PAIN TREATMENT: USING HYPNOSIS

Apr 21, 2009

Posted by admin under Pain Relief-Muscle Relaxers

Effectiveness of hypnosis on pain

The placebo is a time honoured way of presenting to a patient by a doctor of a sugar pill or coloured water said to have potent properties to heal or to relieve pain. It works because the brain produces natural pain-killers, the endorphins and enkephalins simply because the patient believes the treatment is going to be effective.

The effectiveness of the placebo in hypnosis in pain relief has been studied in low and highly hypnotisable subjects. In low hyp-notisable subjects, there is no difference in the effectiveness of hypnotism and a placebo, such as simply asking subjects to close their eyes and not react to given suggestions.

But in highly hypnotisable subjects, hypnotism is more effective than a placebo in pain relief — the placebo occasionally produces negative results.

The difference between hypnotism and a placebo is that hypnotism primarily acts as an analgesic and only secondarily as a sedative. There is no link between hypnotisability and the response to the placebo overall. Even unhypnotised subjects can respond to suggestions of relaxation. These can be of benefit in anxiety reduction, as in dental procedures where hypnotic ‘depth’ is not necessary as usually little pain relief is needed to help.

There is as yet no real evidence of a relationship between hypnosis and the endorphins. One study by Goldstein and Hilgard (1975) showed that hypnotic analgesia was not reversed by Naloxone, a drug which reverses the pain-killing effects of morphine in a dose which is effective in reducing the placebo response. So far, the study of internal systems for pain reduction and that of the natural morphine-like substances is still in its infancy.

*126\37\8*