We all know that stress can have a profoundly negative effect on our mental health. A recent study by Roehampton University and the children’s charity Elizabeth Finn Care has revealed a sharp increase in the number of people suffering from mental health problems related to stress due to redundancies, job insecurity and pay cuts etc. These include symptoms such as anxiety and depression.
According to the report, the rise of people experiencing stress related mental health symptoms is related to concerns about the economic downturn. It’s reported that there has been up to a five-fold increase in the incidents of mental health problems with up to 71% of people who have lost their jobs in the last year experiencing symptoms of depression, 55% suffering from stress and 52% experiencing symptoms of anxiety. It was also found that those in the middle socio-economic group were more likely to experience depression and that people aged between 18 and 30 were the age group most likely to be affected by the symptoms of stress related depression, anxiety and other mental health problems.
“What makes our findings worrying is the high percentage of people reporting symptoms of depression, anxiety and stress. This applies even more to those who have lost their job or experienced a major loss of income.” said Dr Joerg Huber, principal lecturer at Roehampton University. He added that “Left untreated, depression could turn into “a vicious cycle of related disability and an inability to work”.
Stress has also been shown to have an negative effect on our physical health and recent research suggests that in particular, long-term or chronic stress can lower the immune system, restrict healing and effect the functioning of the brain. This in turn has a negative impact on our mental health, increasing stress levels and further increasing the chances and severity of depression and anxiety and, with the government planning cuts to public jobs and services of up to 40%, the recession doesn’t seem to be going away any time soon. Rather, there are going to be many more job losses, redundancies, pay freezes and pay cuts to come over the next few years.
Complementary therapists have known for thousands of years how relaxing treatments such as hypnotherapy and guided imagery, as well as touch therapies like massage including, Swedish massage, Indian head massage, reflexology and reiki, can boost the immune system, increase self esteem and self confidence, increase energy levels and improve brain function. It now seams that at long last the medical community is catching on to what we’ve been doing right all these many years and some doctors are finally beginning to refer patients to complementary therapists (if yours isn’t then start hassling them!!).
Leading scientists such as Dr Bruce Lipton and Dr Candace Pert have shown that stress is the cause of almost all disease and that by reducing stress the balance of hormones in the body changes in favour of those needed for healthy cell growth, efficient digestion and uptake of nutrients and a stronger immune system.
It’s well known that reducing stress and increasing relaxation allows the immune system to work more effectively, damaged tissue is repaired faster and recovery from injury and illness is quicker. This means that patients using complementary therapy often require fewer and lower doses of harmful drugs and they generally spend less time in hospital. Due to the government’s demand for 20% cuts from so called “efficiency” measures within the NHS, I believed that complementary therapy will need to play a major role (alongside conventional medicine) in helping to reduce costs within the NHS while maintaining the highest levels of care.
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A survey carried out by Children’s Hospital and Clinics of Minnesota (Children’s) showed that 90% of parents would like more information about alternative healthcare for their children.
The survey also found that 90 percent of parents have a strong desire to eliminate their children’s pain and improve their quality of life, while 85 percent would like to minimize their dependence on drugs. Parents felt especially strongly about reducing drug treatment for mood or behavioural problems such as anxiety or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Sixty-eight percent of parents believed that integrative treatment could be effective, and more than 75 percent said that hospitals should offer experts on both conventional and alternative treatments.
Integrative medicine combines traditional Western medicine with medical therapies from other traditions, including acupuncture, massage and nutrition.
However, only 12 percent of parents surveyed had ever spoken to their child’s doctor about the possibility of alternative or integrative medical treatments.
“Many children with chronic or acute health conditions seek a complementary or integrative approach only after they have exhausted all other conventional treatment options,” said Timothy Culbert of Children’s. “Parents should be aware that integrative medicine can be helpful from the onset of disease and can save time, money and most importantly, improve a child’s quality of life. This is true for all kinds of conditions including acute illnesses like cancer or chronic problems like migraines or behavioural issues.”
Among parents of children with serious health issues, 42% had more knowledge of integrative medicine than others in the survey. Yet nearly two-thirds had still never considered integrative medicine due to insufficient familiarity with the subject.
“Parents need to consult and work with their child’s physician to determine what integrative medicine options are available that may be helpful,” Culbert said. “There are so many different kinds of complementary therapies, it’s important to learn about options to find an approach that will work best for each patient. I see first-hand every day the difference it can make in a child’s life.”
Ninety-five percent of parents whose children had undergone integrative treatment reported a positive experience.
Sources for this story include:
www.reuters.com
www.naturalnews.com/028499_alternative_medicine_parents
April 2nd, 2010 in
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Venue: Chiswick, London
Trainers: Penny Croal and Mark Sheppard
Course type: One day GHR valid CPD Course
Maximum class size: 12
Date and time: 11th July 2010, 10am – 5pm
Fee: £95
Given the time constraints of a clinical consultation, we can see how essential it is to be able to really communicate with a client and to quickly elicit critical information relating specifically to their condition, allowing us to spend as much time as possible on treatment. Also for any treatment to be most effective it’s imperative to establish a comfortable client/therapist relationship based on trust, openness and understanding.
The NLP Communication Model is one of the bedrocks of Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP). It allows us to understand how we believe we see the world around us, how we believe the world sees us, how we communicate with others and how we communicate with ourselves. The NLP Communication Model for Therapists course has been designed specifically for anyone seeing clients in a clinical environment. It will give you the tools needed to gather essential information quickly and efficiently and then to present the necessary information back to the client in a form that they can not only understand but can also accept.
Anyone who has considered taking a Neuro Linguistic Programming practitioner course will already know just how expensive that can be. This course has been designed specifically to give therapists with no previous NLP training the most effective communication tools, using the latest NLP techniques without the expense of a full practitioner course.
Outcomes – By the end of the course you will be able to:
- Use state elicitation to be in the most resourceful frame of mind before, during and after a consultation.
- Understand why you communicate with some clients more easily than with others.
- Be able to communicate fully and effectively with every client.
- Move your client from a negative state to their most resourceful state.
- Build rapport quickly – one of the most essential skills for any therapist.
- Recognise how we use our senses to communicate with our world.
- Literally speak your client’s language.
- Discover how your client builds their unique model of the world and how they can change it.
- Move your client from being under the effect of their lives to being the cause of their lives.
- Understand and elicit your client’s goals.
- Help your clients develop achievable positive outcomes.
NLP is the study of excellence – of what works – and the techniques and skills you will take away with you will not only allow you to communicate and work more effectively as a therapist but they can also be used in almost every situation in your own life including relationships, negotiations and setting personal goals.
You will also take away a certificate of attendance and a course handbook describing all of the techniques covered during the day, plus you will have access to free post-course email and telephone support.
Initially developed for therapists this course has now been taken up by the medical community as a validated CPD course for medical doctors.
For more information about the course and how to book your place please use the contact form or call 01777 862822.
Apparently there is a body revolution happening in the fashion industry!! In a rather strange article, Stefanie Marsh of The Times explains (in between her anti-German rantings) how a weekly German fashion magazine called Brigitte has taken the very brave decision to make the magazine a “model-free zone”.
According to the magazine’s editor-in-chief Andreas Lebert the trend for “exaggeratedly underweight” women being used as models means that they are now in the ludicrous position of having to Photoshop the girls in order to put some weight on them; in particular on their thighs and upper chest area or décolletage, He said “this is disturbing and perverse and what has it got to do with our real readers?” He also pointed out that the average model now weighs around 23 per cent less than the average woman, a figure that had forced him to conclude in a dramatic statement to the press that “the whole industry is anorexic”.
In sightly more balanced articles posted by Kate Connolly (guardian.co.uk), Tony Paterson (independent.co.uk) and Byron Gorgon (telegraph.co.uk) they explain that Brigitte magazine had received complaints from readers who felt they had “no connection with the models and no longer wish to see protruding bones”. Andreas Lebert has therefore decided to ban professional models from appearing in the magazine as of 2010 and has called on German women to apply to be featured instead. “We’re looking for women who have their own identity, whether it be the 18 year old A-level student, the company chairwoman, the musician, or the footballer” said Lebert. Although there are some critics of the idea, as there always are, the readers seem to like it as more than 20,000 put themselves
forward as potential models for the magazine and sales have jumped from 700,000 to more than 790,000.
Do you remember that wonderful Dove skincare advert which featured so-called real women stripped down to their underwear and revelling in their own “natural beauty”. Dove also took out a five-page advertisement in the first new-look Brigitte, commending the magazine on its “bravery”.
However, the elderly German fashion designer Karl Largerfeld has described anyone who criticises skinny models as “fat, chip-eating mummies” and that much of the objection is sheer jealousy. “Nobody wants to see a round woman” says Largerfeld. Personally I couldn’t disagree strongly enough with Largerfeld; I know plenty of non-fat, non-chip-eating mummies who like most people in the real world find extremely skinny models abhorrent and as for “sheer jealousy”, is he seriously suggesting that fit, healthy women look at these near-death size zero’s and think “I wish I looked that ill, I’m so jealous”? With regard to his ridiculous statement about nobody wanting to see round women, I suggest he take a look at a few “modern” men’s fashion and lifestyle magazine such as FHM, Mens Health, GQ, Maxim, Smooth or Nuts.
Brigitte Magazine and Andreas Lebert seem to have the same idea as British Vogue editor Alexandra Shulman who recently appealed to major fashion houses to end the “size-zero” culture. I for one can’t wait to see the end of this sick obsession by delusional fashion designers, or should I say fashion dinosaurs, for unnaturally skinny models.
I feel there are two main issues here – first is that the fashion industry feeds off the insecurities of 
“vulnerable” women by selling them an ideal that is completely unobtainable. Even naturally thin models struggle to get down to a size-zero and when they do they have to live in a constant state of starvation which as we know can often be fatal. Even then their pictures may still be Photoshopped to make then look even thinner – how ridiculous? Secondly all employers have a duty of care to their employees so surely there is an issue of health and safety here. If women feel they have no option but to starve themselves to the point where they endanger their own lives in order to get work as models, then it should be the responsibility of the employers to stop that happening. I wonder if it’s now time for a law making it a criminal offence for anyone in the fashion industry to employ a model with a body mass index below a certain level.
Hear are a few facts:
2006 a string of models died as a result of extreme dieting including sisters Luisel and Elianna Ramos. That year models with a body-mass index of less than 18.5 were banned from Madrid’s fashion week and The Council of Fashion Designers of America recommended that runway models should be aged 16 years or over.
2007, Spanish shop window dummies were increased to a size 10 after an agreement between some of the country’s leading retail chains including Zara and Mango and its health ministry.
The following year French MPs, fashion industry leaders and advertisers signed a voluntary charter on promoting healthier body images.
2009 American Glamour magazine was applauded for publishing a picture of a “plus size” model, Lizzie Miller, without airbrushing the image.
American high fashion magazine V took another so-called brave step last year when it published its “Size Issue”, which featured only very thin or plus-size models: a one-off.
I’d like to end on a question for the fashion dinosaurs who advocate size-zero. If size-zero is such a good thing, if it’s so attractive, why are we not seeing the fashion designers and magazine editors dying from excessive dieting?
February 21st, 2010 in
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Child constipation and encopresis (soiling) is not only distressing for the child but can also have long-term psychological effects. However, research has shown that Reflexology can be used as an effective treatment for the condition. For the full article by Julia Sheppard please click on Mindcraft Therapy
Stomach Reduction Surgery
Listening to the Today Programme on Radio 4 this morning I was astonished to hear that 4,300 people suffering from obesity received surgery for weight loss last year. Not only that but this number is just two per cent of the 20,000 clinically obese patients currently on the waiting list for stomach reduction surgery; one commentator even suggested that there are up to one million people in the UK “requiring” surgery for obesity.
What I find most astonishing about these figures is this; if one million people a year or even 20,000 for that matter, were turning up at accident and emergency departments, all presenting exactly the same symptoms, the focus of attention would soon turn to the cause of the problem and to it’s prevention. Imagine if every year one million computer users needed corrective eye surgery – how long would it take to find the cause of the damage and to rectify it?
I feel that the issue here is not that so many people considered morbidly obese or clinically obese can’t get access to stomach reduction surgery but that so many people become obese. Over-eating is not a medical condition but a behavioural problem produced by ones psychological relationship with food. Only recently I’ve treated two clients for weight loss, both of whom had gastric bands fitted at the time of coming to see me and both of whom had found ways to over-eat despite the surgery. In fact, both clients told me how difficult they found it trying to eat healthy food once the “lat band” had been fitted; even small amounts of chicken, fish, wholemeal bread and fruit would be vomited back up. Ironically they found it much easier to eat junk food such as certain types of crisps, chocolate and sweets to the point where one of them was eating nothing but Pringles and Chocolate. Following our session however, this particular client realised it was time for him to take control of his eating and went back to liquidising healthy, nutritional food while he saved up to have the lat band removed.
Apart from the cost of surgery, weight related medical conditions such as diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, osteoarthritis, depression, sleep apnoea and other respiratory conditions all cost the NHS hundreds of millions of pounds every year. Another factor to consider is the risk inherent in operating on obese patients and the growing number of compensation claims for complications arising form stomach operations as reported on in an article on the BBC News website
It’s clear that a long term solution to obesity and its associated problems should rely less on drastic, unnecessary and often ineffectual (but always expensive) surgery and more on education and early intervention with hypnotherapy and other psychological treatments to help people change their relationship with food.
Regarding the analogy I used earlier about computer users, how irresponsible would it be for the NHS to continue to offer corrective eye surgery when all that was needed was to change the way computers were used?
I’d be very interested to hear from any hypnotherapists, NLP practitioners and psychotherapists providing treatments for weight loss who have also treated clients with gastric bands fitted or who have undergone some other form of stomach reduction surgery.
January 21st, 2010 in
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Hypnotherapy for Ulcerative Colitis
Anyone who has experienced or suffers from Ulcerative Colitis, Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) Crohn’s Disease or Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) will know just how debilitating and painful these conditions can be. The chronic inflammation in the lining of the colon and rectum caused by Ulcerative Colitis produces severe abdominal pain and diarrhoea.
Although there are a number of medications available, many patients report only slight improvement in their symptoms while others feel no change at all. However, research suggests that hypnosis for colitis can be used as a very effective complementary therapy.
Hypnotherapy is already used successfully in the treatment of irritable bowel syndrome and stomach ulcers which, like colitis, involve inflammation which can be worsened by psychological stress and anxiety.
A study carried out by Dr David S. Rampton of Barts and the London, Queen Mary School of Medicine and Dentistry showed that hypnotherapy can help ease some of the bowel inflammation seen in Ulcerative Colitis. The study looked at the effect of one 50 minute “gut-focused” hypnotherapy session on 17 patients while another eight patients acted as a control group and listened to their choice of music for 50 minutes.
Results showed that blood levels of a specific marker for inflammation in the body fell by 53 percent in the group given hypnosis, whereas the control group showed no significant change. Other similar chemical markers of inflammation were also shown to decline in the hypnosis group, but again not in the control group. Senior researcher Dr. David S. Rampton told Reuters Health that “This work shows that a single short session of hypnotherapy can return some of the chemical changes in the bowel associated with inflammation back towards normal in patients with ulcerative colitis”.
Rampton’s team suggest that hypnosis might have direct effects on colon activity or it might affect people’s pain tolerance or perceptions of their symptoms. Whatever it is that hypnotherapy does, its benefit to patients are obvious.
Dieting
It can feel very confusing for anyone trying to lose weight; being continually bombarded with glossy adverts for various slimming pills, diets, weight loss programmes, Slimmer’s World, Weight Watchers and a whole host of firming creams, lotions and potions. The one thing that all of these methods have in common is that they focus our attention on the things we “don’t” want – being overweight – high cholesterol – cellulite – over eating – obesity, and it’s why in general none of them are effective in the long term.
How many people do you know, maybe even yourself, who’ve spent years on diets? No sooner has the latest fad diet come out than they’re on it, following it religiously, counting the calories or the points, or balancing the carbohydrates against the protein content for each and every meal. Sometimes, after the weeks or months of pain and suffering, tears and hunger we reach our target weight, we feel good (and so we should, we’ve suffered for it), we look good, our confidence increases and people begin to notice the difference and tell us how well we look and then it happens, again…. the pounds start going back on, faster than they did the last time and before we know it we’re right back where we started, eating the same things we were eating before. Our self esteem is shattered, we feel depressed and we wonder why we bother.
Hypnotherapy
As far back as 1985 the Journal of Clinical Psychology published an article entitled “Effectiveness of hypnosis as an adjunct to behavioural weight management” which describes a clinical trial in which 109 people aged between 17-67 years old underwent a behavioural treatment for weight management. They were divided into two groups, one with the addition of hypnosis and the other without.
The programme lasted for nine weeks resulting in both groups showing a significant weight reduction as would be expected from most diet plans. The subjects were then followed up after eight months and again in two years with some pretty startling results. The group that received the addition of hypnosis for weight loss continued to lose a significant amount of weight as opposed to the non-hypnotherapy group who only went on to lose a little more weight. A further benefit to the hypnotherapy group was that significantly more of them went on to achieve and maintain their personal weight goals.
A similar study looking at hypnosis in weight loss, this time of 60 women who were a minimum of 20% overweight, showed that the group given hypnotherapy lost an average of 17 pounds vs the non-hypnosis group who lost an average of only 5 pounds on follow-up.
A quick search of the internet will find many similar studies all showing that hypnotherapy not only helps in the initial weight loss but also in maintaining that weight loss. The weight loss industry is worth billions of pounds a year only because in the long term, most diets don’t work for most people.
The difference with hypnosis for weight loss is that it works on changing our relationship with food, with our self image and our self worth, while allowing us to focus on what we do want such as becoming healthy, increasing confidence and self esteem, feeling good about ourselves and enjoying life.
Unlike conventional medicine which focuses on the symptoms of a disease, complementary therapy takes a much more holistic view of cancer care. This mind-body-spirit approach works with the the patient, not only to treat the symptom but also the psychological and spiritual aspects of an illness including stress, anxiety, well being and self esteem. A holistic approach can also include family and friends, something which is particularly important in the treatment of cancer patients. In conventional medicine control of the illness is taken over by the medical practitioner with little or no input from the patient. A good complementary therapist on the other hand will help the patient to take control of their illness.
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