You might think that the obvious favouring of hypnotherapy
for the treatment of Irritable Bowel Syndrome
on this site is
solely due to the founder's slant being a hypnotherapist
himself; however there are strong research findings that
also heighten the role of hypnotherapy in terms of
long-term recovery/management.
IBS usually expresses its symptoms in the area of the colon, although the sufferer can experience effects along the whole of the gastro-intestinal tract, from the oesophagus and stomach with symptoms including reflux, belching and nausea (which is functional dyspepsia and of a similar nature and treatment approach). The colon is the large intestine that rises from the small intestine on the right hand side of the body and descends on the left hand side to the rectum and then anus. The bowel’s habit is in terms of the volume of material it can accommodate before sending signals denoting a need to empty is also affected.
In IBS the control
would appear to be dominated by the Sympathetic Nervous System - one
related more to anxiety, fear and stress than it's name
suggests! Thus
Hypnotherapy, with the specific gut targeted therapy/visualisations switches the nervous control of the colon to the Parasympathetic Nervous System one of calmness and much reduced anxiety - preventing the colon from going in to spasm and ensuring the slower transit of digested food through normal peristalsis (waves of contraction and relaxation) that progress the contents of the colon along its length at a slow speed to allow for the absorption of liquid. Hypnotherapy has also been demonstrated in published research to normalise a dysfunctional bowel - that is to say in IBS-D it decreases the hypersensitivity and in IBS-C it increases hyposensitivity; it has no effect on a normal bowel sensitivity.
The effectiveness of hypnotherapy as a treatment of Irritable Bowel Syndrome has been rigorously tested - especially that of the 'Manchester Model' developed by Professor Peter Whorwell of the NHS South Manchester Functional Bowel Service.
The success rate for hypnotherapeutic interventions is about 80% of people gaining an improvement in their bowel habit, reduction of pain, occurrence of diarrhoea. The gains are slightly higher for women than men.
**(Galovoski T.E., Blanchard E.B. 'The Treatment of
Irritable bowel Syndrome with Hypnotherapy' Applied
Psycophysiological Biofeedback 1998;23;219-32)