Altered States – Hypnosis Goes
Mainstream
Major Hospitals use Trances for…
Fractures, Cancer and Burns, Speeding Surgery Recoveries
The Wall Street Journal – October 7, 2003 Tuesday
by Michael Waldholz
Fractures, Cancer and Burns, Speeding Surgery Recoveries
The Wall Street Journal – October 7, 2003 Tuesday
by Michael Waldholz
Hypnosis, often misunderstood and
almost always controversial, is increasingly being employed in mainstream
medicine.
Numerous scientific studies have
emerged in recent years showing that the hypnotized mind can exert a real and
powerful effect on the body. The new findings are leading major hospitals to
try hypnosis to help relieve pain and speed recovery in a variety of illnesses.
At the University of North Carolina, hypnosis is transforming the treatment of
irritable bowel syndrome, and often-intractable gastro-intestinal disorder, by
helping patients to use their mind to quiet an unruly gut. Doctors at the
University of Washington's regional burn center in Seattle regularly use it to
help patients alleviate excruciating pain. Several hospitals affiliated with
Harvard Medical School are employing hypnosis to speed up post-surgical
recovery time. In one of the most persuasive studies yet, a Harvard researcher
reports that hypnosis quickened the typical healing time of bone fractures by
several weeks.
“Hypnosis may sound like magic, but
we are now producing evidence showing it can be significantly therapeutic,”
says David Spiegel, a Stanford University psychologist, “We know it works but
we don’t exactly know how, though there is some science beginning to figure
that out, too.”
Hypnosis can’t help everyone, many
practitioners say, and some physicians reject it entirely. Even those who are
convinced of its effect say some people are more hypnotizable than others,
perhaps based on an individual’s willingness to suspend logic or to simply be
open to the potential effectiveness of the process.
These days, legitimate hypnosis is often
performed by psychiatrists and psychologists though people in other medical
specialties are becoming licensed in it, too. It can involve just one session,
but often it takes several – or listening to a tape in which a therapist guides
an individual into a trance-like state. Whatever the form it is increasingly
being used to help women give birth without drugs, for muting dental pain,
treating phobias and severe anxieties, for helping people lose weight, stop
smoking or even perform better in athletics or academic tests. Many
health-insurance plans, even some HMOs, now will pay for hypnosis when part of
an accepted medical treatment.
Until the last decade, many
traditional science journals regularly declined to publish hypnosis studies,
and research funding was scarce. That’s changing. Dr. Spiegel, for instance, is
co-author of a widely referenced randomized trial involving 241 patients at
several prestigious medical centers. Published several years ago in the Lancet,
a respected medical journal, it found that patients hypnotized before surgery
required less pain medication, sustained fewer complications an left the
hospital faster than a similar group not given hypnosis.
Using new imaging and brain wave
measuring tools, Helen Crawford, and experimental psychologist at Virginia
Polytechnic Institute in Blacksburg, Va., Has shown that hypnosis alters brain
function, activating specific regions that control a person’s ability and it
can be quantified, “Dr. Crawford says.
Still, proponents say they typically
spend a great deal of time dispelling commonly held myths and answering
skeptics. Hypnosis they say cannot make people do or say something against
their will. Credible hypnotists don’t wave a watch in front of their clients,
as portrayed in many old movies. People who enter into a so-called hypnotic
trance are not, generally, put to sleep. On the contrary, practitioners say,
they refocus their concentration to gain greater control.
Even so, the field continues to be
hurt by quacks, says Marc Oster, president of the American Society of Clinical
Hypnosis. His group, along with the Society for Clinical and Experimental
Hypnosis, publishes research studies, conducts educational seminars for health
providers and certifies those who complete course work and meet other
standards. Dr. Oster suggests that people interested in hypnosis see a health
provider licensed in a medical discipline, who is also certified by one of the
hypnosis societies – someone who “uses hypnosis as an adjunct” to a principal
medical practice.
Everyday Trances
Researchers say that most people unwillingly enter into hypnosis like trances on their own in everyday life. When reading a riveting novel or watching a film or TV, many people are experiencing a trance-like state when they are so focused they become only vaguely aware of nearby noise, conversation or activity. In a dream, when someone imagines falling off a cliff and is startled awake by the sensation of falling, they are triggering the same mental machinery that in hypnosis allows the mind to influence the body, says Dabney Ewin, a psychiatrist at Tulane University Medical School.
Researchers say that most people unwillingly enter into hypnosis like trances on their own in everyday life. When reading a riveting novel or watching a film or TV, many people are experiencing a trance-like state when they are so focused they become only vaguely aware of nearby noise, conversation or activity. In a dream, when someone imagines falling off a cliff and is startled awake by the sensation of falling, they are triggering the same mental machinery that in hypnosis allows the mind to influence the body, says Dabney Ewin, a psychiatrist at Tulane University Medical School.
Katie Miley used self-hypnosis
taught to her by a Chicago area psychologist to help her give birth “without
being so anxious and without pain medication.” For weeks preceding the delivery
Dr. Miley herself a psychologist, used tapes provided by the therapist to
practiced slipping into a hypnotic state. During the birth, and as suggested by
the therapist, she muted the pain by imagining the contractions “as a warm
blanket enveloping me.” She says.
“It was weird,” she says. “I was
aware of everyone in the room and I was interacting, but mentally my focus was
elsewhere. And I just allowed the process to unfold.”
Some of the clearest clinically
measured results come from using hypnosis to mute severe and chronic pain – as
the University of Washington’s regional burn-treatment center in Seattle is
doing with burn patients. Patients sent there must undergo frequent therapy to
sterilize their damaged skin, and get new grafts. They must be awake and alert
during the treatment, and even the most powerful narcotic rarely diminish the
intense pain.
David Patterson, a psychologist at
the center, induces a hypnotic trance with a typical and relatively quick
technique. Patients are told to close their eyes, breathe deeply, and imagine
they are floating. Through a variety of verbal suggestion, Dr. Patterson then
helps the patient imagine themselves elsewhere, away from the treatment. “The
pain is still there, of course, but patients simply don’t experience it as
before, “he says.
While relieving physical pain is one
of the more common uses of hypnotism, it is also the hardest to explain. Dr.
Patterson and others report that hypnosis doesn’t appear to act on the body’s
natural pain-killing chemicals, the way drugs do. Instead, scientists believe,
through hypnosis a person can be trained to focus away from the pain, not on it
as most people usually do. Many athletes often unconsciously use such a
technique to play through severe pain, concentrating their attention on the
game or tasks ahead, instead of on their injury.
Recently, Dr. Patterson added
another tool to transport hypnotized patients to a “safer emotional
environment.” He and his colleagues created a virtual reality film; patients
placed in a helmet during therapy watch a three-dimensional depiction of a
snow-covered set of mountains and canyons. By interaction with the film,
patients can feel they are suspended over a cool and calming world. Michael
“Mac” MacAneny, one of the first burn patients to use the 3-D film, says he is
certain that “it saved my life.”
Early last year, Mr. MacAneny
sustained deep burns over 58% of his body when building a bonfire for his sons
in his backyard. A gas tank he was using suddenly exploded, enveloping him in
flames. Before Dr. Patterson began treating him, the 39-year Mr. MacAneny says
he dreaded his daily therapy, “freaking out” whenever the nurses came to get
him. Hypnotized and inside the 3-D virtual world, “I knew what was going on,
but I just didn’t pay attention to it,” he says.
Hypnosis, is some form or another,
has been used for more than 200 years. It began gaining credibility as a
medical tool in the early decades of the last century as psychiatry and
psychoanalysis began to show how the unconscious mind often rules daily life.
Its usefulness was cemented when combat physicians reported using it during
World War II for the wounded.
By 1958, as more doctors described
their experiences in the war, the American Medical Association certified the
technique as a legitimate treatment tool. Nevertheless, few doctors employed
it. But in 1996, a National Institutes of Health panel ruled hypnosis as an
effective intervention for alleviation pain from cancer and other chronic
conditions. These days, as many people accept that stress can exacerbate
illness, the potential curative power of hypnosis is becoming more acceptable,
too.
Healing the Body
Carol Ginandes, a Harvard psychologist at McLean Hospital in Boston, is trying to prove that “through hypnosis, the mind can have a potent effect not only on mental well-being but also on the acceleration of bodily healing itself.” She has co-written a study showing ankle fractures among patients receiving a hypnotic protocol healed weeks faster than usual and another study showing wound-healing benefits for hypnotized breast -cancer surgery patients. Though these studies were preliminary, Dr. Ginandes believes that hypnosis enabled her subject to stimulate the body’s own healing mechanism to work more efficiently.
Carol Ginandes, a Harvard psychologist at McLean Hospital in Boston, is trying to prove that “through hypnosis, the mind can have a potent effect not only on mental well-being but also on the acceleration of bodily healing itself.” She has co-written a study showing ankle fractures among patients receiving a hypnotic protocol healed weeks faster than usual and another study showing wound-healing benefits for hypnotized breast -cancer surgery patients. Though these studies were preliminary, Dr. Ginandes believes that hypnosis enabled her subject to stimulate the body’s own healing mechanism to work more efficiently.
Elvira Lang, director of
interventional radiology at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, has
made similar findings. She recently reported that hypnotized patients who must
remain awake during certain vascular and kidney procedures fared measurably
better than similar patients who didn’t undergo hypnosis. Still, says Dr. Lang,
until very recently, “I didn’t dare use the ‘H’ word around here.”
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