Crohn's Disease - Inflammatory Bowel Disease

Crohn's Disease, Ulcerative Colitis, Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS), Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) and Diverticulitis are all "diseases of the gut". Millions of people all over the world suffer from these little-understood conditions.

On this page We'll outline our theories as to why western medicine is ill-equipped to handle certain aspects of these debilitating, painful conditions. We'll offer hope for not only symptomatic relief but resolution of underlying emotional and psychological co-factors in either producing these conditions or aggravating symptoms.

Since Crohn's is a medical condition we can't treat you unless you are exploring or have explored medical options. NLP and hypnosis won't interfere with any traditional treatment but anything like a decrease of medication due to improvement should be done under the advice of a physician.

We need to go into a little bit of explanation here. IBD is often thought of as an auto-immune disease. Somehow the immune system may be attacking part of your own body and producing inflammation of the bowels, nausea, pain, diarrhea etc. One of the things we do is work with the immune system - teach it what belongs to it and what is foreign and needs to be defended against.

Without going into a lot of psychological mumbo-jumbo we believe the Crohn's and other digestive disorders have a large psychological element. We base this on the fact that about 50 percent of adults having surgery for Crohn's have a return of symptoms which require additional treatment - within five years. Both chronic illnesses and conditions which have a high rate of symptom return after treatment are red flags for psychological factors. You see, if there's a psychological need surgery won't take care of it and the mind will have to figure out a way to re-create the symptoms. Hypnosis is highly effective for discovering and answering psychological needs (medical treatments offer no answer for this).

Direct hypnotic suggestion has been found effective for regulating automatic, unconscious body functions such as blood flow, hormonal levels and so on. These are functions that are normally out of the control of the conscious mind but in hypnosis we can have some access to them. We would definitely recommend hypnosis with direct suggestion for healing and amelioration of symptoms - decreased bowel inflammation and decreased nausea etc.

If there are emotional difficulties that relate to past trauma related to this condition we can use hypnotic regression to find and resolve those experiences.

Finally, here are some studies and articles we've picked up along the way. Mostly they deal with hypnosis or guided imagery which is not as powerful as the combined hypnosis and NLP techniques we use (in our opinion).

"Over 15 years of solid scientific research has demonstrated hypnotherapy as an effective, safe and inexpensive choice for IBS symptom alleviation. Hypnotherapy routinely produces positive results in over 80% of the people who use it. It has been so overwhelmingly successful for IBS symptom alleviation that Adriane Fugh-Berman, MD, chair of the National Women's Health Network in Washington, DC, says that hypnosis should be the treatment of choice for IBS cases which have not responded to conventional therapy."

We find it less than amusing that they recommend a non-drug, non-surgery method AFTER they've tried "conventional treatments".

Crohn's Disease A Healing Program

From Lewis Mehl-Madrona, M.D., Ph.D.

"Hypnosis and visualization has been very helpful in treating Crohn's disease. We suggest working intensely on the mind-body aspect of your illness. "

Mind, Body, Bowel http://www.americanwholehealth.com/library/ibs/ibs007.htm

"Mind-body approaches may be key to reducing symptoms of irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), doctors in Germany report. Patients who supplemented standard care with behavioral therapies, including relaxation and coping strategies, fared much better than those who received standard care alone (American Journal of Gastroenterology, 4/00).

Other studies have confirmed the benefits of other mind-body techniques, such as hypnosis, for men and women with diarrhea, constipation, cramps, and other symptoms of this common and often disabling bowel complaint.

In an earlier Flemish study (Scandinavian Journal of Gastroenterology, Supplement 230, 1999), 27 people with IBS were asked to visualize their gut and to replace the discomfort with normal bowel function. One patient, for example, pictured her bowel transforming from a rigid pipe into an elastic hose.

After 12 weekly sessions, pain, flatulence, and bloating were reduced or disappeared and bowel habits returned to normal in all but one of the patients. Those who practiced these hypnosis techniques at home with an audiotape got better faster.

In addition to IBS and other digestive complaints, hypnotherapy is often used to treat such conditions as anxiety, phobias, and stress.

If you have any further questions or would like to book a session, feel free to call or email.