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IBS (Irritable Bowel Syndrome) and hypnotherapy

IBS is one of the outstanding success stories in medical hypnotherapy. Hypnosis offers an excellent likelihood of most welcome and permanent relief for this peculiarly unpleasant condition.

In severe cases IBS can have a crippling effect on someone's life, leaving them at their wit's end to know how to cope. When diarrhoea is the main symptom, the sufferer's life can in the worse cases be all but wrecked by fear of an uncontrollable explosive urge to use the toilet, leaving them sometimes afraid, or unable, to leave the house or ever be far from a toilet.

Yet clinically, "nothing is wrong," and for quite a number of patients, there is not much that doctors have to offer.

Have you got Irritable Bowel Syndrome?

If you have any upset in your bowel function, it is ESSENTIAL that you visit your GP. A diagnosis of IBS is made by eliminating other conditions, some of which are serious ones. Neither I nor any other reputable therapist will help a patient without a clear and definite diagnosis of IBS from your GP. That said, you can click here for a list of typical symptoms of IBS (irritable bowel syndrome).

Happily, there is good news. The pioneering research of NHS consultant Dr Peter Whorwell in the UK (supplemented by Olaf Palsson in the USA) has now shown that treatment of IBS with hypnotherapy can have an impressive success rate, even in cases where all other forms of therapy have failed.

And the improvement has been shown to continue long-term. This success story has been picked up by the media. Click here for reports from the BBC website including interviews with Dr Whorwell and his team on how they use hypnosis to treat IBS.

If you are willing to take an active part in your own healing process, then hypnosis offers excellent prospects of success with IBS. There are various claims for how many sessions are needed. Whorwell's authoritative research indicates that up to 12 sessions may be needed, but it can be much less.

This treatment for IBS is not yet available on the NHS except in tiny areas of the country.

Hypnosis is not a cure-all. To quote Peter Whorwell once again, "A lot of hypnotists ... say they can cure anything. I don't." I totally agree with that plain honesty; in IBS as in all other issues, I aim to offer "hope without hype."

Yet the facts speak for themselves.

Graph showing overwhelming superiority of hypnosis over placebo for reducing IBS pain and distention

And here is a list of the excellent success rates of hypnotherapy for irritable bowel syndrome in well-designed medical studies. It is taken from the International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis, Volume 54, Jan 2006.

Researchers	Number of patients	Success rate of hypnosis with IBS
Randomised controlled treatment studies
Whorwell et al, 1984	15	100%
Forbes et al, 2000	25	76%
Palsson et al, 2002 (study II)	24	87%
Houghton et al, 1996	25	Superior to standard medical care on Bowel Symptoms, Disability, Health care Utilisation, and Quality of Life
Nonrandomised controlled treatment studies
Harvey et al, 1989	33	61%
Palsson et al, 2002 (study I)	18	93%
Whorwell et al, 1987	50	95% for classic IBS
Vidakovic-Vukic, 1999	27	89%
Gonsalkorale et al, 2002, 2003	250	71%

How does hypnosis for IBS work?

The greatest fear of an IBS sufferer is that their body is out of control. In fact the GPs well-intentioned assurance that "nothing is wrong" often accentuates the out-of control feeling: there isn't even any explanation for why the symptoms are happening.

The medically-researched hypnosis procedures for IBS puts your mind in charge of your body. No longer are you helpless. You can take charge of your symptoms with a medically-validated self-help procedure.

In India, yogis can control body temperature and heart rate by the power of their mind. In a very real way, the Whorwell approach for IBS is a scientific version of these yogic powers.

What causes IBS?

What happens in IBS is that the guts, most commonly the colon which absorbs water from the food at the end of digestion, move too quickly or too slowly. Instead of contacting smoothly and rhythmically, the colon contracts almost randomly, and painfully tightly. Some parts of the colon may remain in contraction for long periods until the fecal material is so dried out that it is hard to evacuate, causing constipation. Or gas is trapped, causing bloating. At other times the colon is almost inactive and the digested food remains loose and liquid until it is evacuated as diahorrea.

In addition, the guts are hypersensitive. When you eat, it is normal for the bowels to become more active. But in IBS, the guts tend to become hyperactive. While for sure some specific foods may trigger IBS, and each sufferer has their own avoidance list, it is often the very act of eating which triggers the symptoms, and some sufferers mistakenly place too many foods on the list as a result. It may be better to experiment with smaller, more frequent meals.

Commonly, it is beneficial to experiment with excluding from the diet:

lactose
gluten
caffeine
spices
alcohol
sorbitol gum
gas producing foods
as previously stated, to avoid very big meals.

Many people with IBS make sure to eat a great deal of fibre. However Whorwell's research is that this can be positively unhelpful, and his authoritative advice is to experiment with eliminating cereal fibre for three months. Other research indicates that soluble fibre can be useful, either from pears, apples, strawberries and other fruit, or bought over the counter at a health-food shop.

How does hypnosis affect the IBS symptoms?

Wouldn't it be wonderful to be able to to just talk to the bowels: "Bowels! Bowels, calm down now! - relax, take it easy, everything is OK." Quite amazingly, you can do exactly this. It is provenly effective is to communicate with the bowels, not through words, but via imagery. If you imagine the bowels being calm, rather wonderfully, they will become so.

One common imagery, suitable for symptoms of pain and constipation, is to visualise the bowels as a river flowing smoothly and deeply. Another, suitable for diarrhoea, is to imagine that the bowels are digesting soothing magic porridge which absorbs all that water. Another is to imagine that the bowels are coated in a soothing heaing balm which heals and nourishes them so that they relax and become normally-sensitive. The best images are the ones which each person invents for themselves.

And at the same time, the patient will receive classical hypnosis suggestions to notice their guts less and less, to worry about them less, to focus on improvements, and so on.

In addition, the therapy will deal with anything which is stressful in an individuals life. IBS is a combination of physiology and psychology. The guts are undoubtedly over-sensitive (and IBS happens much more in the West, so is very likely diet-related). At the same time stress and "somatisation" - expressing emotions not as emotions, but as symptoms - and very important. The balance between physiology and psychology varies from individual to individual. So the work, following Whorwell's research, is completely tailored to you as a unique individual.

It works. If you would like to explore further how you can learn to take control of your life and symptoms, please give me a ring: 0845-3510604. I'm happy to talk and answer questions.

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See here for fees, schedule, and money-back assurance for the first session, here for what makes the type of brief therapy and hypnosis which I do different.

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"While many doctors may still be a little suspicious of using hypnotherapy [to treat irritable bowel syndrome], patients have no such qualms.
"They are falling over themselves to have the therapy, particularly the younger ones.
Many are on antidepressants, because they have the effect of lessening pain sensations at low doses.
"But if you're 25 and you had the option of a long-term course of antidepressants or having hypnotherapy that will put you right, which would you choose?"

NHS consultant Dr Peter Whorwell on the use of hypnosis to treat IBS at Wythenshaw Hospital in Manchester, quoted on the BBC website.