Hypnosis Therapy for Asthma

What if you could use the power of your mind to overcome your biggest asthma symptoms? As implausible as this may sound, some researchers believe that asthma patients can use self-hypnosis to control their condition and help themselves breathe better on a regular basis.

Alternative Medicine for Asthma

When you think of treating your asthma, you probably think of the medications you take and the lifestyle modifications you make. Now, some studies have also found that alternative medicine approaches such as self-hypnosis therapy can help people manage a variety of chronic health conditions, including asthma.

Using Hypnosis Therapy to Control Symptoms

While this treatment modality may not work for everyone (in fact, the evidence reveals that it's best used on people who're susceptible to hypnosis in order for it to have the full effects), it does open up some important new avenues for asthma management and gives patients more control over how they feel.

Asthmatic Children and Hypnosis Therapy

Researchers believe that children are particularly responsive to hypnosis therapy as an alternative medicine approach for asthma. A study published in BMC Pediatrics showed how one young asthmatic patient experienced anxiety-related symptoms that were initially interpreted as asthma and were treated by traditional medications. Her doctor then tried using self-hypnosis therapy to reduce her anxiety, allowing the patient to manage both her emotional reaction and the coinciding physical effects.  As a result of this intervention, her asthma symptoms improved.

More Hypnosis Therapy Results

Another study published in the same journal in 2005 looked at self-hypnosis therapy as a psychological intervention to treat asthma among a much broader group of children. Again, the results were very promising. Of those patients who were taught to use this alternative medicine approach when asthma symptoms set in, the majority seemed to benefit quite a bit.

It's also worth mentioning that teaching the self-hypnosis was relatively easy, according to the researchers. In most cases, a pediatric pulmonologist was able to teach patients to use this technique in one or two sessions lasting between 15 and 45 minutes at a time. Other studies trying hypnosis therapy and other alternative medicine approaches on adult asthmatics have had similar successes.

Future Implications

These results can be significant for the future course of treating asthmatics, since using hypnosis is cost-effective and can also prevent some of the side effects that are typically caused by mainstream medicines.

This means that if you have asthma and sometimes feel stressed, anxious or have any concerns about other psychological components that could be affecting your symptoms, it could be worth talking to your doctor and finding out if self-hypnosis therapy might help to get your condition in check and help reduce your related distress.



Sources:

BMC Pediatric
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12875663

BR Medical Journal
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1912142/

Journal of Asthma
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10724294