Hypnotherapy and
Hypnosis articles
Hypnosis 'helps reduce pain suffered by cancer
patients'
by Charles Arthur, Technology Editor, 10 September 2004, The
Independent.
Cancer patients should be offered hypnosis therapy to help reduce their
pain, researchers said yesterday after a series of scientific studies.
Tests with patients as young as six found they reported and showed less
discomfort when they were hypnotised or learnt how to hypnotise themselves.
The children were undergoing treatments such as lumbar punctures - where
a long needle is inserted into the spine - and who suffered continual
pain from cancer, said Dr Christina Liossi of the University of Wales
in Swansea at the British Association Science Festival in Exeter. "Hypnosis
improves the quality of life for children and adults with cancer," she
said. "It may also improve the length of life, though we are not yet sure
on that. We need to put it into clinical practice.
We now have experimental evidence that hypnosis is an intervention, at
least with children who undergo painful treatment procedures." Her call
came after the outcome of a study with 80 children in Greece, who clearly
showed less reaction to pain when hypnosis techniques were used. Children
who were not hypnotised, but simply engaged in comforting conversation,
reported and showed more pain than hypnotised ones.
Although hypnotism is often made available as an alternative therapy,
the work by Dr Liossi suggests that it should become part of standard
clinical practice. She is now about to start a second full study in Swansea.
Scientists agreed that after years when debate has raged over whether
hypnosis has a real basis or is just a pretence, there is now clear data
showing that important brain functions change when somebody "goes under"
a hypnotist's spell. "Brain scans show that in hypnosis there's a disconnection
by a part of the brain called the anterior cingulate gyrus, which monitors
what we are doing in the here and now," said Dr Peter Naish of the Open
University.
"In stage hypnosis, the reason why people can do outrageous things that
they wouldn't normally do is that that structure, which monitors the emotional
consequences of our future behaviour - what if I do this or that - doesn't
understand the consequences of following the hypnotist's instructions."
Scientists are less clear how hypnotism works in the easing of pain -
although they now feel sure that it does. "Studies in the US show that
rather than ignoring pain, hypnotised patients appear to be attending
to it, focusing on the pain in order to deal with it," said Dr Naish.
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