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Research shows that listening to hypnosis techniques can reduce the severity and number of episodes that menopausal women experience.
A new study finds that 20 minutes per day of recorded hypnosis – where women are encouraged into a hypnotic state and picture scenarios where they feel cool – reduces symptoms such as sudden feelings of hot flashes, sweating or heart palpitations.
Writing in the journal JAMA Network Open, including researchers baylor university In texas Said findings were clinically significant.
They concluded that “Self-administered clinical hypnosis has been shown to be an effective, clinically significant intervention for the treatment of hot flashes, given its efficacy in reducing hot flash scores (i.e., frequency and severity) by more than half and improving participants’ perception of their quality of life”.
During the randomized controlled trial, 250 women were divided into two groups.
All women were postmenopausal and experiencing at least four daily or 28 weekly hot flushes at the start of the study.
Women were asked to rate each time they experienced a hot flush and its severity (mild, moderate, severe or very severe).
In the hypnosis group, women were asked to listen to 20-minute audio-recorded hypnosis sessions every day for six weeks.
These recordings included hypnotic relaxation techniques as well as induced mental imagery of feeling cool.
The other group served as a control group and listened to white noise that was still labeled as hypnosis – this acted as a “sham” intervention.
The results showed that women in the real hypnosis group experienced a significantly greater reduction in hot flush scores and daily interference with hot flushes at week six than the other group.
Overall, the improvement in average hot flush scores was larger for those given real hypnosis (baseline score of 88.7 compared to six-week score 41.3, so a 53.4% reduction) compared to those in the white noise group (baseline score of 94.6 compared to six-week score 55.9, so a 40.9% reduction).
The actual hypnosis group reported a significantly greater reduction in the amount of hot flushes interfering with daily life (49.3% reduction) compared to the control group (37.4% reduction).
They experienced greater benefits from their technique (90.3% vs. 64.3%).
The researchers said the findings showed that “hypnosis intervention for hot flushes is a safe and effective option for women”.