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By David
Noonan Sept. 27, 2004
Hypnosis can help with problems from anxiety to pain. How it works,
and what it does in the brain.
- At 27, Beth, an Indiana housewife, came down with chronic
diarrhea that plagued her for the next three years. "I knew
where every bathroom in town was," she says with a laugh. But it
was no joke. "I didn't really want to go out at night because
it's just not fun." Doctor after doctor told her it was
stress-related. She tried diet changes and medicines, but nothing
helped. Then she went to see Dr. Marc Oster, a Chicago-area
psychologist. After 12 sessions of hypnosis with Oster, during which
Beth explored the traumatic events that preceded her illness
(including her husband's agonizing two-week stay in a burn unit), the
problem disappeared. Two years later Beth (who asked that her last
name not be used) tried hypnosis during the birth of her second
child. Three years after that she went back again, this time to deal
with her fear of flying. Could there be more hypnosis in her future?
"If the need ever arises, you bet," says Beth, now 38.
Despite widely held misconceptions about hypnosis (in part because of
its long history as a type of entertainment), a growing body of
research supports the ancient practice as an effective tool in the
treatment of a variety of problems, from anxiety to chronic pain.
Today, as practitioners work to assess and refine the clinical
applications of hypnosis, they are also exploring its underlying
mechanisms, using state-of-the-art imaging technology to document
changes in the brain that occur when someone is in a hypnotic state.
This increased understanding of how hypnosis works and what it does
makes it a legitimate option for patients whose needs have not been
met by more traditional methods.
To appreciate the therapeutic potential of hypnosis, you first have
to forget about things like swinging watches and hapless audience
members who prance around onstage, crowing like roosters. "One
of the interesting ironies about hypnosis is that old fantasy that it
takes away control," says Dr. David Spiegel, professor and
associate chair of psychiatry at Stanford University School of
Medicine and a leading expert on the practice. "It's actually a
way of enhancing people's control, of teaching them how to control
aspects of their body's function and sensation that they thought they couldn't."
Hypnosis is "a form of highly focused attention," says
Spiegel-an induced state of mind that enables people to alter the way
they perceive and process reality. During a typical session, the
doctor guides the subject into a state of receptive concentration,
asking him to imagine he is in a safe and comfortable place. Once the
patient is in a state of hypnosis, the practitioner makes specific
suggestions-a hockey player with back spasms was told that when his
pads touched his back, the muscles relaxed-to address the problem.
(This focus on a problem distinguishes hypnosis from more passive
states, like meditation.) The doctor then terminates the trance and
teaches the patient how to use self-hypnosis to reactivate and
maintain the therapeutic effect. The benefits can last for years.
Besides pain management and stress reduction, habit control is
another popular clinical application of hypnosis; it's routinely used
by people who want to quit smoking. It has also been used
successfully as an alternative to sedation during invasive medical
procedures like angiography. And at the University of Pennsylvania
School of Medicine, Dr. Peter Bloom, clinical professor of psychiatry
and past president of the International Society of Hypnosis,
sometimes uses it to enhance therapy sessions. "Hypnosis allows
us to interact with the people who seek our care in more than one
dimension," says Bloom. "It involves the totality of the
person. Clinically, when I get stuck, I use hypnosis and see if that
gives me a different way of linking up with them." As it is
practiced by medical professionals like Bloom and Spiegel, hypnosis
is generally safe, though there are occasional surprises, such as the
unplanned recall of a forgotten trauma (something a lay hypnotist
might not handle as well as a doctor or psychologist).
Practitioners often use vivid imagery when making hypnotic
suggestions. Dr. Olafur Palsson, a psychologist at the University of
North Carolina, developed a detailed, seven-session hypnosis protocol
for the treatment of irritable bowel syndrome, a disorder often
accompanied by abdominal pain. "One of the ingredients is
visualizing your stomach and your intestines and visualizing a strong
protective coating being applied inside your intestines,"
explains Palsson. "And this special protective coating only
allows pleasant sensations through, and keeps all uncomfortable
sensations out. And then it is suggested that this protective coating
grows stronger and thicker and harder day by day."
It's well known that some people are more responsive to hypnosis than
others. Hypnotizability, experts say, is a trait, like eye color. As
a rule, the more "absorbed" a person is able to get in
things-movies, sunsets, daydreams-the more hypnotizable he is.
(Researchers use standardized measures to screen subjects.) People
who describe themselves as more trusting of others tend to be more
hypnotizable, says Spiegel, while those who are very logical and
never take anything at face value tend to be less hypnotizable.
Several studies using positron emission tomography (PET) have looked
at what goes on in the brain during hypnosis. In one, hypnotized
subjects had their hands immersed in "painfully hot" water
but were told it was comfortably warm. This not only altered their
perception of the pain but also altered blood flow in pain-related
parts of the brain. In another study, highly hypnotizable people were
shown a black-and-white pattern and asked to see color. The results:
the regions of the brain normally activated during color perception
were activated in the hypnotized subjects. "It's not just a
fantasy," says Spiegel. "It's not just telling people
things because that's what you think they want to hear. If you think
you are seeing color, you actually see it, and your brain acts as
though it's seeing it." It's easy to see why, in the field of
hypnosis these days, nobody is getting sleepy.
© 2004 Newsweek, Inc.
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