A study out of Harvard University confirms that hypnosis helps healing . . . not just relaxation and stress reduction but actually accellerates the rate for physical mending.

All these functional uses may help a person feel better,” Ginandes continues. “I am also interested in using hypnosis to help people get better physically. That means using the mind to make structural changes in the body, to accelerate healing at the tissue level.” Four years ago, Ginandes and Daniel Rosenthal, professor of radiology at the Harvard Medical School, published a report on their study of hypnosis to speed up the mending of broken bones. They recruited 12 people with broken ankles who did not require surgery and who received the usual treatment at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. In addition, Ginandes hypnotized half of them once a week for 12 weeks, while the other half received only normal treatment. The same doctor applied the casts and other care, and the same radiologists took regular X-rays to monitor how well they healed. A radiologist who evaluated the X-rays did not know which patients underwent hypnosis. The result stood out like a sore ankle. Those who were hypnotized healed faster than those who were not. Six weeks after the fracture, those in the hypnosis group showed the equivalent of eight and a half weeks of healing.

That’s very good to know.

Thanks to Seth-Deborah Roth for the heads up on the online posting of the article.

Of course, my usual caveat regarding medical issues, hypnosis should only be used to supplement competent qualified medical care and never as a sole replacement. Your hypnotist should require a referral from your physician.

For more information on hypnosis and pain relief or for services and products, feel free to browse here.

All the best,
Brian