in an adult’s way.

In 1986, another study in Advances in Developmental and Behavioural Pediatrics, 45 cancer patients were split into two groups.  One group was given hypnosis and the other was given visual distraction and fear control methods.  Both groups felt less pain but only the hypnosis group said they felt less anxiety.

In America, Rebecca Kajander specializes in teaching children how to deal with stress and says children nowadays are more prone to stress than we might think. Signs of tension include problems sleeping, headaches, stomach upsets and more as they struggle to cope with exam pressure, modern day problems like divorce, parent’s long working hours, materialism and the publicity surrounding internet scares and terrorism.

Kajander teaches the children how to spot their own signs of tension or anxiety and different simple techniques to stop it building. The mind-body connection is nothing new, as we discussed in our earlier article Accepting The Mind Body Link, and aside from hypnosis, disciplines like pure meditation and yoga have long embraced the idea.

Your mental attitude really can affect your physical symptoms, whether you believe that it’s the physical symptom itself that has been relieved or purely your attitude towards it that has altered your perception. As one of Kajander’s child patients was quoted in an article:

I was skeptical about that (positive self-talk), but I’ve found it’s really true… My attitude would really affect how my neck felt. If I wake up and have a headache and think, ‘Oh, it’s going to be a bad day,’ it’s different than waking up and thinking, ‘I have a headache and I’m going to have to manage this.’

It can be difficult to ‘talk yourself’ into these techniques and often a little help is needed, such as that provided by Kajander and her team. Under hypnosis, a hypnotherapist can help the process and can teach you self-hypnosis. It takes practice but the benefits can be enormous.

As with many areas of hypnosis, there has been very little research into this technique but there has been one four year study by the charity Barnardo’s Nova Trauma Support Services (NTSS).

The NTSS operate mainly in Northern Ireland, helping victims and their families through psychological trauma.

Over the four years, lead clinician Martin Murphy and the NTSS team worked with forty seven sufferers and the results of the study were published in the Human Given Journal (Vol 14, 2007). 57% of the sufferers were treated using purely the Rewind Technique. Twenty six of them would have met the criteria for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Following treatment, none of the forty seven met the PTSD criteria.

Murphy suggests that the treatment is suitable for all ages from as low as 8 to as high as patients in their 70’s and was quoted as saying:

the case notes repeatedly identified not only relief from symptoms but also the emergence of qualitative positive changes in the individual’s daily lives

The majority of hypnotherapy courses will include the rewind technique as one of the basics of their student’s study.

One particular hypnosis study took brain scans of two groups of people that were hypnotised to forget and recall. The study group was tested for their susceptibility to hypnosis. According to the results, the group was split into a susceptible group and non-susceptible group.

Each group was shown the same short video of a day in the life of a woman. A week later, they were placed in a scanner to monitor brain activity and hypnotised. During the hypnosis, it was suggested to them that they would forget having seen the video. A cue was also planted which would reverse the suggestion and enable them to remember the video.

After this hypnosis session, the groups were tested for their ability to recall the video. As expected, the susceptible group showed less recall ability than the non-susceptible group.

The brain scan analysis of the susceptible group showed suppressed activity in certain areas of the brain whilst the memory was being suppressed. Once the memory was restored, the activity in those areas increased again.

The researchers wrote that the induced amnesia

“affects an executive preretrieval monitoring process, which produces an early decision on whether to proceed or not on retrieval, and in case of a [question about the movie], aborts the process.”

An overview of the study was published in Science Daily. Further studies are needed, but researchers hope that this study may go partway in helping understand real-life, clinical amnesia.

Diet changes, Anti-acid tablets or juices are often all that is recommended and don’t always do the job.  However, hypnosis has proved effective in many cases.

Dr Whorwell and his team at Manchester’s Wythenshawe Hospital have used hypnosis on irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) sufferers for many years and find it can be effective for general indigestion too and the benefits seem to last.

The hospital conducted a study of 126 patients who suffered from indigestion that didn’t seem to have a cause and offered them a choice of three treatments: hypnotherapy, anti-acid or counseling.  The results were astounding.  73% of the hypnosis group said their symptoms improved and at a 40 week follow up they had needed no drug treatment.  Compare that to the 43% for anti-acid treatment and 34% for counseling, 80-90% of which needed drug treatment in the 40 weeks leading up to their follow up check.

Dr Martin Sarner, secretary of the Digestive Disorders Foundation, says that the mind can affect the stomach in many ways.  Studies have shown an increase in brain activity in one particular area of the brain for IBS sufferers, adding further weight to the argument that the mind is linked to gut functionality.

Unfortunately, although the NHS now has a hypnotherapy register, getting hypnosis on the NHS is still difficult and infrequent as it is costly, time-consuming and there is still little research being done.  However, after being checked for obvious causes such as a stomach ulcer, sufferers can ask your GP to refer them to a hypnotherapist.