0:00

I'm Joe Graydon. And I'm Terry Graydon.

0:03

Welcome to this podcast of The People's

0:05

Pharmacy. You can find previous podcasts

0:08

and more information on a range

0:10

of health topics at peoplespharmacy.com.

0:14

Is hypnotherapy

0:16

a quaint relic of a bygone era or

0:19

could it be a cutting-edge tool for pain

0:21

relief and stress reduction? This

0:24

is The People's Pharmacy with Terry and

0:26

Joe Graydon.

0:34

Dr. Franz Mesmer made a huge

0:36

splash with his discovery of animal

0:39

magnetism. It became known as mesmerism.

0:42

Today, it's evolved into hypnotherapy.

0:44

Our guest today is one of

0:46

the country's leading experts on the value

0:49

of hypnotherapy in clinical settings.

0:52

Psychiatrist Dr. David Spiegel

0:54

is director of the Center on Stress

0:56

and Health at Stanford University

0:59

School of Medicine.

1:00

He'll offer you a tiny taste of a hypnosis

1:02

section, so stay tuned. Coming

1:05

up on The People's Pharmacy, how hypnosis

1:08

can help your health.

1:14

In The People's Pharmacy health headlines,

1:17

with cases of COVID-19 on the rise,

1:19

a new study deserves attention. While

1:21

some people recover from the infection within

1:24

a few weeks or months, others are

1:26

still suffering up to two years

1:28

after coming down with the coronavirus. People

1:31

who were hospitalized for COVID-19

1:33

are at the greatest risk of lasting health

1:36

problems and death, but even

1:38

those who had mild cases may experience

1:41

any of more than 20 medical

1:43

conditions. This information

1:45

comes from an analysis of data from

1:47

nearly 140,000 veterans

1:50

who had a SARS-CoV-2 infection

1:52

and almost 6 million patients

1:55

who had remained uninfected. VA patients

1:57

who had been hospitalized for COVID-19 had a higher risk of contracting

2:00

hospitalized with COVID were at a higher risk

2:02

of death for the subsequent two years than

2:04

people who had never been infected. Although

2:07

many people gradually improved, even

2:10

after two years a significant number were

2:12

not back to their original state of health,

2:14

they were more likely to experience trouble

2:17

with blood clots, kidney problems,

2:19

digestive disorders, diabetes,

2:22

and cardiovascular complications.

2:24

There's growing

2:26

interest in how viral infections

2:29

may play an important role in

2:31

the development of dementia. A

2:33

new study in the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease

2:36

explores the link between routine

2:39

vaccinations and a reduced

2:41

risk for Alzheimer's disease and related

2:43

dementias. The investigators

2:45

reviewed 16 million medical

2:48

records from an insurance claims database.

2:50

About 1.6 million senior citizens

2:53

were followed for more than eight years.

2:56

Those who were vaccinated for tetanus

2:58

and diphtheria were 30% less likely to receive

3:02

a diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease. Shingle's

3:05

vaccinations lowered the risk by 25%. Pneumonia

3:09

vaccines also reduced the likelihood

3:11

of developing dementia by about 27%.

3:15

These are relative risk reductions.

3:18

Absolute risk dropped by 2 to 3%. Such

3:22

results suggest an unanticipated

3:24

benefit from vaccinations in general

3:27

and Shingle's vaccinations

3:29

in particular.

3:30

There's a popular saying, use it or

3:33

lose it. Does it apply to your brain?

3:36

A new study of approximately 280,000 volunteers

3:40

in the UK Biobank suggests

3:42

that it does. These people signed

3:44

up with the Biobank between 2006 and 2010 when they

3:47

were at least 40 but not

3:50

older than 69. They

3:53

completed a number of cognitive tests

3:55

during the seven years of follow-up. In

3:57

addition, at the start of the study they filled out a number of tests.

4:00

a comprehensive questionnaire that asked

4:02

about their participation in adult

4:05

education classes. During

4:07

the study, about 1% of

4:09

the volunteers developed dementia.

4:12

Those who had participated in

4:14

adult education classes were 19%

4:17

less likely to be among them than

4:20

those who had not. They maintained

4:22

their fluid intelligence and nonverbal

4:25

reasoning better, too, although classes

4:27

didn't seem to affect visual spatial

4:29

memory or reaction time. The

4:32

authors conclude, accordingly, participation

4:35

in such classes could reduce the risk

4:37

of developing dementia.

4:39

Systemic oral

4:41

treatment with corticosteroids

4:44

tends to reduce bone strength and

4:46

contribute to fractures. Scientists

4:49

have been unsure whether that risk

4:51

also applies to people using inhaled

4:54

corticosteroids. A study

4:56

of more than 87,000 patients

4:59

with chronic obstructive pulmonary

5:01

disease, or COPD,

5:04

suggests that people using inhaled

5:07

corticosteroids to treat their breathing

5:09

difficulties are at higher

5:11

risk of breaking a bone.

5:13

The investigators analyzed 44

5:15

randomized controlled

5:18

trials that compared inhaled

5:20

corticosteroids to non-steroid

5:23

treatments. Inhaled steroids

5:26

alone did not increase the risk

5:28

of fractures significantly. However,

5:31

people using steroids in combination

5:33

with other drugs for COPD were 30 to 50%

5:36

more likely to break

5:39

a bone. The risk from taking

5:41

Budecinide with a metered dose inhaler

5:43

was especially high, about 75%

5:47

greater than for people not using corticosteroids

5:50

for their COPD at all. Older

5:52

patients and those with more severe COPD

5:55

were at the greatest fracture risk from inhaled

5:57

corticosteroid use in combination with other drugs.

5:59

with other medications. And

6:02

that's the health news from the People's Pharmacy

6:04

this week.

6:12

Welcome

6:15

to the People's Pharmacy. I'm Terry Graydon.

6:18

And I'm Joe Graydon. Hypnosis

6:20

has been a healing practice for hundreds

6:22

of years. Why doesn't modern

6:24

medicine use it more often?

6:26

Many people have misconceptions about

6:29

hypnosis. They may think of it

6:31

as a stage performance. But

6:33

clinical hypnosis can be surprisingly

6:36

effective to treat a range of conditions,

6:38

from anxiety and stress to insomnia

6:41

or pain. Why don't we know

6:43

more about this powerful tool

6:45

for healing?

6:46

We are delighted to be talking

6:48

with one of the country's leading experts

6:50

on hypnotherapy. Dr. David

6:52

Spiegel is Wilson Professor and

6:55

Associate Chair of Psychiatry and Behavioral

6:57

Sciences, Director of the Center

7:00

on Stress and Health, and Medical

7:02

Director of the Center for Integrative Medicine

7:04

at Stanford University School of Medicine.

7:07

Dr. Spiegel is the co-founder and

7:09

chief scientific officer of Reverie,

7:12

an interactive hypnosis app.

7:16

Welcome back to the People's Pharmacy.

7:18

Dr. David Spiegel. Thanks

7:20

very much, Terry. I'm very glad to be here with

7:23

you. Dr. Spiegel, for

7:26

those listeners who are just

7:28

not very familiar with the history of

7:30

hypnosis, can you give us

7:32

a quick thumbnail? Who was Dr. Franz

7:35

Mesmer, and how did this whole

7:37

thing get started? Sure,

7:39

Joe. It is an interesting history. Hypnosis,

7:43

or what Mesmer called animal magnetism,

7:46

is actually the oldest Western conception

7:49

of a psychotherapy, the first time a talking

7:51

interaction between a doctor and a patient is

7:54

thought to have

7:55

therapeutic potential. And despite

7:57

being the oldest, it's also I

8:00

think the hidden asset

8:02

of psychotherapy that has been underdeveloped

8:05

in this last 250 years, and

8:08

that's why we developed Reverie

8:10

to try and get it to people. Mesmer

8:13

himself thought that people's

8:16

mental and physical disorders were due

8:18

to misdirected

8:21

magnetic fields in their bodies, and so

8:23

he tried to redirect them with

8:26

vats full of iron filings. They

8:29

would come next to them, try to correct their magnetic

8:31

fields. Some people would go into altered

8:33

mental states of some kind or would swoon,

8:36

and many of them

8:38

started to feel better. Mesmer,

8:40

as soon as he got some notoriety, left his wife

8:43

and family in Vienna and moved to Paris, where

8:45

he competed very successfully with

8:47

the leading doctors of the day. Now

8:49

keep in mind that if you were sick in 18th

8:52

century Paris, the most

8:54

likely treatment would be bloodletting. Voltaire

8:58

wrote to his brother, we did everything we could to

9:00

save father's life, we even set the doctors away.

9:04

And Mesmer competed

9:06

very successfully.

9:08

His office was bright and cheerful, he

9:10

had patients encouraging one another there,

9:12

whereas doctors' offices at the time were kind

9:14

of grim, dark places where you got the bad

9:16

news. And Mesmer got

9:19

so popular, he was the go-to doctor,

9:21

that the other physicians got

9:23

King Louis to convene a commission

9:26

to investigate him. It

9:28

included our own Benjamin Franklin, who was having

9:30

a very good time in Paris then. It

9:33

included the famous chemist Lavoisier,

9:35

who developed the principles of oxygen chemistry,

9:38

and shortly before he was beheaded in the

9:40

French Revolution, also came up with the idea

9:42

of the gross national product, brilliant guy.

9:45

The other member of the commission, another member, was

9:48

a man well known for his work in

9:51

pain control, Dr. Guyotin, the

9:53

inventor of the guillotine. He kind of created

9:55

the mind-body problem, and this

9:58

panel concluded that what Mesmer doing

10:00

was nothing but heated imagination. Well,

10:03

actually, that is not a terribly incorrect

10:05

conclusion, but heated imagination

10:08

can be a very useful therapeutic tool,

10:10

and that's a big part of what we do using

10:13

hypnosis, teaching people to access

10:15

their own ability to control their bodies. One

10:18

of the biggest misunderstandings about hypnosis

10:20

is that you lose control, and

10:23

that comes from everybody having seen

10:25

some stage show hypnotist making a fool

10:27

out of the football coach by having him dance like

10:29

a ballerina.

10:29

That's not what hypnosis is. Hypnosis

10:32

is an ability to control your

10:35

state of mind and your state of body as well.

10:37

Well, let's talk a little bit about some

10:39

of those misconceptions. What are the most

10:42

common ones, and why

10:44

is it that you actually don't lose control?

10:47

I think that is a common misconception.

10:49

It is, Terry, because all

10:51

hypnosis is really self-hypnosis.

10:54

I can't hypnotize anybody who isn't hypnotizable,

10:56

and about one out of four adults are just not

10:58

hypnotizable, but to the extent

11:01

that you are, you naturally

11:03

shift into mental states. People who are hypnotizable

11:05

have experiences in movies, for

11:08

example, of getting so caught up in the movie that they

11:10

forget they're watching a movie. Hypnosis

11:12

has been called believed in imagination.

11:16

So people who are hypnotizable have this

11:18

ability to dissociate,

11:20

put outside of conscious awareness things that would

11:22

ordinarily be in consciousness, to control

11:25

physiological function, to help

11:27

themselves relax their muscles

11:30

or tense their muscles, depending on what they're

11:32

reacting to. They have tremendous

11:34

ability to control pain, to reduce or eliminate

11:36

pain. And

11:39

I have patients with severe arthritis

11:41

or other problems who are able to mentally disconnect

11:44

themselves from pain. Today I saw

11:46

a retired professor here who

11:50

had viral neuralgia,

11:53

didn't get, unfortunately, the shot

11:56

that could prevent it, and he has

11:58

had terrible pain. When he lies down it goes into

12:00

a state of self-hypnosis, the pain

12:02

is gone. And so it's

12:05

a remarkable skill. It's an ability

12:07

people can learn to use. It's not a liability.

12:10

Dr. Spiegel, can you tell us how

12:13

you got interested in hypnosis?

12:15

A little bit about your background. Well,

12:18

Joe, it's something of a genetic

12:20

illness in my family. Both of my parents

12:23

were psychiatrists and psychoanalysts. My

12:25

father trained to

12:28

use hypnosis when he was in combat in World

12:30

War II in North Africa. And

12:32

he used it to help soldiers

12:34

with combat stress reactions, to help

12:37

control pain. And so as you can

12:39

imagine, the discussions at the dinner table were

12:41

pretty interesting. And

12:44

I got to watch some films of him

12:47

inducing hypnosis in patients with

12:49

dissociative disorders, and they could shift from

12:51

one dissociative state to another. So by

12:53

the time I got to medical school, my parents told me

12:55

I was free to be any kind of psychiatrist

12:58

I wanted to be. So here I am. I

13:00

took them up on it actually. And the

13:03

thing that got me hooked myself personally

13:05

was in my third year as a medical student at

13:07

Harvard, I was told by the

13:09

nurse, your next patient Spiegel is an asthmatic

13:12

in room 342. And I

13:14

followed the sound of the wheezing down the hall. And

13:16

there is this pretty 15-year-old redhead,

13:19

knuckles white, struggling for breath, mother

13:21

crying, nurse in the room. And

13:24

I didn't know what else to do. They tried epinephrine times

13:26

twice, times two, it hadn't worked. They

13:28

were thinking of general anesthesia as the next step

13:30

and then starting her on steroids. And

13:33

I said, I have just started my hypnosis

13:35

course. I thought I got to learn more about this. And

13:38

so I got her hip, but I said, would you like to learn a breathing

13:40

exercise? So she nodded. I

13:42

got her hypnotized. And then I realized panicky

13:45

that I hadn't gotten to asthma

13:47

in the course yet. So I just said to her something

13:49

very complicated. I said, each breath you

13:51

take will be a little deeper and a little

13:54

easier. And within five minutes, she's

13:56

lying back in her bed. She's not wheezing anymore.

13:58

Her mother stopped crying. The nurse

14:00

ran out of the room. My intern comes looking

14:02

for me. I figure he's going to pat me on the back and say,

14:05

What the hell did you do, Spiegel? And

14:07

he said, the nurse has filed a complaint with the nursing

14:09

supervisor that you violated

14:12

Massachusetts law by hypnotizing a

14:14

minor without parental consent. Now,

14:17

Massachusetts has a lot of weird laws. That's

14:19

not on the list. And her mother was standing

14:22

right next to me when I did it. So

14:24

he said, Well, you're going to have to stop doing it. And

14:26

I said, Why? He said, Well, it could

14:28

be dangerous. And I said, You're going to put her on

14:30

steroids and give her general anesthesia. And you think my

14:32

talking to her is dangerous. Take me off

14:35

the case if you want. But I'm not going to tell my patients

14:37

something I know is not true. So

14:40

over the weekend, the intern, the

14:42

resident, the chief resident, the attending had a council

14:44

of war. And they came back on Monday

14:46

with a radical idea. They said,

14:49

Why don't we ask the patient?

14:51

Oh, my goodness.

14:52

Yes. Very radical. What a concept.

14:54

So this 15 year old girl who had been

14:56

hospitalized twice in the previous three months

14:59

had one subsequent hospitalization, but went

15:01

on to study to be a respiratory therapist. And

15:04

I thought that anything that could help a patient that

15:06

much, that fast, that safely,

15:10

had to be worth looking into and violate

15:13

a non-existent Massachusetts law. And

15:16

and so, you know, if you ever want it was

15:18

it was a life changing moment for me, because

15:20

if you ever wanted just visible in your face

15:23

evidence that a technique like this can

15:25

help not just with psychological problems, but

15:27

with physical problems, there

15:29

it was. And so I've been doing it ever

15:31

since. And I've used hypnosis with about seven

15:33

thousand people in my career.

15:36

What kinds of problems does it work best for?

15:38

It's very helpful for

15:40

pain control. Remarkably

15:42

effective for controlling

15:45

pain. And that's particularly important these

15:47

days. You know, tragically,

15:49

we have lost some three hundred thousand

15:51

Americans in the last 10 years to opioid

15:54

overdoses. Opioids

15:56

are good for dealing with acute pain

15:58

and there's a new study just out. along with a lot of others,

16:00

it shows that it's really not helpful for

16:03

chronic pain, that over time it's no better than

16:05

placebo, but it's addicting and it

16:07

can kill you. You can go to sleep and not wake

16:09

up in the morning because opioid

16:11

receptors that control breathing

16:14

are different from the ones that control pleasure

16:16

and pain. And you can habituate

16:18

to those, but you don't habituate to the ones

16:21

that suppress breathing. So a lot of

16:23

people die. Prince, the wonderful

16:25

musician Prince, died of an opioid

16:28

overdose. He wasn't trying to kill himself. He was just

16:30

on too many opioids. So having

16:32

a safe and effective way of controlling pain

16:36

is a very valuable asset that

16:38

we underutilize. It's

16:40

very good for helping with stress. We approach

16:42

stress and reverie from the bottom up,

16:45

rather than what normally happens

16:47

when you're stressed about something is your

16:49

muscles tense, you start to sweat, you breathe

16:51

faster, your heart rate goes up, and

16:53

then you notice that your body's reacting

16:55

that way. We call that interoception. And

16:58

then you think, oh God, this must be really bad

17:00

because I'm feeling terrible. So

17:02

you worry some more and your body says, uh-oh, he's

17:04

worrying more. So it's like a snowball rolling downhill.

17:07

With hypnosis, you can get people to imagine

17:09

they're floating in a bath, a lake, a hot tub

17:12

or floating in space. Get your body

17:14

relaxed. That's the one thing about the stressor

17:16

you know you can do something about. You can

17:18

do something about your body's reaction. Then

17:21

when your body's feeling better, you say, oh, all right, I've

17:23

already made some headway here. Now

17:25

what can I do to deal with a stressor? And

17:27

so we use an imaginary screen to have people picture

17:30

the problem on one side and try

17:32

out possible solutions on the other. We

17:35

find with people using Revory

17:37

that within 11 minutes, they

17:39

report significant reductions in their

17:41

level of self-reported stress. So the

17:43

nice thing is people will know right

17:46

away whether it's likely to help them or

17:48

not.

17:49

You're listening to Dr. David Spiegel. He's

17:51

Wilson Professor and Associate Chair

17:53

of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences,

17:56

Director of the Center on Stress and Health, and

17:58

Medical Director of the Center on Stress and Health. Center for Integrative

18:01

Medicine at Stanford University School

18:03

of Medicine. Dr. Spiegel is the

18:05

co-founder and chief scientific officer

18:07

of Reverie, an interactive hypnosis

18:09

app. After the break we'll

18:11

learn more about hypnosis and how it can help

18:13

pain, stress, and anxiety. Does hypnosis

18:16

have side effects we should know about? Why

18:18

haven't more doctors embraced medical

18:21

hypnotherapy?

18:39

You're listening to The People's Pharmacy with

18:42

Joe and Terry Graden. This

18:44

podcast is made possible in

18:46

part by Gaia Herbs. For

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19:24

Welcome back to The People's Pharmacy. I'm

19:26

Joe Graden. And I'm Terry Graden.

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19:51

We're exploring

19:53

the clinical potential of hypnotherapy

19:56

today on The People's Pharmacy. How can

19:58

it be used to promote

19:59

promote health and relieve stress and anxiety.

20:03

What can hypnosis do to ease hard-to-treat

20:06

pain?

20:07

Is there scientific support for

20:09

this therapeutic approach? We're

20:11

talking with Dr. David Spiegel. He

20:13

is Wilson Professor and Associate

20:16

Chair of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences,

20:19

Director of the Center on Stress and Health,

20:22

and Medical Director of the Center for Integrative

20:24

Medicine at Stanford University

20:27

School of Medicine. Dr. Spiegel

20:29

is the Co-founder and Chief Scientific

20:31

Officer of Reverie, an

20:34

interactive hypnosis app.

20:37

So, Dr. Spiegel, you were just

20:39

talking about the benefits of

20:41

hypnosis, especially for

20:44

things like stress and anxiety.

20:47

And a lot of your colleagues prescribe

20:49

anti-anxiety drugs that are very hard

20:51

to get off once you get started on them. We're

20:54

talking about Valium

20:57

and

20:58

Librium, and oh my goodness, there are now so

21:01

many of them. Xanax,

21:03

of course, being a classic example.

21:06

And you also talked about pain. What

21:08

else is hypnotherapy good for? It's

21:11

very useful for getting to sleep. Hypnosis

21:13

is not sleep, but it can help you get to

21:15

sleep. We find that people can

21:17

do it by getting their bodies comfortable, as

21:20

I mentioned, with stress. And then if

21:22

they're preoccupied with things, with worries, I

21:24

just say, imagine you're watching your

21:26

home movie, just picture it on an imaginary

21:28

screen, but outside your body. Just

21:30

let the thoughts flow through you. And

21:34

we were a little worried at Reverie because we

21:36

were getting good feedback from people

21:38

about pain and stress. Their levels went down. We

21:41

were getting just very few reports, despite

21:43

the fact that it's our most heavily used app. And

21:46

we started asking our users, why aren't you

21:48

telling us how it's doing? And they said, we didn't

21:50

want to tell you anything. We just wanted to fall asleep.

21:52

So a lot of them went to

21:55

sleep or got back to sleep. And I realized

21:57

also that in some

21:58

ways, you know, I...

21:59

We try to make the app almost as good

22:02

as being in the office with me, but I realized for

22:04

Insomnia it's actually better because

22:07

hopefully I won't be in your bedroom at three in the morning

22:09

when you're not able to go back to sleep, but

22:11

you can hear my voice on the app. So we

22:14

find it very helpful for people with

22:16

Insomnia of various kinds. We

22:18

also use it for habit control like

22:21

stopping smoking. We found in our research

22:23

that we get 19%

22:25

of people who use it to stop smoking. Now,

22:27

I wish it were more, but that's not bad. It's

22:29

as good as you get with Varenicline

22:32

or Bupropion, the meds that

22:34

are used to help people stop smoking. We

22:36

do it by having people focus not on

22:38

fighting smoking. Telling yourself don't smoke

22:41

is like telling yourself don't think about purple

22:43

elephants. You know what you think about. Instead

22:46

we tell you, I want you

22:48

to think about these three things in hypnosis. For

22:51

my body smoking is a poison. I

22:53

need my body to live. I owe my

22:55

body respect and protection. So

22:57

you focus on thinking of your body as if

23:00

it were your baby or your pet. Would you

23:02

ever put cigarette smoke into the lungs of your

23:04

baby or your pet? No. Well,

23:06

think of your body the same way, respect and

23:08

protect your body. And so when

23:10

you focus on it this way, the urge

23:13

to smoke is not the issue. The urge is to be

23:15

a good person and protect your body. So

23:17

you can feel better immediately when you

23:19

make this commitment. And we find that about

23:22

one out of five people do that.

23:24

Dr. Spiegel, when you mentioned

23:26

drugs like Renoclin and

23:29

Bupropion, when you mentioned opioids,

23:32

we talked about benzodiazepines for

23:34

all these various things that people are

23:36

finding

23:37

hypnosis helpful for, all

23:40

of these drugs have side

23:43

effects. They all have adverse effects.

23:45

Are there adverse effects to

23:48

hypnosis? It's

23:50

a good question and the

23:53

basic answer is no. It's

23:55

just a naturally occurring state of highly

23:57

focused attention.

23:59

The worst thing that happens most

24:02

of the time with hypnosis is sometimes it doesn't work.

24:05

That's fine. But compare, and I'm a physician,

24:07

I use all of those drugs when

24:09

I think it's appropriate. But

24:11

it is not habit forming. In fact, the issue

24:13

is to teach people to use it regularly, and many

24:16

do, but not everyone does. But

24:18

no, it has no side effects, analogous

24:21

to the side effects we get from benzodiazepines

24:24

and analgesics. There are people

24:26

who worry that

24:28

maybe I won't come out

24:30

of hypnosis. Maybe I'll be stuck

24:33

in this weird place. Yes,

24:38

that is a concern. I've never lost a patient

24:40

in hypnosis. I've had a few people

24:42

who get very strong emotional

24:45

reactions to the state. They're often people

24:47

who have a history of trauma, who

24:50

somehow start having a kind of a flashback,

24:53

and flashbacks are hypnotic-like states where

24:55

people don't just feel like they're reliving

24:58

the trauma without being

25:00

aware of how it's going to turn

25:02

out, which is part of what's so terrifying about trauma.

25:05

But if people can slip into these states,

25:07

they can come out of them again. And

25:09

we've had remarkably little difficulty

25:12

using it with people. And I

25:14

can definitively say as a physician that

25:17

it is vastly safer than any

25:19

of these medications. I'd like to share

25:22

a quick story with you. Many

25:24

years ago, we interviewed

25:26

Reynolds Price.

25:28

He was a famous writer. He

25:30

was a professor at Duke University,

25:33

and he had developed cancer

25:35

that had wrapped itself around his spinal

25:38

cord. And he had had to have

25:40

pretty severe radiation therapy

25:43

that put him in a wheelchair and in

25:46

intractable chronic pain.

25:49

And someone

25:51

taught him self-hypnosis. And

25:54

he said, you know, I live with the kind of

25:56

pain that would have the normal person

25:59

writhing

25:59

on the floor, incapable

26:03

of doing anything but screaming. He

26:06

said, self-hypnosis has made

26:09

my life bearable. And he went on to

26:11

write many books afterwards that were just

26:13

magnificent. So, the

26:15

N of 1, but

26:18

a powerful, powerful N of 1, Professor

26:21

Reynolds Price was just an extraordinary

26:24

human being who benefited from

26:26

hypnosis. I'm wondering

26:28

if there's any science here,

26:31

because our listeners, they're

26:33

kind of used to the idea of randomized

26:36

controlled trials that have to do with

26:38

pharmaceuticals, and they wonder,

26:40

well, you know, I saw that

26:43

stage hypnosis thing, it seemed a little

26:45

hokey. Is there any science

26:47

to support this practice? It's

26:50

an excellent question, Joe, and I and

26:52

my colleagues have been doing that. I've been doing

26:55

it for half a century, and

26:58

it's a wonderful story. I had not

26:59

heard of his experience before, but it doesn't

27:01

surprise me at all. We

27:03

have science about how it works in the brain,

27:06

and we have evidence that it works. How

27:08

does it work in the brain? We've done studies using

27:11

what are called event-related potentials. They're

27:13

EEGs, time locked to preventing

27:16

a series of shocks. I had a group of highly

27:18

hypnotizable Stanford students receiving

27:20

the shocks. We've recorded their electrical response,

27:23

and then I hypnotized them and said, your hand is

27:26

in ice water, cool, tingling a numb, filter

27:29

the hurt out of the pain. There were three

27:31

components to the evoked response. The P100

27:33

is a tenth of a second after the signals are

27:36

recorded in the brain. The P100

27:39

disappeared in the hypnosis condition. These

27:41

students are all getting exactly identical

27:43

shocks. The P200 and P300,

27:46

which are bigger to the extent that

27:48

the signal is either surprising

27:51

or important for solving a task, were

27:54

half as big. So what that means is

27:56

that within a tenth of a second the

27:58

brain is cutting down.

27:59

by at least 50% the intensity

28:02

of the processing of these pain signals.

28:05

We know how that works also because when

28:07

we hypnotize people using functional magnetic

28:09

resonance imaging to study it, we

28:12

find that they turn down activity in

28:15

what we call the salience network, the dorsal

28:17

anterior cingulate cortex. It's

28:19

part of the pain network in the brain. It's

28:21

the part of the brain that when you hear a loud noise

28:23

outside and you think it might be a gunshot, you

28:26

interrupt everything else you're doing. If you

28:28

turn down activity in that salience

28:31

network, you're less likely to be distracted

28:33

and you can turn down the intensity

28:35

of signals like pain. The strain

28:37

in pain lies mainly in the brain. What

28:40

comes into the brain through the lateral spinal

28:42

thalamic tract is pain signals,

28:45

but what you interpret as pain and how you react

28:47

to it is how your brain processes

28:49

those signals in various regions

28:51

including the anterior cingulate. And

28:54

it is very clear now that the brain has many

28:56

mechanisms. There is a study at the University

28:58

of Montreal by Pierre Rainville showing

29:01

that if you tell people like I did

29:03

before that they filter the hurt out of the pain,

29:06

you reduce activity in the somatosensory

29:08

cortex, the parietal lobe in the brain. If

29:11

you tell them instead it's there but it won't bother you,

29:13

you turn down activity in the anterior cingulate

29:16

cortex. So different words will

29:18

help the brain reduce the pain in hypnosis

29:20

in different ways. So we

29:23

know how it works in the brain. Pain is not

29:25

a uniform signal, it's how the brain interprets

29:28

the pain that makes a difference. Does

29:31

it work? I'll tell you, one of my frustrations,

29:33

Joe and Terry, is we published a paper

29:36

in The Lancet in 2000 leading British Medical

29:38

Journal, 241 patients having arterial cut downs to thread

29:44

catheters to chemo-embolized tumors

29:46

in the liver or visualize artery

29:48

stenosis. It's a two and

29:50

a half hour procedure. We don't use general anesthesia.

29:53

It's painful and anxiety provoking. One

29:55

group got standard care which is push a button and

29:57

you get opioids in your bloodstream. Second

30:00

is that plus having a friendly nurse providing

30:02

emotional support and the third is self-hypnosis.

30:05

By the end of an hour and a half, the people in

30:08

standard care had pain levels of 5 out of

30:11

The ones with a friendly nurse had pain levels of 3 out

30:13

of 10. The hypnosis group, 1 out of 10 and

30:16

they were using half as much opioids.

30:18

Wow. They had, when you looked

30:20

at anxiety, it was 5 for standard care, 3

30:23

for nurses, 0 for hypnosis. I was afraid

30:25

they were all dead or something because they just weren't anxious

30:28

at all. Their procedures got done 17

30:30

minutes quicker on average so it saved

30:33

money as well as distress.

30:36

They had fewer complications. And

30:39

now if I had published a paper like

30:41

that, Randomized Clinical Trial in

30:44

a major medical journal with

30:47

a drug, every hospital in the

30:49

country would be using it now. Absolutely. Is

30:51

every hospital in the country using hypnosis? No. So

30:54

there is this prejudice against these

30:57

psychological control mechanisms that are

30:59

scientifically understood and

31:01

scientifically proven.

31:04

It's hard to understand why

31:07

not every hospital would jump on an

31:09

intervention like this. Or every pain

31:12

center. Or I mean, why

31:15

hasn't the medical

31:17

profession embraced

31:20

hypnotherapy? It has a long

31:22

history and now you and your

31:24

colleagues have demonstrated the science.

31:27

I would think that not just every

31:29

hospital but every clinic in America

31:31

would be very interested in hypnotherapy.

31:34

You know, that's beautifully stated and

31:37

I wish you were right but

31:39

frankly we're the Rodney Dangerfield of

31:41

medical treatments. We don't get no respect.

31:44

He said they once asked him to leave a bar so they

31:46

could start happy hour. I

31:49

don't understand it except this. I'm

31:51

a psychiatrist and among medical

31:54

specialties psychiatry is kind of not high

31:56

at the top of the list because

31:58

somehow psychological. biological variables

32:01

just seem less real and less scientific than

32:04

physical ones. The body

32:06

is a complex organism. The brain

32:08

is connected to every part of the body. So

32:11

the idea that the brain can realistically

32:13

and effectively control the way the body feels

32:16

and acts is obvious,

32:18

but we don't see it that way. We think

32:20

still of medicine like an auto mechanic,

32:22

you know, just replace broken parts. And

32:25

that's not the best way to treat people.

32:27

And so you've articulated it very

32:29

well. It's a source of endless frustration

32:31

to me, and I'm just doing what I can to

32:33

get the word out and make the treatment available

32:36

to people.

32:37

Dr. Spiegel, a little while

32:39

ago, we talked about a variety of

32:42

serious problems that people can

32:44

overcome

32:45

or help to control with

32:48

hypnosis. How long does

32:50

it take before people will notice

32:53

that their

32:54

insomnia, for example, is getting

32:56

better or that they are

32:58

able to stop

33:01

smoking?

33:02

The coolest thing, Terry,

33:04

about using the app is that

33:06

for insomnia, you're going to have a night or two of trying

33:08

to sleep to find out. But many people find

33:10

that within

33:13

a night or two, they're starting to sleep better

33:15

and they're surprised sometimes. With

33:18

pain and stress, you can feel it within 10 minutes.

33:21

You know, does going into self-hypnosis,

33:23

filtering the hurt out of the pain, getting your body floating

33:26

actually make you feel better? And

33:28

for 90% of the people who try it for stress

33:30

and pain, within 11 or 12 minutes,

33:32

they know whether it's going to work.

33:35

You know, even if you get a prescription, you've got to go to

33:37

the pharmacy, get it, and let the drug start to

33:39

take an effect. With hypnosis, you

33:41

can tell right away whether it's likely

33:43

to help you or not.

33:44

Tell us more about the app, please. Reverie,

33:48

you and your colleagues developed this app. How

33:50

does it work and who does it work for?

33:51

It's spelled R-E-V-E-R-I,

33:56

correct? That's absolutely correct. Yes.

33:59

You can download it from the app store if you

34:02

have an iOS phone or from Google Play

34:04

if you have an Android. What

34:06

happened is about three years ago, I was speaking

34:08

at a brain mind summit at Stanford and

34:11

an entrepreneur, a serial

34:13

entrepreneur named Ariel Polar came up

34:15

to me after my talk and said, hey, you know,

34:18

Alexa is pretty good at helping

34:21

you get started with a talking, an interactive

34:23

talking app. You want

34:25

to build an app together. So I said, great.

34:27

So we did one for smoking control and

34:31

we found that 19% of people were stopping

34:33

smoking. That's not bad. It was

34:35

a little clunky to use and some people didn't

34:38

like having their speakers listening to him day

34:40

and night. So after

34:42

a year or so, we formed a little

34:44

company to build an app and we now have

34:46

a very efficiently functioning app

34:49

that people can download and

34:51

use for a whole variety of problems.

34:54

Including stress pain. It's a way

34:56

of learning a health and wellness skill

34:58

that can help most people deal

35:02

with problems like eating

35:04

well, exercising regularly,

35:07

stopping smoking, dealing with drinking problems

35:11

and pain and stress. And so

35:14

we I hope that because

35:17

the uptake of techniques that are

35:19

simple and effective like this has been

35:21

relatively slow, that we can go direct

35:23

to consumer and let people try it for themselves.

35:26

Well, I love this idea because

35:28

I suspect that there are a limited

35:30

number of hypnotherapists and

35:33

therefore not all of our listeners are

35:35

going to be able to find a hypnotherapist. They've

35:38

just learned that, wait,

35:40

here's a therapy that doesn't

35:42

have side effects and

35:44

it has these profound abilities to help

35:47

control pain and

35:49

insomnia, which is a very

35:51

widespread problem. And now maybe

35:53

I could just go to the app store and

35:55

download REVERY and I could

35:58

do a little bit of

35:59

that. it myself? Absolutely

36:02

right, absolutely right. And you know, we take

36:04

a certain amount of blame. We used to be very kind of

36:06

controlling and precious about it. One of my colleagues

36:08

said we've been treating it like Golden Fort Knox.

36:11

And there are situations where you want to have

36:13

a licensed and trained professional help you with it,

36:16

but for the vast majority of problems, you don't

36:18

need that. And so you're right, there

36:20

are comparatively few well-trained licensed

36:22

professionals who know how to use hypnosis.

36:25

They are available around the country.

36:28

There's a Society for Clinical and Experimental

36:30

Hypnosis. You can look it up on the web and get referrals

36:32

or the American Society of Clinical Hypnosis. But

36:35

compared to the extent of the problem to,

36:37

you know, 25% of Americans with anxiety

36:41

disorders and millions of people with pain, it

36:45

makes sense to make widely available

36:47

these straightforward, simple and safe approaches

36:49

that can help a whole lot of people.

36:52

You're listening to Dr. David

36:54

Spiegel. He is Wilson

36:56

Professor and Associate Chair

36:58

of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences,

37:02

Director of the Center on Stress and

37:04

Health, and Medical Director of

37:06

the Center for Integrative Medicine at

37:08

Stanford University School of Medicine.

37:11

Dr. Spiegel is the Co-Founder and

37:13

Chief Scientific Officer of Reverie,

37:17

an interactive hypnosis app. Although

37:19

we're very enthusiastic about this

37:22

tool, we should make clear that we have no

37:24

financial relationship with Dr. Spiegel

37:27

or with his Reverie app.

37:29

It's time for a short break, and

37:31

after the break, how would you know if you're

37:34

hypnotizable? Do you need

37:36

to be able to visualize for

37:39

hypnosis to work? If so,

37:41

oh man, I would be totally

37:44

out of luck. Dr. Spiegel

37:45

will offer you a little taste of what a hypnosis

37:47

session is like. How can you

37:50

find a health professional to

37:52

help you with hypnosis?

37:55

Thank

37:58

you.

38:11

You're listening to The People's Pharmacy with

38:13

Joe and Terry Graydon. This

38:16

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Welcome

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39:45

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39:48

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40:11

Today we're discussing the therapeutic

40:13

benefits of hypnosis. What

40:16

does the process of hypnosis sound

40:18

like?

40:19

Our guest today will give you a short taste

40:21

of his therapeutic technique. Just

40:23

make sure you're not listening while you're

40:25

driving or doing anything that requires

40:27

your full attention. We are talking

40:29

with one of the country's most respected

40:32

hypnotherapists. Dr. David

40:34

Spiegel is Wilson Professor and

40:36

Associate Chair of Psychiatry and

40:38

Behavioral Sciences, Director

40:41

of the Center on Stress and Health, and

40:44

Medical Director of the Center for Integrative

40:46

Medicine at Stanford University School

40:48

of Medicine. Dr. Spiegel is

40:50

the co-founder and Chief Scientific

40:53

Officer of REVERI,

40:55

R-E-V-E-R-I, an

40:57

interactive hypnosis app. Dr.

41:01

Spiegel, I believe you have

41:03

mentioned that in order for people to benefit

41:05

from hypnosis, they have to be hypnotizable.

41:09

That's correct. How many of us are

41:11

hypnotizable and how would we know?

41:14

There

41:16

are, I would say as adults, about

41:19

three quarters of adults are at least somewhat

41:21

hypnotizable, about 15%, very

41:24

hypnotizable. Hypnotizability

41:27

hits its peak in latency

41:29

years in childhood. So what that means is that all

41:31

eight-year-olds are in trances all the time. As

41:34

you know, if you call your eight-year-old in for

41:36

dinner and he's outside playing, it's

41:38

why work and play are all the same for kids.

41:41

It's kind of a shame we try to make them into little adults

41:43

before they need to be. But as we

41:45

go through adolescence, we develop what

41:48

Piaget called formal

41:49

operations, where we start to

41:51

value logic and understanding

41:53

over experience. And some

41:56

of us lose that hypnotic ability,

41:59

but by the time you're- 21, your

42:01

hypnotizability becomes as stable a trade

42:03

as your IQ over a 25-year interval. And

42:07

so we can test it. We have

42:09

an app. Part of the app is to test your hypnotizability.

42:11

So in about five minutes, you can do

42:14

a structured hypnotic experience, making your

42:16

hand feel light floating up in the air like a balloon.

42:18

If you pull it down, it wants to float right back up.

42:21

And to the extent that that happens, you

42:23

are more hypnotizable. And the app will tell

42:25

you exactly how hypnotizable you

42:28

are. There's no harm in trying

42:30

hypnosis with the Rev-Re app, even

42:32

if you're not hypnotizable, because

42:35

part of it, the

42:37

textbook I coauthored with my late father,

42:39

Trans End Treatment, indicates

42:41

that the hypnotic state is part of it. But

42:44

the treatment strategy is also important.

42:47

And we try to help people focus on what they're for,

42:49

not what they're against. But

42:52

people who are more hypnotizable will find it easier

42:55

and quicker to go into the hypnotic

42:58

state and apply the method of

43:00

dealing with the problem.

43:02

Dr. Spiegel, I'm wondering if I

43:04

might be hypnotizable because

43:07

I suffer from a rare condition.

43:10

I think it's called, and I always pronounce it incorrectly,

43:13

aphantasia. And

43:15

so I can't see stuff. When I

43:17

close my eyes, it's black.

43:21

There's no mind's eye for

43:23

me. But does that

43:25

mean that you couldn't hypnotize

43:27

me? Oddly enough, no.

43:30

I would have thought so. And we actually did a study

43:32

of this some years ago. And we found

43:35

no correlation between visual imagery

43:38

ability and hypnotizability. And

43:40

that really surprised

43:40

me because I use visual imagery

43:42

all the time with people I'm hypnotizing. But

43:45

do you ever get so caught up in a good movie that

43:47

you kind of forget you're watching the movie? Of

43:49

course. There you go. So

43:52

that means you can go into a state of focused

43:54

attention. It's just that it doesn't take the form

43:57

of visualization. That's not an

43:59

obstacle.

43:59

Now, what about finding a therapist? You

44:02

mentioned a couple of organizations

44:04

where people could go online and

44:07

see if there were a therapist in

44:09

their area.

44:11

Yes, you can do that. Those

44:13

two societies, sceh.us on

44:15

the web and asch.net

44:18

are places you can go to look. Often

44:21

there are local chapters of professional

44:24

hypnosis societies that can help. There

44:27

are a lot of other people listed who

44:29

have no formal training. What

44:31

we're doing here is a health and wellness

44:34

skill. There are people, a lot of people

44:36

can benefit from that. But if you're going

44:38

to be diagnosed, so rather than being the person

44:40

who decides what your problem is, you're looking to a professional

44:43

to determine with you what the problem is, you

44:46

want a licensed and trained professional.

44:50

But it is possible to get professional

44:52

help. And there are some problems like severe

44:55

post-traumatic stress disorder where hypnosis may

44:58

be of help, but you need a licensed and trained professional

45:00

to help you do it. Sure.

45:03

What about online?

45:04

I mean, during the pandemic,

45:06

people all of a sudden learned that they could

45:09

interact with health professionals via Zoom

45:11

or some other online resource. And

45:14

psychotherapy kind of blossomed because

45:16

you could actually do it online. Can you do

45:19

online hypnotherapy? I'm

45:21

doing it all the time. It's been

45:23

the majority of my practice during the pandemic. I see people

45:25

remotely. I test their hypnotized

45:27

ability remotely. Instead of my stroking the

45:29

hand, I have them use their other hand to stroke their hand

45:32

and let it float up in the air like a balloon.

45:34

And it works fine. Now

45:36

I wonder if this is even going

45:39

to be doable or safe.

45:41

And anybody who's driving should turn

45:43

off the radio right now. Could you

45:46

teach our listeners a kind of brief

45:48

technique as

45:50

to like, well, what would it be like

45:53

to

45:55

begin a hypnotic

45:57

session? And of course, you have a magnificent.

46:00

voice for hypnosis. So could you

46:02

give us just a little taste?

46:04

Sure, but you know you're right. If you're driving

46:06

don't do this. Yeah, turn off the

46:09

radio. When automobiles were invented actually

46:11

there were laws passed against windshield wipers

46:13

because you may remember that the old image

46:16

of the hypnotist was the dangling watch. So

46:18

they were afraid that people's eyes would follow

46:20

the windshield wipers and they'd go into hypnotic

46:23

state. Didn't happen, but so

46:25

don't stop driving if you're listening. But

46:28

sure, get as comfortable as you can. On

46:31

one, do one thing, look up. On

46:34

two, do two things. Slowly close your eyes and

46:36

take a deep breath. And on three,

46:38

do three things. Let your breath out. Let your

46:40

eyes relax, but keep them closed. Let your body

46:43

float. And then let one hand

46:45

or the other float up in the air like a balloon.

46:48

Notice how quickly and easily you can

46:51

begin to use your store of memories and your

46:53

imagination to help yourself and your body

46:55

feel better. Imagine you're

46:57

floating in a bath, a lake, a hot tub, or

46:59

just floating in space.

47:04

Take in a breath,

47:06

stop, and then fill your lungs

47:08

completely and slowly exhale through your

47:10

mouth.

47:14

Now notice how quickly and easily you can

47:17

help yourself and your body feel better.

47:19

And then when you're ready to come out

47:21

just count backwards from three to one. On

47:23

three, get ready. Two with your eyes closed,

47:25

roll up your eyes. One, let your eyes

47:27

open, your hand float back down, make a fist

47:30

open, and that's the end of the exercise. Wonderful.

47:33

Thank you so much for that.

47:37

Hope you're both feeling better. And

47:40

I was already feeling pretty relaxed, just talking

47:43

with you. Can you give us

47:44

some, you know, we hate to use this term,

47:47

case examples, stories.

47:50

I mean, you know, a

47:52

lot of your colleagues go, oh, that doesn't

47:55

count. We have to do a randomized double-blind

47:57

placebo control trial with thousands

47:59

of

47:59

people. And of course you just

48:02

told us about a very impressive trial

48:04

that you published in The Lancet in 2000.

48:07

But people learn best from stories

48:10

and so I wonder if you have a case example

48:13

where somebody was either in pain

48:15

or was addicted to cigarettes

48:18

or couldn't sleep or some other thing

48:20

that comes to mind where hypnosis

48:23

really made a difference. Well we had one

48:26

woman who came to one of our

48:28

studies when we first did the Alexa app experiment

48:31

and she said I smoked for 25 years. I

48:33

didn't even want to stop smoking but I was curious

48:35

so I went in the first time

48:37

you showed us how to do it because we were it

48:39

was a study so we it wasn't all remote.

48:43

She said I don't like this but

48:45

she went home that night she listened to the app and

48:48

she lit up a cigarette and she looked at it and

48:50

she said who needs this?

48:54

And she put it down and put it out and

48:57

she hasn't smoked a cigarette since and she said

48:59

I didn't even want to smoke. My friends

49:01

couldn't believe it. She said you

49:03

know this is some crazy ass voodoo s***

49:05

and I mean that in a good way. And

49:10

she's going around helping her friends stop smoking. So

49:14

what what is interesting about hypnosis

49:16

and what gets mobilized in reverie is it's

49:19

it's different from traditional psychotherapy

49:21

and that there that's sort of top-down you

49:24

know that Freud actually started his research

49:27

in in therapy using hypnosis.

49:29

It was the first treatment he used. He studied it

49:31

with the great French psychologist

49:34

Jean Martin Charcot. He was a

49:37

neurologist actually and and

49:39

he then decided

49:42

to switch to talking to people about

49:45

their projected fantasies on him the

49:47

transfer it's and so on. But

49:50

the idea and the idea in cognitive behavioral

49:52

therapy too is understand how

49:55

you can use cognitive processes to control

49:57

your impulses. Hypnosis is

49:59

kind of the opposite. We start from the bottom

50:02

up rather than the top down. We

50:04

get you in a position where you can see

50:06

what it would be like to feel different. Is

50:08

it possible that you can make yourself feel less

50:10

pain to handle your stress better,

50:13

to approach the urge to smoke

50:15

from a different point of view, and then

50:18

see if you can do it? Because one of the things that

50:20

happens in the brain is that you

50:22

turn down activity in the posterior

50:24

cingulate cortex. That's part of what we call the default

50:27

mode network, where you reflect

50:29

on who you are or what people think about

50:31

you. And the nice thing about hypnosis

50:33

is you can you can suppress that for a while

50:36

and just see what it would be like to be different.

50:38

And once you have that expression of being different,

50:41

you can continue doing it.

50:43

It sounds like that might actually

50:45

be quite useful for someone with severe

50:47

social anxiety. Yes, absolutely

50:50

right, absolutely right. I'm

50:53

also wondering about people who have performance

50:56

anxiety, you know, getting ready

50:58

to perform at

51:00

a piano recital, for example, or

51:02

perhaps on stage or give a speech.

51:05

Is there a way that hypnotherapy

51:07

could help such folks? Absolutely. We get

51:09

them there, we get them controlling their physiological

51:12

hyperarousal, which of course makes them feel

51:14

worse and worse. The more they physically

51:16

anxious they get, the more trouble they have.

51:18

And for performance anxiety, we have them concentrate

51:21

on being a three-legged stool. That's

51:24

stable. You want to think about what you're

51:26

saying, you want to think about the audience

51:28

you're speaking to, and you want to think about how

51:30

you're doing doing it. If you focus

51:33

on any one of those, you're going to lose the other

51:35

two. So the idea is to sort of

51:37

move around and use the self hypnosis

51:39

to keep yourself balanced by

51:41

keeping a balance between connecting with your audience,

51:44

evaluating how you're doing, and

51:46

thinking about the content you're presenting.

51:48

And we find that that can

51:50

be very helpful to people. It's

51:52

also helpful for treating phobias. I'll tell you

51:54

one story. My late father was treating

51:57

a social worker in New York who had a horrible

51:59

dog phobia.

51:59

And she was at a fancy

52:02

dinner. Somebody walked in with a cute little

52:04

French poodle. She was so scared she jumped

52:06

up knocked the table over spilled all the food

52:09

on everyone her husband said Get

52:11

fixed or go away, you know, and so

52:13

she went to my father He taught her with hypnosis

52:16

to be able with a friend holding a dog

52:18

to just walk up and pet it and understand

52:20

the difference between a wild and a tame animal

52:22

and After

52:25

a while she said I could do it. I was so proud

52:27

of myself Six months later he

52:29

called to see how she was doing and a little

52:31

boy answered the phone and he said

52:33

your mama there and he Said yeah, who's calling

52:35

and he said dr. Spiegel and there was a long

52:37

pause and the boy said that's funny

52:40

Spiegel's in heat

52:42

She

52:47

did so well that she got a dog and

52:49

named it Spiegel

52:54

Now I'm imagining that That

52:57

many of the health professionals who are listening

52:59

to us right now MD's

53:03

psychologists nurse practitioners

53:07

PAs they're going well,

53:10

this sounds pretty

53:12

exciting Maybe

53:15

I could learn how

53:17

to do hypnotherapy Because

53:20

I've been writing all these prescriptions

53:23

for diazepam and

53:26

various other medications for anxiety

53:29

and Drugs to go to sleep

53:31

at night and they all have side effects

53:34

But wouldn't it be cool if I could do

53:36

hypnotherapy? Who

53:38

how where would people

53:41

go to be able to be? Certified

53:44

or learn how to do this in a way

53:46

that is

53:47

acceptable to other health professionals Well,

53:50

that would be wonderful and I would suggest

53:52

that the one way to start is to just

53:55

listen to Reverie and see how I do it because

53:57

that's part of how I teach and I

53:59

Ask professionals to try listening

54:02

to it. Try it for yourself, see what it's like. We

54:04

offer courses. The funny thing is there are courses

54:07

about hypnosis in the best medical schools, but

54:09

not most medical schools. We

54:11

offer a course here at Stanford. There are courses

54:13

at Harvard and elsewhere. But

54:16

there are also the two professional hypnosis societies

54:18

that have workshops and annual meetings that teach

54:21

licensed and trained professionals to use hypnosis.

54:25

But I would like for more people,

54:28

more professionals to use it. And I've been teaching

54:30

it my entire career. We have

54:32

a textbook, as I mentioned, called Trans and

54:34

Treatment, Clinical Uses of Hypnosis, that

54:37

teaches people how to do it. But

54:39

I think what I'm hoping is

54:42

that many

54:42

more professionals will

54:45

recommend and use reverie itself. And

54:47

then when more complex problems

54:50

come up, they might then take the time

54:52

and effort to learn to do it and help their own patients.

54:54

And I would love to see that happen.

54:56

You know, you have suggested that professionals

54:59

could turn to the professional

55:02

societies. Would you name them again?

55:04

Society for Clinical and Experimental

55:06

Hypnosis and the American Society for

55:08

Clinical Hypnosis. There's also a Division 30,

55:11

the Hypnosis Division of the American

55:13

Psychological Association.

55:15

And I trust that

55:17

these would also be great sources if

55:20

a patient needed a referral to

55:22

a qualified therapist.

55:23

Absolutely. But also you can

55:26

go to, very often primary care docs

55:28

know some respected person in the

55:30

community who uses hypnosis as well. So

55:32

that's another source. We have one minute

55:34

left, Dr. Spiegel. If you could summarize

55:37

for our listeners, what are some of

55:39

the things that

55:40

hypnotherapy can help them with?

55:43

Hypnosis can help a great deal and

55:45

often very quickly with pain, with

55:48

stress, anxiety, with focus, with

55:50

planning your work activity, with

55:52

transitioning from work to

55:54

home and back, with sleep,

55:57

with insomnia. It can help you stop.

55:59

stop smoking, eat better, eat more healthily,

56:02

either maintain your weight or

56:05

control it, reduce it if you want to.

56:08

It can help you control other bad habits

56:10

like problems with alcohol and substances.

56:14

So the kind of mind-body

56:16

problems, behavior-related problems

56:19

and stress-related problems are things that

56:21

hypnosis can be very helpful with.

56:24

Dr. David Spiegel, thank you

56:26

so much for talking with us on the Peebles

56:28

Pharmacy today. You're most welcome,

56:30

Terry and Joe. Thank you. You've

56:33

been listening to Dr. David Spiegel.

56:35

He is Wilson Professor and

56:38

Associate Chair of Psychiatry and Behavioral

56:40

Sciences, Director of the

56:42

Center on Stress and Health, and

56:45

Medical Director of the Center for Integrative

56:47

Medicine at Stanford University School

56:49

of Medicine. Dr. Spiegel has

56:51

more than 40 years of clinical and

56:54

research experience studying psychoancology,

56:57

stress and health,

56:58

pain control, sleep, hypnosis,

57:01

and conducting randomized clinical trials

57:04

involving psychotherapy for cancer

57:06

patients. He is the co-founder

57:08

and chief scientific officer of Reverie,

57:12

an interactive hypnosis app.

57:14

We want you to know that despite our enthusiasm

57:17

for that tool, we have no financial

57:19

relationship with Dr. Spiegel or

57:22

the Reverie app. When Siegel

57:24

produced today's show, Outward Arski, Engineered,

57:27

Dave Graden edits our interviews, B.J.

57:29

Liederman composed our theme music.

57:32

This show is a co-production of North

57:34

Carolina Public Radio W.U.N.C.

57:37

with the Peebles

57:38

Pharmacy. The Peebles Pharmacy is made

57:40

possible in part by Cocoa Via Dietary

57:43

Supplements. During this National

57:45

Wellness Month, you can take care of your heart

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and brain health by adding coco

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strong heart and cognitive support.

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How can Cocoa Via be a part of your

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wellness habits? More information

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at cocovia.

57:59

Today's show

58:02

is number 1354. You

58:05

can find it online at peoplespharmacy.com.

58:08

That's where you can share your comments about today's

58:10

interview. Let us know what kind of interview you have.