Irritable bowel syndrome aka grumpy guts.

Does your gut frequently remind you of a grumpy old man? Irritable Bowel Syndrome is not a topic of polite conversation. It s embarrassing, so most people don't talk about it. However, it is a topic near and dear to one out of five people in the general population and one out of three women.

IBS strikes twenty percent of the population with two thirds of those being women. Although some people can never recall a time when they did not have digestive problems, it most commonly begins in the twenty-something years and becomes progressively worse as the individual ages.

IBS symptoms are chronic constipation, chronic diarrhea, a combination of constipation and diarrhea accompanied by gut pain, gut spasms, gas, bloating and a change in bowel habits that has occurred more than 12 weeks out of the past 52. Those weeks do not have to be consecutive.

Frequently, people with IBS have nausea and dyspepsia as well. Some people report having constipation and diarrhea in the same day. The symptoms vary in intensity with some people only experiencing periodic inconvenience while others can be totally disabled by their symptoms.

Symptoms follow a cyclical pattern with people feeling better at times only to get slammed again as the cycle returns. They are certain they ate something that triggered the latest attack. Or, they experienced a stressful incident or they became anxious and that caused their problems.

It isn't about the food. And although emotional upsets exacerbate IBS symptoms, they do not cause them. Generally, the reverse is true with IBS causing stress and anxiety.

Conventional treatment consists of trying a variety of medications and eating a high fiber diet. Unfortunately, this treatment program has never provided relief for more than 30% of IBS sufferers. Not only do the symptoms return as soon as the medications are discontinued but most people quit taking them within a few months because the side effects are as noxious as the IBS symptoms. And, for some people, the side effects can be life threatening.

So, if you have been diagnosed with IBS are you supposed to just learn to five with it? No. No way. Absolutely not. Since IBS is not life threatening, many physicians are not very supportive when it comes to helping you find relief when the usual medications do not give you enough relief to actually feel better.

However, for the past twenty-five years there have been an increasing number of reports in respected medical journals citing the efficacy of using hypnosis to relieve IBS symptoms. Peter J. Whorwell, MD of Manchester, England was the first gastroenterologist to consistently report success in relieving all IBS symptoms using gut-directed hypnotherapy. In fact, the evidence is so overwhelming that hypnotherapy provides safe, effective and long-lasting relief for all IBS symptoms that Adrienne Fugh Bauman, MD, says that it should be the treatment of choice for IBS symptoms that fail to respond to drug and diet therapy.

Not just any hypnotherapy program will tame the savage gut. However, in as few as six sessions of gut-specific hypnotherapy more than 86% of people will become and remain symptom free. The symptoms do not return when the sessions end. Ninety-four percent of people will get a minimum of a 50% reduction in symptoms and be able to come off all medications and supplements they were taking for their symptoms. Since hypnosis is non-invasive, it represents the safest of all treatments for relieving IBS symptoms.

For more information on how hypnotherapy can relieve IBS symptoms, go to www.tranceworkers.com.

Melissa J. Roth

Alabama Hypnotherapy Center

Reprinted by permission from the Alabama

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Ms Roth go to the: 2006 IMDHA 

Conference in the Hypnosis and Holistic

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