Hypnosis for IBS

In this article, we will go over the benefits of hypnotherapy for IBS, what hypnotherapy is, and studies that have shown excellent results in IBS patients who used professional gut-specific hypnotherapy.

What is Hypnotherapy? An Overview

When you initially hear the word “hypnotherapy,” the first thing that probably comes to your mind is someone on stage in front of a large audience convincing people to sing, dance or perform other unusual acts after being hypnotized.

Professional, medical hypnotherapy for IBS and other disorders, on the other hand, is a guided form of therapy that can be used along with other forms of psychological or medical treatment.¹

Typically performed by a trained psychologist or psychiatrist, hypnotherapy guides the patient into a trance-like state that transforms their awareness inward to address suppressed emotions, as well as discover, within themselves, ways in which they can make the necessary changes in their lives to regain control.

Indications for Hypnotherapy

Hypnotherapy can be used to treat a variety of psychological and biological disorders. Some of these include:

• Anxiety
• Phobias
• Substance abuse
• Sexual dysfunction
• Undesirable spontaneous behaviors
• Bad habits
• Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)
• Depression
• Grief
• Weight loss ²
• Sleep disorders
• Learning disorders
• Communication issues
• Relationship issues
• Pain management
• Digestive disorders
• Skin disorders
• Gastrointestinal side effects of pregnancy and chemotherapy ¹

Hypnotherapy: What to Expect

Depending on the health provider, hypnotherapy can be performed in various different ways. Typically, in a clinical environment, hypnotherapy will be performed in a calm and therapeutic area, in which the therapist will guide the patient into a relaxed and focused state ¹.

During this process, the patient will be asked a variety of questions about their personal experiences and situations in an effort to allow for a more positive outlook to be placed on these events.

The hypnotherapist who guides the patient will take them through guided meditations, visual journeys, and calming techniques specific to the patient’s condition. Most of the time this is accompanied by relaxing music as well.

Hypnotherapy for IBS

As many IBS sufferers can probably agree, conventional treatments for IBS are not always successful, as these types of medications often fail to address the wide variety of symptoms that IBS patients endure.

Gut-directed hypnotherapy has been shown to be an extremely effective treatment for patients with IBS, as improvements in gastrointestinal symptoms such as abdominal pain, constipation, diarrhea and bloating, overall quality of life, as well as associated symptoms such as nausea, lethargy and backache have been improved through this form of treatment.

For example, there have also been a few different scientific studies done using hypnotherapy in patients with IBS. You can see these studies in the chart below.

Typically, gut-directed hypnotherapy for the treatment of IBS will involve one session per week of an hour-long duration for a total of 12 weeks.

There is now a better option for gut-specific hypnotherapy you can do in the comfort of your own home that is guided by one of the top hypnotherapists in the world, Michael Mahoney. It is a 100-day program that has been optimized through many patient trials.

Check Out the IBS Audio Program Here

Hypnotherapy for Digestion

In 1984, a group of clinical researchers led by Peter Whorwell in Manchester, England investigated the potential use of a structured intervention, which we now recognize as gut-specific hypnotherapy, as a treatment of IBS. At the conclusion of this study, patients experienced such an improvement in their IBS symptoms that hypnotherapy has become an increasingly used treatment option for this gastrointestinal disorder.

Since the results of this study were so promising for IBS patients, the researchers decided to expand their work and investigate the ways in which hypnotherapy can also be a useful treatment option for individuals with other functional gastrointestinal disorders, some of which include gastric acid production, upper digestive disorders, such as those affecting gastric emptying rates, frequently relapsing peptic ulcers, functional dyspepsia and several others.

The efficacy of these studies is further explored in Table 1.

Although a tremendous amount of relief was achieved by utilizing hypnotherapy for the aforementioned disorders, researchers believe that more studies need to be performed by independent investigators before the widespread use of hypnotherapy is applied for the treatment of upper digestive disorders.

Additionally, the time and cost of hypnotherapy treatments, as well as the limited amount of individuals who are trained in this type of psychological therapy are also important factors to consider when determining the effectiveness of these alternative treatment options.

Hypnotherapy for the Gut-Brain Connection

The gut-brain connection is often prone to dysregulation in GI disorders, such as IBS and SIBO. In these situations, the use of medical hypnotherapy provides a way to connect and treat the “second brain” of the enteric nervous system (ENS) with the severity of the symptoms that patients with these types of GI disorders experience.

By entering a state of deep meditation, such as that which is achieved with hypnotherapy, patients suffering from severe GI disorders are able to turn off that dysregulation and allow their digestive systems to heal.

The IBS Audio Program 100 Gut-Specific Hypnotherapy

Imagine that doing something every day for only 30 minutes could bring a drastic relief to your GI symptoms. If you are someone who has been struggling with your GI symptoms associated with SIBO, IBS, GERD or other debilitating GI disorders, you are most likely thinking – how and when can I sign up for this?

The IBS Audio 100 Program does just that – curated by Mr. Michael Mahoney, who is well known for his development of the Ongoing Progressive Session Induction Method (OPSIM), this program lasts 100 days, which taken together is a little over 3 months.

Each day, your 30-minute session will bring you through progressive, calming and deep meditations that will attempt to help you calm down your GI tract, as well as relieve any anxieties or fears you may feel regarding your GI disorders.

The IBS Audio 100 Program is a convenient option you can do anywhere to achieve the same benefits that countless other patients with IBS and related GI disorders have accomplished by attending expensive hypnotherapy sessions at a doctor’s office.

To find out more about the IBS Audio 100 Program, click here.