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Injuries

• Hypnosis is not a medical treatment. If your pain is coming from a sprain, strain or broken bone then a medical doctor is where you should be seeking treatment. Anyone seeking hypnosis to help with pain must first ascertain if that pain is being caused by something treatable. If a physical exam yields nothing, then hypnosis could be a viable treatment alternative.
  
  

Stress

• Pain that has been brought on by stress does respond well under hypnosis. When the body suffers from stressful situations the fight/flight response takes over. This can cause an involuntary contraction of the muscles that over time can bring some painful results. Patients quite frequently suffer from headaches, muscle aches and overall body pain. By placing the brain in a more relaxed state, the perception of pain can be altered with the eventual goal of making the patient pain free.
  
  

Perceived Pain

• Perceived pain does not mean the person is faking it, or that they are suffering from a mental disorder. The pain is very real to them. Hypnosis can be quite effective on this type of pain as well. Sometimes pain is a state that the brain creates. The goal of hypnosis in this case is to teach the brain to process this information in a different way. Again, the eventual goal is to help the patient become pain free.
  
  

Results

• The American Psychological Association has evidence that patients in a medical setting do respond well to hypnosis as a part of a treatment plan for pain management. Post-surgical patients, when treated with a combination of medications and hypnosis, reported a lower degree of pain than patients that were treated with medications alone. They were also able to reduce the amounts of analgesics and pain medications used.
  
  

Advantages

• Although not able to cure all types of pain, the use of hypnosis in pain reduction could bring about several health benefits for the patient and the health care industry. The reliance on pain killers could decline, reducing costs and the side effects often endured. Recovery times could speed up reducing the patients overall stay in the hospital.