Hot flashes are a very common symptom during menopause.
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The frequency and severity of menopausal hot flashes can be reduced by more than half by using hypnotic audio recordings that you can listen to in the comfort of your home.
Up to 80 percent women experiencing hot flashes during menopause – sudden sensations of overheating, which can cause increased sweating, discomfort, anxiety and sleep disturbances – due to a sharp drop in estrogen levels around this time. Dietary changesHormone replacement therapy and cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) can help, but they are often uncomfortable and not suitable for everyone.
“Many people believe that there is a connection between the mind and body and that through mental processes we can influence our body and our physiology,” says Gary Elkins at Baylor University in Waco, Texas. “This hypnotherapy demonstration shows how strong and powerful the connection between mind and body is.”
When used clinically, hypnosis has been shown to relieve the symptoms of hot flashes. superior effect of CBTbut people want a more convenient option,” Elkins says. Now he and his colleagues have developed a six-week home program that involves listening to 20 minutes of vocal recordings every day, aimed at inducing hypnotic relaxation and conjuring up images of coolness.
To test this, they asked 250 postmenopausal women, average age 56, who experienced at least four hot flashes a day, to undergo either a hypnosis program or a sham program that provided 20 minutes of white noise.
Six weeks later, participants in the hypnosis group reported that hot flash scores (a measure of their frequency and severity) were on average 53 percent lower than at baseline. Participants in the dummy group also benefited from their program, but to a lesser extent—a 41 percent reduction. This is probably due to placebo effect“,” says Elkins.
After 12 weeks, when the intervention period ended, both groups continued to experience improvement over their baseline scores, with the hypnosis group reporting an overall improvement in scores of 61 percent. This compares to an overall improvement of 44 percent in the sham group after 12 weeks. The women may have continued to listen to the tapes voluntarily or undergo hypnosis on their own based on what they learned, Elkins said.
This supports home hypnosis as a convenient, low-cost (or free) intervention for hot flashes during an attack. menopausehe says. How exactly this works is unclear, but research shows that it allows the brain modifies its connections and rewires itselfwhich can help us cope with the variety of events that life throws at us. This may also explain why hypnosis often helps relieve pain and anxiety.
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