Medical Research and News (that is, "Does it work?")
Scientific Evidence and Newspaper Articles Re: Hypnosis
Two Recent and Historic Events for Hypnotherapy:
The recent publication of a study by the Harvard Women’s Health Watch, as announced on WCAX-TV earlier this month, which found “that patients who are hypnotized before surgery require less sedation and experience less pain.”
Visit this site: www.health.harvard.edu/women
The first-time participation of hypnotherapists in Pain Week in September 2007. Pain Week is the annual conference of the American Society of Pain Educators, where hypnotherapists shared their expertise in relieving chronic pain.
Visit this site: www.paineducators.org/PainWeek.asp?id=78
NIH Studies & Other Clinical Trials
Teaching Self-Hypnosis to Kids Works a Charm: Medical Study for Habit Cough WebMD study: Click Here
Scientific Studies with Chronic Disease
The last time I went to the National Insitutes of Health (NIH) web site, a search on the word 'hypnosis' came up with 388 entries, including papers, speakers, and clinical trials reports. When I searched for 'hypnosis clinical trials,' 256 entries were listed.
Go to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) web site.
Once there,use their search function to explore all the different research being done at the NIH and the National Cancer Institute, and other health care research clinics, as well. There's LOTS of data; so don't let them tell you hypnosis is an unknown in medical contexts. Show them this link.
Other Articles and Research Topics and their links.
Let the Mind Help Tame an Irritable Bowel
By JANE E. BRODY
New York Times,Sept. 1, 2008
"If you've ever had butterflies in your stomach or an attack of nerves that sent you racing for the bathroom, you already know that the intestinal tract has a mind of its own. The millions who suffer from irritable bowel syndrome, or I.B.S., perhaps know it best....
"Dr. Charles D. Gerson, a gastroenterologist affiliated with Mount Sinai Medical Center, works with his wife, Mary-Joan Gerson, a psychotherapist, and their daughter, Jessica, a hypnotherapist, at the Mind-Body Digestive Center in New York.
"Dr. Gerson said in an interview that for patients who are seriously impaired by I.B.S., medications help but 'there is no magic pill .... Patients need a more holistic approach. Those who accept emotional as well as physical causes of their condition do better.'"While it is destructive for patients with I.B.S. to be told it is all in their heads, it is also wrong to ignore the psychosocial factors that play a role, he said.
'I tell patients that if they don't deal with the emotional factors that relate to their problem," Dr. Gerson said, "they are likely to continue to have symptoms.'... Through techniques like hypnotherapy and cognitive-behavioral therapy, it is possible to change how the brain perceives what is happening in the body.
"In hypnotherapy, patients learn to visualize their colon as functioning more normally.... "