Medical Hypnosis and hypnotherapy in Castro Valley in East Bay Castro Valley California near San Francisco Bay Area near San Leandro, Oakland, Hayward, Pleasanton, Union City, and Fremont. Medical hypnosis for pain control, pain management, hypnotic stress reduction, weight loss, self-hypnosis, smoking cessation. Close to Castro Vally Bart and to all Castro Valley centers. Do not let pain dominate your life, take control of your life, manage your discomfort, relax yourself, release the stress. Clinical hypnosis in Castro Valley, Fremont, Union City, Hayward, San Leandro, San Lorenzo in the East Bay Area near San Francisco, California.
20990 Redwood Road Castro Valley, California, USA
Directions
From SAN FRANCISCO or OAKLAND via 580 • Turn LEFT onto STROBRIDGE AVE. 0.18 miles • Turn RIGHT onto CASTRO VALLEY BLVD. 0.39 miles • At the intersection with ANITA AVE., turn RIGHT into the parking lot at 2881 CASTRO VALLEY BLVD
From SAN JOSE, PENINSULA, or OAKLAND via 880 • Merge onto I-238 S toward I-580/CASTRO VALLEY/STOCKTON. 2.08 miles • Take the CA-238/Redwood Road exit. 0.11 miles • Take the Redwood Road ramp. 0.32 miles • Turn LEFT onto Redwood Road. 0.86 miles • , turn RIGHT into the parking lot at Castro Valley Plaza at 20990 Redwood Road
From CASTRO VALLEY BART • Turn LEFT onto Redwood Road •., cross the street into the parking lot at 220990 Redwood Road
From PLEASANTON or DUBLIN • Take I-580 W toward OAKLAND. Take Redwood Road exit • Turn Right onto Redwood Road. 0.39 miles • turn RIGHT into the parking lot at Castro Valley Plaza at 20990 Redwood Road

September 08, 2005

A Published Study Regarding the Power of the Mind

An exciting study has just been published in The Journal of Neuroscience, documenting the release of natural painkillers based solely on the belief, or mental attitude, of the patient -- the first published, quantifiable proof that mind indeed controls matter.
A report on the findings follows.

If You Think You'll Feel Better, You WillBy Steven ReinbergHealthDay ReporterWEDNESDAY, Aug. 24 (HealthDayNews) --

Pain relief may just be mind over matter.According to new research, the belief that a pill will relieve pain is enough to cause the brain to release its own natural painkillers.The finding is the first direct evidence that the brain's own pain-fighting chemicals, endorphins, have a role in the phenomenon known as the "placebo effect" -- and that this response corresponds with a reduction in feelings of pain."This is telling us that placebos are powerful," said study lead author Dr. Jon-Kar Zubieta, an associate professor of psychiatry and radiology at the University of Michigan. "When there is a belief that something may take place, this belief actually activates systems in your brain that are directly modifying experience. If you receive a drug and you believe it is active, the drug itself might not be doing very much."

The report appears in the Aug. 24 issue of the Journal of Neuroscience."We looked at the response of pain control systems in the brain," Zubieta said. "We observed that a placebo that was believed to be an agonistic agent was able to enhance the release of these anti-pain endogenous opioids."For the study, Zubieta's team induced pain by injecting concentrated salt water solution into the jaws of 14 healthy young men who agreed to the experiment. The injections were given while the men underwent positron emission tomography (PET) scans.During one scan, the men were told they would receive pain medicine. Instead, they were given a placebo. Then every 15 seconds during the subsequent scans, the men were asked to rate the intensity of their pain on a scale of 0 to 100. After the experiment, they provided more detailed pain ratings.
The researchers found that after telling the men that the placebo was coming, the amount of concentrated salt water needed to maintain the pain increased. This indicated that sensitivity to pain was reduced. So thinking they were getting a pain drug actually allowed the participants to tolerate more pain, the researchers said.Zubieta classified nine of the men as "high placebo responders" because they exhibited a strong placebo effect. The other five were classified as "low placebo responders."In addition, the researchers were able to show the power of the placebo effect. "There was more relief in response to this inactive medication as a function of belief," Zubieta said. "In fact, in some areas of the brain, the release was related to how much they believed the drug was going to be effective.
"Zubieta believes these findings tell you something about how humans function. "Understanding these mind-body connections are important," he said. "There are many treatments that are believed to be effective, when in reality they may not be more effective than placebo."Harnessing the placebo effect may have some positive therapeutic applications, Zubieta said. "You want to enhance the placebo effect under some circumstances," he said. "And in some others you want to reduce it --like when you do a clinical trial.
"One expert thinks the findings are important, but miss the larger point."It's clearly another step in elucidating these mechanisms, which is really terrific," said Daniel E. Moerman, the William E. Stirton Professor of Anthropology at the University of Michigan in Dearborn, and the author of Meaning, Medicine and the Placebo Effect. But he added, the question of a mind-body connection as a separation between the two "is not even 16th-century quality thinking," Moerman said. "Socrates did better than that.""It's only the technology that has made this an interesting area to study," Moerman added. "You can scan this stuff now. You can see it, so there it is.

"SOURCES: Jon-Kar Zubieta, M.D., Ph.D., associate professor of psychiatry and radiology, University Michigan Medical School, Ann Arbor; Daniel E. Moerman, Ph.D., the William E. Stirton Professor of Anthropology, University of Michigan, Dearborn, and author, Meaning, Medicine and the Placebo Effect; Aug. 24, 2005, Journal of Neuroscience. Copyright © 2005 ScoutNews LLC. All rights reserved.Reference to the published results in The Journal of Neuorscience:The Journal of Neuroscience, August 24, 2005, 25(34)Endogenous Opiates and the Placebo Effect Jon-Kar Zubieta, Joshua A. Bueller, Lisa R. Jackson, David J. Scott, Yanjun Xu, Robert A. Koeppe, Thomas E. Nichols, and Christian S. Stohler (see pages 7754-7762) Much to the chagrin of drug designers and sometimes to the benefit of patients, placebos can have powerful effects on medical management. This week, Zubieta et al. add to the evidence that the placebo effect on the subjective assessment of pain involves the endogenous opioid system. During a pain challenge, volunteer subjects were given an intravenous injection that they were led to believe might have analgesic properties. The painful stimulus, the infusion of a few milliliters of hypertonic saline into a jaw muscle, was adjusted to maintain constant pain intensity and to prevent tissue swelling. The authors used positron emission tomography in combination with a µ-opioid receptor-selective radiotracer to examine the brain regions activated and the contribution of µ-opioid receptors. The placebo induced activation in the rostral anterior cingulate, dorsolateral frontal cortex, insular cortex, and nucleus accumbens in parallel with lower ratings of pain intensity.

Hypnosis & Weight Loss in the News Again

This article just appeared in the Washington Times.
Isn't it great that there is more & more news out there about hypnosis!

Hypnosis a tool in weight loss
By Candice ChoiASSOCIATED PRESSSeptember 7, 2005

Imagine a world where chocolate cake holds no temptation, where celery is an indulgence and food cravings float away in a balloon. Now, open your eyes to the trancelike world of Americans who are turning to hypnosis to drop extra pounds. In a nation where two-thirds of the population is overweight or obese, some dieters are hoping hypnosis will finally break food's spell over them. It's working for Cynthia Lewis, a San Diego resident who is no longer tempted to polish off a plate of cookies when she smells them baking. "Now, just smelling [the cookies] is enough," she said. Despite its hokey, magic-show aura, hypnosis is used as an alternative treatment in medical institutions to manage everything from pain to smoking to weight loss. And as waistlines continue to bulge, hypnotherapists say they're seeing more patients desperate for a way to control their eating. "The country is getting fatter and fatter, so different weight-loss methods are getting more attention," said Jean Fain, a psychologist who uses hypnosis at Harvard Medical School's Cambridge Hospital. In the past five years, Miss Fain said, the number of patients she treats for weight loss has doubled. For many of those patients, hypnosis is a last resort. That was the case for Miss Lewis, who grew tired of dropping and gaining the same 30 pounds on various liquid diets. Three months ago, she began seeing Brian Alman, who teaches self-hypnosis for Kaiser Permanente, the Oakland, Calif.-based health insurer. So far, Miss Lewis said the therapy has helped her change her lifestyle. Generally, the hypnotic state is defined as a state of focused concentration -- a condition akin to being so absorbed in a good book that the outside world seems to fade away, said Guy Montgomery, president of the Society of Psychological Hypnosis, a division of the American Psychological Association. Whether hypnosis will bring favorable results varies from person to person as in any other treatment, Mr. Montgomery said. "We don't view [hypnosis] as a stand-alone therapy, but as an additional technique," he said.
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