Hypnosis for Pain Control
For centuries hypnosis has been viewed as a magical cure-all, and has had a history of acceptance and rejection by the medical profession for over 200 years. Countless numbers of people have used hypnosis with great success; it has been put under the microscope and reviewed many times over.
Just a few years ago it was said that hypnosis was bad and didn’t exist! Whilst at the same time Dr’s of Psychology were achieving amazing results utilizing hypnosis techniques.
Going back just a couple of hundred years we have documented evidence from Friederich Anton Mesmer; who in the 18th Century, believed Mesmerism would hinder the development of disease and had success in curing various illnesses as well as helping people with pain control.
Then in 1834 an English surgeon John Elliotson used hypnosis for pain control and reported back to the British Medical Association at that time on his success in the numerous operations he performed. He said that these were done painlessly using mesmerism.
And in England around 1846, another surgeon James Braid revisited the phenomenon of Mesmerism and renamed it hypnosis, after the Greek god of sleep, Hypnos. He was the first person to attribute the phenomenon to psychological rather than physical variables and his findings brought a renewed interest in the subject. He documented over 345 major operations performed successfully and painlessly using hypnosis as the sole anesthetic.
Yet more research was completed in 1990, from the various trails undertaken The American Psychology Association came to the conclusion that hypnosis had a similar effect as the placebo effect; that the subjects beliefs that the hypnotic suggestions can reduce pain had the effect of reducing pain.
Here in the UK operations have been completed in modern hospitals using hypnosis for pain control. In July 2008 it was reported in the Daily Telegraph that “Bernadine Coady aged 67 was wide awake for the one-hour operation, which is usually performed under a general anaesthetic. Mrs Coady hypnotised herself before the "keyhole" surgery, an arthroscopy, in which a surgeon drills into a patients knee and inserts a camera to look for possible causes of pain. She went home the same day "looking very happy", according to a spokesman for the private Orthopaedics and Spine Specialist Hospital, in Peterborough, Cambridgeshire”.
The management of pain using hypnosis is in a strange position. Although hypnosis has been shown to be effective in many cases, it still tends to be overlooked. Regardless of the various conclusions made over time, hypnosis has been shown to be a useful tool for pain management in many situations with some articles suggesting that hypnosis is one of the great misunderstood treatments of our time. It has been shown to be an effective, safe, and inexpensive way in which patients can deal with pain; and is the perfect pain control for many procedures ranging from kidney stone fragmentation to minor surgery to childbirth it has proved an effective alternative to conventional sedatives and analgesics.
Contact Tina for information on how hypnosis can help you.