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Brain cells produce minute fluctuations in electric current which can be recorded by placing on various parts of the head small metal discs attached to suitable amplifiers.The numerous electrical impulses which are associated with the living brain tend to produce a particular repetitive pattern. With the eyes closed, alpha rhythm appears, i.e. a rhythm consisting of waves lasting one-tenth of a second; with the eyes opened so that the brain is alerted, this rhythm disappears. Faster rhythms may be seen when the patient is on tranquillizers, and slower (theta) rhythms indicate malfunctions or tumours of the brain.These slower rhythms are also seen in some patients with migraine, particularly during an attack, when they may indicate a transient decrease in circulation. Most patients with migraine have a normal EEG but the abnormalities found consist mainly of slow wave activity, more often over only one temporal lobe. EEG findings are not always conclusive since many different abnormalities can give identical EEG changes. A small percentage of ‘normal’ people without symptoms have EEG ‘abnormalities’ but these occur more commonly in migraine patients and become more pronounced during an attack. The EEG can therefore be a help both in assessing the severity of attacks and in excluding diagnoses other than migraine; patients with hemiplegic migraine particularly tend to have severe persisting EEG abnormalities on the relevant side of the head.During one stage of the EEG examination, the patient is asked to ‘over-breathe’, i.e. to breathe rapidly and deeply; this causes carbon dioxide to be ‘blown off producing a change in the acidity of the blood. Over-breathing can bring out latent abnormalities and, although migraine patients have slightly different responses to over-breathing, the meaning of this is uncertain. It may be that they are more anxious as a group with a greater tendency to over-breathing, i.e. an anxiety response. A more likely explanation is that their blood vessels are unduly sensitive to changes in blood acidity.Another EEG technique to reveal latent abnormalities is the response to & stroboscope, a machine that produces flashing lights (flicker) at different frequencies. In the vast majority of migraine subjects, these responses are made to a much greater range of flash frequencies than in normal subjects but, as a similar phenomenon was observed in people with anxiety and tension who do not suffer from migraine, its significance is uncertain. The EEG changes found in migraine may be very similar to those found in epilepsy, and on the basis of the EEG records it would be difficult to distinguish between the two conditions.The EEG can indicate a structural abnormality but it is not always possible to distinguish one cause of structural abnormality from another; indeed, some deep-seated lesions may cause no EEG abnormality or only minimal generalized changes.The answer to the question of what the EEG does is that it supplies a useful piece of the jigsaw puzzle but rarely gives the whole answer to a diagnostic problem on its own. Rather like the skull X-ray, the EEG will reveal something unsuspected only in some instances, when more extensive investigations are indicated.
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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.

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