Diet and Health FAQ

Tagged As: Help Irritable Bowel Syndrome

Question:
I am 62 year lady, and was diagnosed with IBS 2 years ago, my symptoms come on very suddenly, hot sweats, fainting, pain in the left hand side, it only eases when I manage to go to the toilet. I can not identify what triggers this, I know that stress seems to trigger an attack, and would really like to speak to people in the same position; I am new to the internet. Has anyone tried hypnotherapy? Or hypnotism?

Answer:
The best thing I can recommend is to keep a diary of situations, meals, and bathroom trips.  It might seem like a lot of work, but I've been doing this for the past 2 months and it's amazing how you can look back and find patterns.  For me, IBS has been a daily struggle since last May for some reason.  I've had it for 8 years, but only last May did my symptoms get so bad that going to work or even to the gas station became a MAJOR event.  Sometimes you could eat something that bothers you, but you may not get the effects of it for 2-3 days later.  For me, everything runs through within 24 hours, but everybody is different, and mine works extremely fast, which doesn't help matters! I've recently found that ice cream = pain for me, although milk doesn't necessarily bother me, based on the diary I'm keeping.  For me, it's more of a situational thing than anything.  Again, based on the diary we've (my GI doc and I) been able to determine that almost every Saturday I am symptom free, probably because the work week is over and I no longer plan to leave the house on weekends.  My stress isn't really typical stress, but any situation where I don't have immediate access to the facilities.  My doc has me on Elavil right now, but it hasn't seemed to help me much yet.  Imodium always does the trick for me, although it can take an hour or more to work sometimes and also in multiple doses. I can't speak for hypnotherapy, but maybe it would help.  What works for one person may also do nothing for another, so it's really a personal experiment before you find a combination that works right for you.   There's no cure for IBS, but most people are able to adjust or treat the symptoms.  For me, I now travel with a portable toilet in my vehicle.  It might sound drastic to some, but it's allowed me to hold a job and in a strange way beat IBS in one area.  Oddly enough, I've NEVER had to use it, I've always been able to get to a public restroom, but just knowing it's there takes a load off my mind.  I've even got more bold lately and have gone with just a couple plastic bags.  It's no fun living in fear every day of when your next BM is going to be and what form it will be in, but for me it was either adjust or let the IBS beat me completely.  There are good days and there are many more bad days, but I hope that before too long my doc will have some formula that works for me to get somewhat of a normal life back.  I get frustrated and want to give up a lot, but overall I try to keep a positive attitude and fight rather than lay down and be beaten by it. Hypnosis for Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) Hypnosis has been by approved by the American Medical Association as a valid medical treatment since 1958, though the concept of using a state of hypnosis to alleviate both physical and mental ills has recurred throughout the history of medicine from ancient times. By reaching the subconscious level of the mind, hypnotherapy can be used to alter the way a person consciously perceives health problems, and also promote new manners of response to them. Hypnosis and self-hypnosis have been repeatedly proven to be highly effective means of alleviating all of the various symptoms of Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS, or spastic colon), including pain, diarrhea, constipation, bloating, nausea, and gas.[1] Hypnosis is often thought to be therapy that only affects the mind, but as mind and body are inseparably joined (particularly with IBS, given the brain-gut dysfunction current research has pinpointed), hypnosis can also help physical ailments. During a state of hypnosis, consciousness is not lost, it becomes more selective, and typically a hypnosis patient becomes aware of internal processes rather than the outside world's distractions. Only ten percent or so of the population is not susceptible to hypnosis – the rest of us can turn to this therapy for relief of symptoms from disorders as wide ranging as: asthma, allergies, strokes, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson's disease, cerebral palsy, high blood pressure, nausea and vomiting, irregular heartbeat, muscle spasms, paralysis, and, with well-documented success rates, Irritable Bowel Syndrome. Hypnotherapy has in fact been proven successful at reducing or even eliminating all Irritable Bowel Syndrome symptoms.[3] Over 15 years of solid scientific research has demonstrated hypnosis to be an effective, safe and inexpensive choice for IBS alleviation.[4] It has been so overwhelmingly successful in this regard that Adriane Fugh-Berman, MD, chair of the National Women's Health Network in Washington, DC, has said that hypnosis should be the treatment of choice for Irritable Bowel Syndrome cases which have not responded to conventional therapy. Since the conventional therapy offered to most IBS patients ranges from nothing at all to a lifetime prescription for semi-effective anti-spasmodic drugs, I take this statement as the closest thing to a whole-hearted endorsement an alternative therapy can hope to get from a mainstream medical spokesperson. For Irritable Bowel Syndrome, one of hypnotherapy's greatest benefits is its well-established ability to reduce the effects of stress. Your state of mind can have a direct impact on your physical well-being, even when you're in the best of health. If you're struggling with IBS, the tension, anxiety, and depression that comes from living with an incurable illness can actually undermine your immune system and further compromise your health.