Salem Hypnosis Article: Time Magazine – Hypnosis and Pain Relief
The Right (and Wrong) Way to Treat Pain
HINT: IT TAKES MORE THAN A PRESCRIPTION PAD TO REALLY BRING RELIEF
By CLAUDIA WALLIS
Feb. 28, 2005
At leading pain centers, the goal is to fashion treatment that fits the patient’s condition.Modern pain management draws from a full range of options, from Advil and acupuncture to vitamins and self-hypnosis.
For more information on this topic you can go to the following link. Holistic Healing
Sources: Consumer Reports; Dr, Symour Diamond, National Headache Foundation; Dr. Scott Fishman, American Academy of Pain Medicine; Dr. John Klippel, Arthritis Foundation; Dr. Bill McCarberg, Kaiser Permanente; National Pain Foundation
Salem hypnosis article at Empowered Within
Hypnotized Brain Feels No Pain
Validating the technique for medicine, hypnosis shown to alter brain activity while reducing discomfort
Betterhumans Staff
3/15/2005 9:31 AM
Brain imaging has yielded insight into how hypnosis can work as an anesthetic while validating the technique for medicine. While hypnosis has been shown to reduce pain perception, it’s not clear how.
To help find out, researchers at the University of Iowa and the Technical University of Aachen, Germany used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) on volunteers under hypnosis.
They found that the volunteers had significant pain reduction in response to painful heat. They also had a distinctly different pattern of brain activity compared to when they experienced the heat while not hypnotized.
The changes suggest that hypnosis somehow blocks pain signals from getting to parts of the brain that perceive pain.
“The major finding from our study, which used fMRI for the first time to investigate brain activity under hypnosis for pain suppression, is that we see reduced activity in areas of the pain network and increased activity in other areas of the brain under hypnosis,” says Iowa researcher Sebastian Schulz-Stubner, the study’s first author.
Salem hypnosis article at Empowered Within
Getting sleepy
The study involved 12 volunteers at the Technical University of Aachen. Volunteers had a heating device placed on their skin to determine the temperature each considered painful and were then split into two groups. One group was hypnotized, placed in an fMRI machine and had brain activity scanned while painful heat was applied. Then the hypnotic state was broken and a second fMRI scan was performed with the same painful heat. The second group underwent their first fMRI scan without hypnosis followed by a second scan under hypnosis.
Hypnosis worked for all participants, who reported either no pain or significantly less pain while hypnotized.
With hypnosis, fMRI scanning showed that brain activity was reduced in areas of the body’s pain network, including the primary sensory cortex, which is responsible for pain perception. There was also increased activation in two other brain structures, the left anterior cingulate cortex and the basal ganglia.
“Imaging studies like this one improve our understanding of what might be going on and help researchers ask even more specific questions aimed at identifying the underlying mechanism,” says Schulz-Stubner. “More practically, for clinical use, it helps to dispel prejudice about hypnosis as a technique to manage pain because we can show an objective, measurable change in brain activity linked to a reduced perception of pain.”
The research is reported in the journal Regional Anesthesia and Pain Medicine (read abstract).
Salem hypnosis article at Empowered Within