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Despite the fact that one in four people will at some time in their lives suffer from the effects of Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS), the cause of the condition remains a mystery within the medical profession and there seems little chance that they will be coming up with a cure any time soon.
Symptoms commonly include abdominal pain, diarrhoea, constipation, bloating, lower back pain and flatulence. Second only to the common cold as the cause of time off work, IBS normally starts in early adulthood and rarely after the age of fifty, and women are three times more likely than men to report the problem. Its effects vary from slight to severely debilitating and can lead to depression and other psychological disorders.
So why are eight million people in Britain still suffering unnecessarily?
A major problem is that when you examine the bowel of an IBS sufferer, it looks no different to that of a non-sufferer, so where do you start to find the cause? We do know that stress is a major factor in triggering symptoms, which is why many eminent medical practitioners support the use of hypnotherapy in its treatment.
Peter Whorwell, Professor of Medicine and Gastroenterology at Manchester University Medical School has been researching the use of hypnosis in the treatment of IBS for 20 years. He says that IBS is ideal for treatment with hypnosis and his follow-up research on 250 sufferers who were given 12 sessions of hypnotherapy showed a success rate of 70%. Professor Whorwell claims that hypnotherapy is an extremely effective therapy for the condition and offers a cheaper option than new and expensive drugs coming onto the market. Some of his former patients had suffered 20 years of distressing symptoms, all of which had disappeared after 12 sessions of hypnotherapy.
So there you have it. A world authority on IBS with his own specialist department within a prestigious NHS institution is proving on a daily basis that hypnotherapy works for the majority of IBS sufferers.
So why is it that most GPs still refuse to refer their patients to a hypnotherapist but will insist they suffer years of relying on an ineffective regime of drug and dietary therapy? The fact is that an holistic approach to medical and psychological care is required in the management of IBS. Of course some patients will require drugs as part of their care, but GPs should stop their stubborn refusal to recognise that other – proven – therapies have a crucial part to play. It’s a win-win situation: The GP reduces his case-load; the NHS gets lower costs, and most important of all, the patient stands a far better chance of being healed.
Copyright: Adrian Walker 2008
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