Health News. Lots of resources and information

These are two forms of treatment that are used quite commonly by both medical doctors as well as by alternative practitioners. Although these therapies would seem at first to have but little role to play in managing sciatica and back problems, they can help in a variety of ways, including:

They can help a patient bring about lifestyle changes indicated for improving his condition. For example, hypnosis can help someone stick to a diet.

Affect how the patient looks at and reacts to his difficulties. While hypnosis may perhaps make no difference to the extent of sciatica, it certainly can alter the way someone reacts to it when it happens, either by making him less aware of it or by increasing his level of tolerance to it. ? These therapies are also particularly useful for reducing stress and anxiety, these often being an exacerbating factor in all kinds of back-connected problems.

Hypnosis and hypnotherapy both depend on the power of suggestion, whether the suggestions originate from the practitioner or the patient himself. In fact, it is generally believed that no one is ever hypnotised by anyone else, and that what invariably happens is that the subject hypnotises himself, the hypnotist merely providing a conduit for this self-hypnosis.

Not every patient is a suitable subject for this approach, and there is considerable individual variation in the extent to which people respond to this technique, some falling almost immediately into a deep trance-like state at the first suggestion while others totally fail to respond. There is, however, no need for a subject to attain a deep hypnotic state before hypnosis can work, the very lightest of trances being enough to achieve results.

Hypnosis can be tried out at very little cost and with minimal risk by buying one or more of the self-hypnosis tapes that are commonly advertised in newspapers and magazines. These tapes, of course, are usually aimed at creating generally beneficial effects – such as inducing relaxation or reducing reaction to pain – but often can be adapted by the user so that the suggestions they contain become directly relevant to the problem. Many hypnotists will also provide patients with individualised tapes they can later use at home to reinforce suggestions made during previous treatment sessions.

*61\124\2*

Having extolled the benefits of increasing the amount of environmental light, I hesitate to confuse matters by mentioning that for some depressed people, an opposite solution may solve the problem – that is, increasing the daily exposure to darkness. Dr Thomas Wehr at the US National Institute of Mental Health has suggested that a cause of depression in some people may be our use of artificial lighting to shorten the hours of darkness to which we are exposed each day. Certain people, he argues, may be physically unable to cope with the legacy of Thomas Edison – universal illumination of the night – and may benefit by returning the night to its natural length. By adopting this strategy for one man, a middle-aged engineer who had cycled in and out of depression for years, Wehr and colleagues enabled him to stay free of depression for many months simply by asking him to remain in darkness for 12 to 14 hours each day. Since then a few other individuals have derived similar benefit from this treatment. Although at this time extending the hours of darkness remains a highly novel treatment that may benefit only a few of those patients who cycle in and out of depression, it is another demonstration of the importance of the environment in regulating mood, and the value of manipulating the environment as part of an overall treatment plan for depression.

*76\75\2*