"Pain affects everything: mood, relationships, careers, family, finances, self-esteem and confidence, just to name a few. Pain creates stress, and stress creates more pain a vicious cycle that can be broken or modified. Chronic pain affects an estimated 100 million people in this country alone, nearly one third of our entire population. This is more than those affected by heart disease, diabetes, and cancer combined. Ninety-one Americans die every day from an overdose of opioids. Deaths from prescription pain-killers have quadrupled since 1999, as have the number of prescriptions for them. One of every three Americans are currently on two or more pharmaceutical drugs, most of which are narcotics to deal with chronic pain. Clearly, the medical/pharmaceutical response to both depressed mood and chronic pain are not working. In fact, people are suffering additional hardship as a result of what have become the standard health interventions.
The Reign of Pain Abides Mainly in the Brain.
Hypnosis and self-hypnosis can take the hurt out of pain. Hypnosis for pain relief is an amazing tool that when used, produces measurable results in pain relief. The reason for this phenomenon of success is explained in research done at such universities as Yale, Stanford, and Harvard. The success is in the ability of suggestions to bypass the cortex, the thinking and reasoning part of the brain, and goes directly to the limbic, endocrine system of the brain. The limbic system is that part of the brain that deals with fear, memory, homeostasis (maintaining a baseline for the body), and stress. What was unknown until recently is that the limbic system takes its order through perceptions given to it by the cortex, but even more astounding is that the suggestions can go directly to the limbic system from external sources and suggestions. Hypnosis is the most dramatic of the external sources.
Chronic pain is that pain that has lasted for over six months and by medical standards has no purpose. Phantom limb pain, fibromyalgia, headaches, and back pain can fall into this category. Because cells have their own consciousness and respond to messages sent to them by the limbic system, these cells can, through thought and hypnotic suggestion recreate their baseline feelings of comfort, which changes how we physically feel. There is evidence (empirical data) suggesting these cells, when given directions by the limbic system to decrease cortisol, respond favorably. Cortisol is the stress hormone which when received in small amounts, protects. However, in large amounts over time, it can cause arthritis and other chronic pain syndromes. The beauty of hypnosis is that it decreases cortisol levels."
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