Patients with ulcerative colitis in remission were more likely to maintain remission if they underwent gut-directed hypnotherapy in a recent study.

Researchers randomly assigned 54 adult patients with ulcerative colitis (UC) in remission at enrollment to seven weekly, 40-minute sessions of gut-directed hypnotherapy (HYP; n=26) or attention control (n=28). All participants self-reported more than one flare per year, had documented flares within the previous 1.5 years and were receiving a stable dose of maintenance therapy for more than 1 month before the study.

Disease status and quality of life were measured at baseline and at 2, 20, 36 and 52 weeks after completing therapy. Patients provided sociodemographic and medical information, completed daily symptom diaries at baseline and during treatment, and responded to questionnaires assessing disease activity, physical and mental health and perceived stress levels.

“As a health psychologist, I would see patients who would loosen up on their self-care when they were in remission, and it seemed like having a pleasant, simple tool like hypnotherapy could help keep them in touch with their disease self-management,” researcher Laurie Keefer,PhD, associate professor and director of the Center for Psychological Research in GI at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, told Healio.com.

Flares occurred in eight patients in the HYP group and 15 among controls. HYP patients had a greater number of days to clinical relapse than controls on one-way Anova analysis (F=4.8, P=.03). More treated patients maintained remission for 1 year (68% vs. 40% of controls;P=.04) in chi-square analysis. Investigators calculated via Cox proportional hazards model that controls were at 2.11 times the risk for flares compared with HYP recipients (P=.09).

Quality of life and assessments of psychological factors, stress levels and medication adherence did not differ significantly between groups.

“Hypnotherapy works as an adjunct treatment in inflammatory bowel disease,” Keefer said. “It may help keep patients in remission a little longer, especially those patients who have frequent flares or who have functional symptoms on top of their IBD.”


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LAS VEGAS—The use of virtual reality and virtual reality hypnosis provides an analgesic effect, reducing pain and anxiety in patients with burns, for example, who describe pain during wound care as “severe to excruciating.”David R. Patterson, PhD, a Professor in the Department of Rehabilitation Medicine at the University Washington, Seattle, provided an overview of virtual reality distraction, the combination of virtual reality distraction hypnosis, and virtual reality hypnosis in the management of patients with pain.

One study of 11 hospitalized patients at a major regional burn center who had their burn wounds debrided and dressed while partially submerged in a hydrotherapy tank found they reported significantly less pain when distracted with virtual reality. Each patient spent 3 minutes of wound care with no distraction and 3 minutes of wound care in virtual reality during a single wound care session. While they were wearing a virtual reality helmet, they had a reduction in time spent thinking about pain, a reduction in pain unpleasantness, a reduction in worse pain—and an increase in fun.

He explained the steps of virtual reality hypnosis. Following relaxation and instructions, patients appear to float down through a canyon, seeing the numbers 1 to 10. After appearing over a scenic lake, post-hypnotic suggestions are given and patients return up the canyon.

Studies have shown virtual reality hypnosis works for burn pain (n=1 and n=13), chronic neuropathic pain (n=13), and trauma pain. In a case series in patients with burn pain being treated for their wounds—92% of whom were male, 92% Caucasian, 46% with a burn to the face and mean age, 38 years—use of virtual reality hypnosis reduced all measures of pain and anxiety. Specifically, there was a 29% decrease in the amount of time that patients were thinking about their pain and an 11% decrease in the unpleasantness of their wound care. Worst pain scores dropped 20% and anxiety, 26%. The amount of opiates required for wound care dropped by half from baseline to day 3 in both the patients with burns and with trauma pain.

In a controlled study in 12 patients, virtual reality was also found to reduce pain during physical therapy for severe burns. One important question to ask, Dr. Patterson said, is whether virtual reality works when used over and over with the same patient; or, does the patient get bored with virtual reality?

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HE 27-year-old, who was left contemplating suicide in a bid to escape the attacks, says her life has been transformed thanks to hypnotherapy.

UNTIL recently, Heather McCartney suffered such severe panic attacks she thought she was having a heart attack.

For 10 years she has been plagued by such terrible anxiety that there have been times she hasn’t felt able to leave the house and, at one stage, listening to music made “her skin crawl”.

Self-harming became a release for the 27-year-old and, at her lowest points, she even contemplated suicide.

But Heather’s life has now been transformed thanks to hypnotherapy.

After just a handful of sessions, she is once more learning to lead a normal life – from going out to the cinema with friends to getting back behind the wheel of her car.

She is now even training to become a make-up artist.

These are everyday events for most people but were impossible for Heather just months ago.

She said: “My life has completely changed since I started hypnosis.

“I am still on anti-depressants and seeing a psychologist, both of which I am sure have played a part, but even after just one session of hypnosis I felt so much more relaxed and was even able to go to a restaurant with my parents afterwards.

“It wasn’t easy but I was able to do it and I wouldn’t have been able to do so before.

“It really has been amazing.”

Heather first started experiencing anxiety when sitting her Highers.

Despite being a good student, used to getting top marks, she began to worry uncontrollably about the exams.

She said: “I had never experienced anything like it before. I just found myself getting really stressed, far more so than people usually would about exams. I was putting a lot of pressure on myself to be the best.”

Nonetheless, with good grades secured, Heather went to Glasgow University to study Classical Civilization, French and Italian.

Sadly, though, her anxiety got worse.

Going to lectures was a daily endurance test for Heather and, at just 17, she found university life too much to cope with.

She said: “I felt like I was going into an exam every time I had a lecture. I felt really sick and nervous every day.

“Because of the course I had chosen, I also had a much more intense timetable than most first year students and I simply felt unprepared to cope with it.

“Looking back, I think I was quite young to be away from my family too, and, just before I started, I split up with a guy I had been seeing for a few years so I don’t think that helped either.”

It was at this point that Heather started to self-harm.

She said: “I know people think it is about attention-seeking but it really wasn’t for me.

“I did it out of frustration at myself.”

Living in a flat with other students, Heather wasn’t able to hide her problems for long.

She said: “I was hardly leaving the flat and wearing scarves tied round my wrists, so they looked quite fashionable but it wasn’t enough to hide what was going on.

“My flatmates eventually said to me that what was happening wasn’t right and I needed to get help.

“I have them to thank for making me tell someone how I was feeling.

“My family were really shocked and upset when they found out how bad I was, even though there had been times when they had come through to Glasgow to take me home because they knew from talking to me that I was having a bad time.”

Halfway through her second year, Heather, from Lanark, left university to return home.

She tried to go back to uni several times but struggled so badly that she finally gave up completely just months before graduation.

After a while, she started work for her dad’s insurance broker business, while DJ-ing at weekends, but this also became too much for her.

Heather said: “I think I was doing too much. It was as if I was trying to lead two lives.

“There was the sensible, responsible me who was working for my dad and then there was the other me who still wanted to go out and enjoy myself.”

Eventually, regular panic attacks – sometimes as many as two a day – forced Heather to stop all work. The attacks could be so severe that she felt as if she was dying.

She said: “I really can’t describe how awful they were, they really were the worst thing ever.

“I began to fear going anywhere or doing anything in case I got one.

“My mum became my comfort blanket because I would only go anywhere when I was with her.

“They came on at any time, even doing something as simple as going to the supermarket.

“I had some on trains, which is terrible because all you want to do is get off and you can’t.

“I also had one while I was driving, which was terrifying and put me off driving again.”

Unable to live a normal life, Heather became so low that she rarely left the house and, at points, she even contemplated suicide.

She said: “It was like there was no relief from feeling that bad and there was no enjoyment to be found in anything in life.

“I had become a shell of the person I had been. I found it hard to understand why I felt the way I did, as well.

“I don’t come from a broken home and we never had money worries – I had a really happy childhood and have good relationships with my parents and my brother.

“I lost both my grans in a space of 13 months when I was in my early 20s, which did set me back at the time, but otherwise I had a really happy, stable life.

“I think it just goes to show that mental health problems really can affect anyone.”

After hitting a really low point this spring, Heather decided to give hypnosis a try.

She had her first session at the end of May. Heather said: “In the first session, all you really do is go into a really deep relaxation but I could feel the difference right away.

“Each session since has helped me a little more and I really do feel now that I am beginning to come out of the other side.

“Don’t get me wrong, I still get bad days when I can feel anxious but I can cope with them so much better.”

While living at home, Heather had begun a blog to review beauty products, but earlier this year she decided to blog about her mental health problems instead, in the hope of helping others.

She said: “The response I had from people was just incredible and it really has been a huge support to me.

“That has given me strength but I also realised how important it is to talk about the problems I have been through so other people talk about them too.

“I feel it is really important to be open and honest about my problems so other people might realise they are not alone.

“And that there is hope.”



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A hospital patient whose day job is being a hypnotist has had his sixth operation without anaesthetic.

Alex Lenkei chose to forgo traditional anaesthetic and instead put himself in a trance for the ankle replacement surgery.

While it was not the 66-year-old's first foray into the world of operations under hypnosis - he has had six operations that way - it was the first time for orthopaedic surgeon Dominic Nielsen.

Mr Nielsen performed the two-hour operation, which involved saw cutting through Mr Lenkei's bone, at Epsom Hospital in Surrey.

"It certainly was a bit nerve-wracking making the first cut, not being sure whether he would be able to feel it, but once we got through that bit it became very much like doing any other ankle replacement," said Mr Nielsen.

The operation took two hours and involved sawing the bone "He did amazingly well with the whole thing.

"To be honest, it was just like doing any other operation.

"Alex went through the process, which took a very short period of time, and he told us he was ready to go ahead ... It sort of went out of my mind that he was awake and able to correspond.

"He made a couple of comments during the operation which obviously reminded us that it was a strange experience.

"He commented at one point on the noise of the saws and was just asking how it was going. It was very strange."

An anaesthetist was on hand in case anything went wrong during the July 8 operation, but he was not needed.

Mr Lenkei, from Worthing, West Sussex, said: "I'm not averse to anaesthetic - it's just that my pain control is a hell of a lot better than the medical profession's and I heal a lot quicker because my body doesn't have to get rid of all of the chemicals.

"Most doctors are scared because obviously it is not something that they come across in the medical profession, as such.

"The brain is a very sophisticated computer and if you press the right buttons it will do amazing things - if you press the right buttons it will switch certain things off."

Mr Lenkei, who suffers from osteoarthritis, six operations without general anaesthesia include surgery on his hand, a hernia removal and freeing a trapped nerve near his elbow.

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Giuliana Rancic's hoarding was a central theme on the latest episode of "Giuiana & Bill." It had become a huge issue of concern for virtually everyone in her life. Her husband, Bill, saw her stockpile unused strollers at home in their garage. Their nanny saw Giuliana refuse to donate any clothes that baby Duke had grown out of. And her office at work was filled with cardboard boxes full of stuff.

So, Giuliana's friend Robbie organized a rather unique sort of pseudo-intervention. Rather than surround Giuliana with loved ones who could voice their concern and get her to face her problem, he brought in a hypnotist named Tom to "cure" her.

“The more you can remove the clutter, the more freedom you have to lead a simpler life," Tom said during her session.

Giuliana certainly seemed to feel that the hypnosis netted a positive result. "Oh my gosh. I am so excited right now. This whole hypnosis thing was amazing," she said. "I feel like I can go in there and get rid of some stuff.”

If she did clean things up, that would be a great relief to Bill. He told Larry King earlier this summer that Giuliana's hoarding was his biggest pet peeve. "“She’s messy as hell ... I call her car the dirty diaper. It’s not normal, Larry. She collects things. She has 12 strollers. She’s on the borderline of being a hoarder."

Giuliana repeated on Twitter that she thinks the hypnosis did work. She also denied having a problem, saying that she was a "collector" and not a "hoarder."

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Method used on allergic patient dates back to 19th century
(By Elisa Cecchi). Padua, August 21 - A woman in Padua had surgery to remove a skin tumor by hypnosis instead of anesthesia in a groundbreaking anesthesiological method which updates 19th century techniques used for minor pathologies, a medical journal said Wednesday. The finding will reportedly enable other tumor patients who have had allergic reactions to anesthetic agents or are considered at risk of an anaphylactic shock to go under the knife by hypnosis The patient in Padua is reportedly allergic to a number of chemicals and had a previous anaphylactic shock under local anesthesia. Her case is described by Enrico Facco, an anesthesiologist and professor at the neuroscience department of the University of Padua, in the September issue of medical journal Anaesthesia. "The patient, a 42-year-old woman, had several allergies to chemical substances and previous anaphylactic reactions to local anesthesia," Facco said. "She had a skin tumor removed from her right thigh with hypnosis alone as a form of anesthesia. "The hypnosis was induced by making her close her eyes while at the same time giving verbal suggestions to achieve a relaxed state and sense of well being", the anesthesiologist said. The hypnosis was continued by "immersing the patient in the image of a pleasant landscape, a tropical beach, and by creating an hypnotic analgesia focused on the location where surgery was taking place according to hypnosis protocols already used for orthodontic sedation". The operation reportedly lasted 20 minutes during which the patient's blood pressure and heart rate remained stable. She did not feel any pain as the tumor was removed with an incision of 6x3 cm, Facco said. After being replaced by pharmacological anesthesia, hypnosis could now be used again in specific cases to control anxiety and raise the threshold of pain, the doctor noted, adding that hypnosis can be used alone or together with medication for a more effective treatment. "This case confirms that hypnosis is effective as the only anesthetic method in selected cases by preserving the patient from pain and surgical stress on the same level as commonly used anesthetics", said Facco, citing James Esdaile's 1846 work 'Mesmerism in India and its practical applications in surgery and medicine' which described over 300 cases of patients who had surgery by hypnosis.

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Tall, graceful, with a gentle smile, hypnotherapist Danijela Radonic Bhandari (38) is someone who puts you at ease instantly. The effervescent lady has a mission on her hands, to spread awareness on hypnosis and give it due recognition as a form of psychological therapy. 

Having been through some harrowing times as a teenage Serbian refugee being brought up in Croatia, she believes that war and pain were the catalysts that made her take to spiritualism and alternative medicine. The lady, who has made Bangalore her home for last one year, remembers how she picked up the book Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse when she was still in primary school and went deep into the world of prayer, meditation and humanitarian service. After medical school, Danijela worked in a dental clinic for eight years but always wanted to know more about alternative medicine.  Exploring better prospects she moved to Dubai and then to Nepal where she would sneak time out to study healing courses, while continuing with her regular job. She also did a course at the Indian Institute of Alternative Medicine in Kolkata.

She was managing one of Nepal’s biggest spa and holistic centres before moving to India. Fate took a harsh turn when she was diagnosed with acute arthritis. Danijela opted for homoeopathy and hypnotherapy to rescue cure herself. The therapy worked beautifully and the pain vanished miraculously. This inspired Danijela to do a course in clinical hypnotherapy in New Delhi at the Indian branch of the California Hypnosis Institute.

“Going through hypnosis and doing the intensive one year course have made me learn more about myself and now it’s my turn to spread awareness about this much misunderstood therapy. Unfortunately, magicians and so called mass hypnosis have given it a bad name and there is fear attached to it,” says Danijela.

Being a practitioner of regular meditation and visualisations, Danijela holds free meditation sessions at her home every Thursday. She combines some spiritual practices with her clinical hypnotherapy sessions. Her gentle sense of humour, compassion and sensitivity makes her session productive and joyful for her patients.

Danijela is eager to dispel some popular myths and misconceptions about hypnosis. She says it is a completely safe and harmless form of psychological therapy. It is a state of altered awareness, not sleep or unconsciousness. Your conscious mind gives a large degree of control to your sub conscious mind. You are in control of your body and mind during hypnosis. It is officially recognised and approved by the British Medical Association and American Medical Association.

Danijela says hypnosis relaxes you completely and many feel a deep inner calm. “Deep hypnosis is similar in many ways to the kind of profound trance felt by yogis or meditation experts. The best way to learn about it is to experience it,” she says. It is a branch of psychotherapy; it is not an occult or esoteric science. Registered clinical psychotherapist sometime uses hypnosis as well to achieve results and breakthroughs with patients. Danijela uses an integrated approach and combines direct verbal suggestions or visualisations and even past life regression techniques.

The most common fear is that someone will get ‘stuck’ in a hypnotic state. What if the therapist gets a heart attack during a session? “You never get permanently stuck day dreaming, do you? Everyone comes out of hypnosis in a relaxed state, no matter what. People fear that they are going to expose themselves by spilling the beans, so to speak, but that is not the case. A client has the freedom to speak aloud or remain silent during sessions. Anyone who is capable of focused attention and truly wants some help in their life can and will get hypnotised. However we hypnotise only those who want it,” asserts Danijela.

Hypnosis can even be used on older children to help alter or improve their study habits; it is commonly used by her to sort out relationship issues, all kinds of addictions and more.

She uses a voice recorder to record what has been said by the patient. Getting to the point of origin of the problem and removing deep set fears helps in healing.

The mind is a very powerful tool, make it your friend and trust in the process of life. Trusting one’s therapist is vital and one can be assured of total privacy and confidentiality. 

Wife of a jet setting hotelier, Ranvir Bhandari, Danijela manages to balance her work and inner life with parties and hectic socialising, with amazing grace and elan. She turned vegetarian a decade ago and you will find her holding a glass of chilled green tea instead of white wine at many a party! When she’s not hypnotising people, she likes to go scuba diving or dancing. Making time for social work and charity is also what Danijela does on a regular basis. Being a former refugee, she knows what it is like to have nothing literally overnight.



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A new review of the scientific literature studying hypnosis, in the journal Nature Reviews Neuroscience, by Oakley and Halligan, discusses the potential for hypnosis to provide insights into brain mechanisms involved in attention, motor control, pain perception, beliefs and volition and also to produce informative analogues of clinical conditions. This is a critical discussion as hypnosis is used as a psychological treatments and, recently, as an investigative tool in cognitive neuroscience.

An iconic vision of the menacing magician involves placing a hapless person from the audience into a hypnotic trance. Svengali. You are getting sleeeepy. A scam, right? Not so fast. According to to this new review, as well as our colleagues who study the brains of people who are prone to trancelike states, hypnosis is not necessarily hocus-pocus. The age-old practice profoundly alters neural circuits involved in perception and decision making, changing what people see, hear, feel, and believe to be true. Recent experiments led people who were hypnotized to “see” colors where there were none. Others lost the ability to make simple decisions. Some people looked at common English words and thought they were gibberish.

Some of the critical experiments were led by Amir Raz, a cognitive neuroscientist at McGill University in Montreal, who is an amateur magician. Raz wanted to do something really impressive that other neuroscientists could not ignore. So he hypnotized people and gave them the Stroop test. In this classic paradigm, you are shown words in block letters that are colored red, blue, green, or yellow. But here’s the rub. Sometimes the word “red” is colored green. Or the word “yellow” is shown in blue. You have to press a button stating the correct color. Reading is so deeply engrained in our brains that it will take you a little bit longer to override the automatic reading of a word like “red” and press a button that says “green.”*

Sixteen people, half of them highly hypnotizable and half of them resistant, came into Raz’s lab. (The purpose of the study, they were told, was to investigate the effects of suggestion on cognitive performance.) After each person underwent a hypnotic induction, Raz gave them these instructions:

Very soon you will be playing a computer game inside a brain scanner. Every time you hear my voice over the intercom, you will immediately realize that meaningless symbols are going to appear in the middle of the screen. They will feel like characters in a foreign language that you do not know, and you will not attempt to attribute any meaning to them. This gibberish will be printed in one of four ink colors: red, blue, green, or yellow. Although you will only attend to color, you will see all the scrambled signs crisply. Your job is to quickly and accurately depress the key that corresponds to the color shown. You can play this game effortlessly. As soon as the scanning noise stops, you will relax back to your regular reading self.

Raz then ended the hypnosis session, leaving each person with what is called a posthypnotic suggestion—an instruction to carry out an action while not hypnotized. Days later, they entered the brain scanner.

In highly hypnotizables, when the instruction came over the intercom, the Stroop effect was obliterated, Raz said. They saw English words as gibberish and named colors instantly. But those who were resistant to hypnosis could not override the conflict, he said. The Stroop effect prevailed, rendering them significantly slower in naming the colors. When the brain scans of the two groups were compared, a distinct pattern appeared. In the hypnotizables, Raz found, the visual area of the brain that usually decodes written words did not become active. And a region in the front of the brain that usually detects conflict was similarly dampened. Top-down processes overrode circuits devoted to reading and detecting conflict. Most of the time people see what they expect to see and believe what they already believe—unless hypnosis trips up their brain circuitry. Most of the time, bottom-up information matches top-down expectation, but hypnosis creates a mismatch. You imagine something different, so it is different.

The top-down nature of human cognition goes far to explain not only hypnosis but also the extraordinary powers of placebos (a sugar pill will make you feel better), nocebos (a witch doctor can make you ill), talk therapy, meditation, and magical stagecraft. We are not saying that hypnosis can cure your cancer, but these effects all demonstrate that suggestion can physically alter brain function.

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Hypnotic relaxation therapy can help the sex lives of postmenopausal women who are experiencing moderate to severe hot flashes, according to a new study.

The findings demonstrate yet another benefit to hypnotic relaxation therapy, shown in other studies to reduce anxiety, relieve stress and help with insomnia. With hypnosis, a person is drawn into a deeply relaxed state, with the suspension of their critical faculties.

For the study, conducted by Baylor University researchers, 187 women were randomly assigned to receive either 5 weekly sessions of hypnotic relaxation therapy or supportive counseling, said lead researcher Aimee Johnson, a doctoral student in psychology and neuroscience at Baylor University, in a press release.

Those in the hypnotic relaxation therapy group were hypnotized, and heard suggestions for relaxation, coolness and mental imagery. Those who received counseling talked about their symptoms with a therapist but did not receive hypnosis.

The women were asked to complete questionnaires at the start of the study, at the end of treatment and at a 12-week follow-up. They were asked about everything from their hot flashes to their ability to experience sexual intimacy.

“The most common complaints are being too tired, anxiety, depression, hot flashes and the fear of close contact,” said Dr. Gary Elkins, director of Baylor's Mind-Body Medicine Research Laboratory, in a press release. Because warmth that comes from closeness can trigger a hot flash, some women begin to fear intimacy, he said.

Elkins noted that, as a result of the study, women might have an alternative to hormone replacement therapy, which has a risk of cancer and heart disease.

At the end of treatment, women who had received hypnotic relaxation therapy reported significantly greater sexual satisfaction and pleasure, as well as less discomfort. This improvement also was evident at the 12-week follow-up assessment.

“Women’s sexual health improved, whether because of sleeping better, less stress or fewer hot flashes, or perhaps other unknown mechanisms,” Elkins said.

Researchers noted that many factors besides hot flashes can impact postmenopausal sexual health including fatigue, self-esteem and a lack of interest.

For many women -- such as those who have had breast cancer -- hormone replacement therapy is not an option for menopause-related symptoms. Estrogen, for example, has been associated with more rapid growth of breast cancer.

The study was funded by the National Institutes of Health.

A previous study, also by Baylor University, found that hypnotic relaxation therapy can reduce hot flashes by 80 percent.

What do you think? Have you tried hypnotic relaxation therapy? Let us know in comments.

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A woman in Italy was successfully anaesthetised via hypnosis ahead of undergoing skin cancer surgery, in an operation hailed Thursday as a landmark by local media.

The procedure was performed in Padua by Enrico Ferro, Professor of Anaesthesia and Intensive Care at the northern Italian town's university. It took 10 minutes to hypnotize the 42-year-old patient, while the surgery lasted 20 minutes.

"When the patient was de-hypnotised, she reported no pain and was discharged immediately," Ferro wrote in an article on Anaesthesia, a scientific journal.

"Our case confirms the efficacy of hypnosis and demonstrates that it may be valuable as a sole anaesthetic method in selected cases," the professor added.

Speaking on RAI radio, Ferro explained his method. "You concentrate (the patient's) attention on a single thing," so as to distract them from everything else, including pain, he said.

Hypnosis is unlikely to work on 10 to 15 per cent of the population, he indicated. A further 10 to 15 per cent is "highly" sensitive to it, while the rest of the population has "average" sensitivity.

The woman who was operated in Padua fell into the "average" category, Ferro said.

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