Treating Chronic Abdominal Pain in Kids with Hypnosis

Hypnosis is the most effective treatment for chronic abdominal pain in kids.

Yes, you read that right! It may sound strange, but it is true: unexplained ("functional") abdominal pain is more likely to respond to the mind-body treatments of clinical hypnosis and cognitive behavioral therapy than to any other treatment.

It works quite well for adults, too. In fact, the American Gastroenterological Association and the American College of Gastroenterology (hardly hotbeds of alternative medicine) now include gut-directed hypnotherapy in their guidelines or algorithms for treating irritable bowel syndrome.

But why would that be? Why would hypnosis, a treatment consisting of words and suggestions, have any effect at all on a person's intestines?

The Enteric Nervous System (ENS)
The answer lies in the layout of the nervous system. Most people are familiar with the idea that the brain is the "boss" of the body and that it sends and receives messages through the nerves. Less familiar is the idea that the digestive tract has its own network of nerves connected to the brain, much less directly. This network is formally called the enteric nervous system (ENS), but is informally called the "second brain" or "little brain."

The ENS does most of its job independently, coordinating the passage of food, optimizing digestion, and interacting with our immune system and intestinal bacteria. Because really, how annoying and inefficient would it be if we had to consciously control all of those processes, in more than 20 feet of intestine? We wouldn't have time or energy for anything else!

Communication Between the ENS and the Brain
But the ENS, for all its effectiveness and efficiency, is not the boss—it tops out at middle management. Sometimes, the digestive tract runs into trouble—like with a viral infection—and the ENS needs to request help from its supervisor, the brain, to coordinate a full-body response. Those messages go back and forth between the brain and the ENS through a few main routes, primarily the vagus nerve and some spinal pathways.

It's exactly those connections, particularly the vagus nerve, that are crucial for the effects of hypnosis on the GI tract. The vagus nerve is the main conduit for the parasympathetic system. The parasympathetic system generates the body's "rest and digest" pattern, in contrast to the "fight or flight" pattern characteristic of the sympathetic nervous system (controlled by the hypothalamus located in the brain).

Chronic abdominal pain (and its cousin, irritable bowel syndrome) occurs when the ENS misperceives a threat and/or forgets to "back down" after the resolution of a threat, such as an injury or infection. The ENS is very well-adapted to its work—but it often can't distinguish between stress caused by a true threat to safety versus stress caused by the day-to-day challenges of life.

But the brain can! That's another reason why we rely on the brain, as the translator or intermediary during hypnosis, to help the GI tract to adjust its response so that it does not react too strongly to "just stress."

We can't talk directly to the ENS to calm it down. The ENS does not use language or logic, and we have no direct way to communicate. On the other hand, the brain is a master of language and logic—as well as creativity and association. In gut-directed hypnotherapy, we task the brain with translating a message into a non-verbal format and changing the communication that passes back and forth from the ENS. Usually, that message is a reminder to "rest and digest," perfectly suited for the vagus nerve.

Gut-directed hypnotherapy makes excellent use of the nerve pathways and physiology that already transmit messages between the digestive tract and the brain. It's efficient, effective, and long-lasting—and most people even find it relaxing.