Hypnotheraphy success for IBS

Really good article from the Manchester Evening News today:

DOCTORS using hypnotherapy to treat irritable bowel syndrome claim it works in 70 per cent of cases.

More than 60 patients with the condition, which can include pain, cramps, nausea, diarrhoea and constipation, are being treated by a hypnotherapist each week.

IBS affects up to 15 per cent of the population and the team at Wythenshawe Hospital now has people from across the country wanting to join the 18-month waiting list for a course of 12 hypnotherapy sessions.

Claire Brunton, 22, from Offerton, suffered cramps from IBS so badly that she stopped wanting to eat and was on the verge of anorexia. She also had panic attacks with worrying about becoming ill.

But during the hypnotherapy she learnt techniques to stop the panics and cope with the pain. Now a year after finishing the treatment, she found it helped her cope with final university exams and gave her the confidence to started working as a recruitment consultant.

Claire said: "Hypnotherapy is a very strange thing to try to describe, your therapist helps you to relax slowly but you are awake and conscious throughout - it feels like the last few moments before you go to sleep when you still know what is happening around you.

"IBS was taking over my life. I had started to worry I would not be able to hold down a job and I didn't want to eat because I felt like everything I ate made me sick, so I'd tried all kinds of herbal remedies and acupuncture before the hypnotherapy."

Hypnotherapy helps IBS

Gut-directed hypnotherapy is "highly effective" for children with long-standing abdominal pain or irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), researchers have found.

"We advocate that hypnotherapy become the treatment of choice in children with persisting complaints of either functional abdominal pain or IBS in whom first-line therapies such as education and dietary advice have failed," Dr Arine M. Vlieger of St. Antonius Hospital, Nieuwegein, and colleagues conclude in a report in the journal Gastroenterolog.

Hypnotherapy more successful

The researchers found that hypnotherapy was "highly superior" to standard care, yielding a significantly greater reduction in pain scores recorded in weekly stomach pain diaries.

At the one year follow up point, pain intensity scores had deceased from 13.5 to 1.3 in the hypnotherapy group and from 14.1 to 8.0 in the control group.

Moreover, 85 percent of children in the hypnotherapy group were considered successfully treated versus only 25 percent of children in the control group.

The team suggests further studies be conducted to see whether hypnotherapy might also be a treatment option for children with other gastrointestinal disorders. – (Reuters Health)

Full article may be read here