Mesothelioma: How Hypnotherapy Can
Help
Mesothelioma Patients
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by Virgil Anderson
Hypnotherapy is an alternative medical practice that is used to bring patients into a state of deep focus, altered consciousness, and relaxation. In this state a client may be more responsive to ideas, like not wanting to smoke or overeat. For mesothelioma patients, hypnotherapy can provide a number of benefits ranging from pain relief to reduction of fear.
Mesothelioma is an aggressive cancer associated with asbestos exposure and it is most often terminal, painful, and uncomfortable. There are many ways I which hypnotherapy can provide relief along with traditional medical care:
- Relieving stress, fear, anxiety, and other negative emotions. The emotional effect of hypnotherapy can be powerful. In a suggestible state a patient can learn to let go of fear, depression, stress, and other feelings. Studies have actually proven this using cancer patients and showing that using hypnotherapy before procedures, like surgery, reduces stress and fear.
- Reducing side effects of chemotherapy. Chemotherapy is one of the most common treatment strategies for mesothelioma, but it causes nausea, pain, and fatigue, among other side effects. Studies show that when cancer patients receiving chemotherapy also undergo hypnotherapy, they are less likely to feel nauseated and to vomit and have more energy and less pain.
- Managing pain. Mesothelioma can be very painful, from the tumors pressing against the chest wall to pain that comes with recovering from surgery, but hypnotherapy can help. Many studies have shown that pain relief is a benefit of hypnosis, including in cancer patients who may require lower doses of pain relievers after a therapy session.
- Improving energy. Mesothelioma, like other types of cancers, is fatiguing. Both the cancer and the treatments can cause a patient to feel extreme fatigue. One study found that for patients receiving radiation therapy—another common treatment used with mesothelioma—the worst fatigue could be avoided with hypnotherapy.
- Improving overall quality of life. There are many proven benefits of hypnotherapy in addition to these that are so important for mesothelioma patients, and all of it adds up to a better quality of life for people struggling with cancer. With hypnotherapy, patients may experience less pain, stress, fear, anxiety, and nausea, along with more energy and that means they can get out more, be more active, and enjoy life more.
A trained hypnotherapist can help a mesothelioma patient achieve many of these benefits for a greater quality of life, but can also help a patient learn to manage symptoms through self-hypnosis. This is a way to self-regulate pain, stress, fatigue and other symptoms by bringing oneself into a state of focus. Self-hypnosis is an important tool that anyone can use to bring about relief and to have better control over an illness and its symptoms and side effects.
Anyone with mesothelioma who wants to try hypnotherapy should work with his or her medical team to find a trained professional whose work will fit into the planned program of medical treatment. With this guidance from an experienced hypnotherapist, mesothelioma patients can find the relief that modern medicine may not be able to give them.
Virgil Anderson
Cancer Advocate
Mesothelioma.net
virgil.anderson@mesothelioma.net
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Virgil Anderson was recently diagnosed with mesothelioma, which is a cancer caused by exposure to asbestos. Virgil’s exposure came from working in demolition and excavating since high school.
When he was diagnosed with mesothelioma he needed immediate medical attention. He found a few websites on the internet that are supposed to help people with mesothelioma cancer but nobody got back to him.
Then he found Mesothelioma.net. Even though he contacted them on a Sunday one of their patient advocates gave him a call back within minutes. They gave him a great deal of helpful information on doctors and resources available to him.
As a result of their website, he is now being treated at the national cancer institute and the patient advocates have even provided him with financial assistance so he could afford a place to live during his chemotherapy. If he had not reached out to this website he would likely be homeless and more importantly in Hospice waiting to die. These people gave him his only chance at survival.
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Article posted: February 21, 2017