Hypnosis and relaxation therapy can be used in a number of ways. In some settings this type of therapy is being used as a pain reducer. It is stated in some articles and studies that the reduction of pain can be made without narcotics and without other types of intervention simply through the practice of hypnosis and relaxation.
There were a number of results to promote hypnosis for various types of medical procedures and pain. With an invasive medical procedure there is a huge difference in the amount of tolerance that can be accepted by a patient who has been hypnotized versus the patient who has not. It was even discovered that patients of open heart surgery would be able to allow the cardiologist to keep the balloon inflated for up to twenty-five percent longer in some cases.
Therefore it can drastically increase the amount of pain tolerance that one has during major surgeries. The treatment has also been tested on burn patients. In burn patients it was successful at reducing pain and in limiting the amount of pain medications that were used. Another area where pain reduction was made possible was in labor care pain where there was a higher chance of someone being able to manage their pain on their own. With acute pain studies there was a regular basis of pain and there were issues with the patients being able to decrease their amount of pain without the medications.
With headaches the pain control was minimal and it was not reported as to whether or not there would be problems. However with these issues the only disappointment in the studies is that there was not a lot of information to maintain that other chronic pain could be controlled by hypnosis. As for relaxation in the control of pain, the results were mixed and some of the studies that were discussed showed that there was a reduction of acute pain while others did not.
As for chronic pain it was determined that there was no real proof in this area either as the studies showed that there was both some improvement or no improvement in chronic pain (Kessler, Patterson, and Dane 2003). As for the pain associated with fibromyalgia, there were studies that showed that hypnosis when combined with drug treatment was very effective in the control of pain but that hypnosis combined with relaxation was not effective (Castel, Perez, Sala, Padrol, and Rull 2007).
It has also been proven that the pain management through hypnosis can help those who have osteoarthritis pain. Thus meaning that these individuals will be able to better manage their pain through the help of both hypnosis and relaxation (Gay, Phillipot, and Luminet 2002).