Children can greatly reduce abdominal pain by using their imagination

[Celebration]

http://www.physorg.com/news174545422.html

Children with functional abdominal pain who used audio recordings of guided imagery at home in addition to standard medical treatment were almost three times as likely to improve their pain problem, compared to children who received standard treatment alone.

And those benefits were maintained six months after treatment ended, a new study by University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Duke University Medical Center researchers has found.

The study is published in the November 2009 issue of the journal Pediatrics. The lead author is Miranda van Tilburg, Ph.D., assistant professor in the Division of Gastroenterology and Hepatology in the UNC School of Medicine and a member of the UNC Center for Functional GI & Motility Disorders.

"What is especially exciting about our study is that children can clearly reduce their abdominal pain a lot on their own with guidance from audio recordings, and they get much better results that way than from medical care alone," said van Tilburg. "Such self-administered treatment is, of course, very inexpensive and can be used in addition to other treatments, which potentially opens the door for easily enhancing treatment outcomes for a lot of children suffering from frequent stomach aches."

[izquierdista]

1. Oh, but there's no such thing as hypnosis and NLP

At least that's what I keep hearing from skeptics.

[LeftishBrit]

2. Who among sceptics ever said there was no such thing as hypnosis?

It isn't a cure-all, and there are some situations where it could be dangerous (e.g. if a stomach-ache is actually due to appendicitis, hypnosis could delay vital treatment). But there is lots of evidence that it can have a valuable effect on certain psychological problems, and on pain that is mainly of psychological origin as in this study.

[mopinko]

3. or maybe they just

said they felt better because it wasn't worth the trouble to complain. really, using this kind of woo on kids, eeeesh.

[Celebration]

4. uh, did you

forget the :sarcasm: ??

[silverweb]

5. "Distractability" is a component of diagnosis.

When the doctor palpates the abdomen of a patient with complaints of pain, and that patient complains when paying attention to the exam, but not when distracted by some other process (like talking to another person in the room), this figures into whether the diagnosis/treatment includes organic versus functional (aka "psychosomatic") etiologies.

When I was a kid, I had stomach aches a lot -- and they invariably occurred when my parents had been fighting the night before. Once I got to school, I was fine until it was time to go home again. Ditto going to the library or into the woods with a book.

School and books were my distraction and they were very effective in the moment, but didn't do a damn thing to stop the cause. That took growing up and moving away, as well as some measure of later counseling.

The point is, I hope use of these audio programs doesn't replace psychological evaluation and counseling for kids who possibly have another root cause of their abdominal pain. Or maybe they can be used to nail down the functional cause and direct the course of treatment to include psychological counseling.

[Celebration]

6. well

Even with a kid getting psychological evaluation, it can't really stop the parents from fighting can it? It can only help the child deal with that so that the kid does not internalize it. One way to do that may actually be through guided visualization........

I am definitely not advocating no counseling however. I just think there are a number of different tools in the toolbox.

I actually threw up every day in first grade. I doubt if guided visualizations or relaxation programs or CDs would have done much for me. Switching schools was the answer. But it isn't that easy changing families.

What I liked about this study was that the changes lasted longer than the treatment, indicating a probably difference in the way the kids handled the stress. This really IS about handling stress.

[silverweb]

7. Absolutely agree.

I wasn't criticizing the use of the audio programs. They could be very valuable in both diagnosis and treatment, especially for functional cases. I was just saying that I hope they don't replace a possible need for additional therapy.

Yes, this really IS about handling stress, and learning to "distract" oneself from the pain using imagery is a valuable tool.

[Crunchy Frog]

8. I recently read a really interesting story along similar lines.

About peditric burn patients, and the use of a virtual realiy program called "Snow World" to reduce their pain during painful burn treatments.

I found this article abou it. http://www.ampainsoc.org/pub/bulletin/spr05/inno1.htm

It doesn't look like "woo woo" at all to me.

[wishlist]

9. Conscious relaxation worked for me as child in reducing stomach pains

I had acute bouts of stomach pain with diarrhea that persisted for weeks in the first grade back in the 1960's. My parents took me to a doctor who in just one visit realized that the source of my very real pains was extreme nervous stress at school due to my teacher's harsh physical punishment methods. Although I was never punished, I had watched it being inflicted on others in the class. As well as encouraging my folks to find out about the problems at school, he helped me to consciously relax. From that time on I was always able to relax as soon as I started feeling nervous tension in my stomach. I never had a recurrence of the problem, despite many stressful events throughout the years and I felt empowered and in control.