Hypnosis: The new aesthetics for Thyroid removal? on CBC NEWS
Can you imagine going through major surgery without general anaesthesia? That’s what Christel Place did when she had her thyroid removed – and she’s one of a growing number of patients who opt out of general anaesthesia and get hypnotized instead. Hypnosis plus a local anaesthetics leaves patients sedated but aware, reports the Associated Press, and doctors say their recovery time is faster and their need for painkillers reduced. This method is feasible for only certain operations, of course – not those involving the heart or internal organs.
For her surgery at the hospital Cliniques Universitaires St. Luc in Brussels, Belgium, Place pictured herself hiking in the French Alps while surgeons sliced her neck open.
Doctors say nearly any surgery usually done with a local anesthetic could work with hypnosis and less pain medicine. Since doctors began offering hypnosis at the hospital in 2003, hundreds of patients have chosen it. At another Belgian hospital, more than 8,000 surgeries have been done this way since 1992.
Surgery to solve thyroid problems is usually done with either local or general anesthesia and is considered low risk.
In the U.S., there are no guidelines on the surgical use of hypnosis, according to president of the American Society of Anesthesiologists Dr. Mark Warner. Dr. Warner often uses music therapy or asks patients to picture a soothing scene to distract them from any discomfort. “If we could get more research on the right patient groups that would benefit from (hypnosis), that would be wonderful,” he said.
Dr. Roelants described hypnosis as a modified state of consciousness. “The patient’s mind goes to a pleasant place, but the body stays in the operating room.” At Roelants’ hospital, one-third of all surgeries to remove thyroids and one-quarter of all breast cancer surgeries, including biopsies and mastectomies, use hypnosis and local anesthetic.
Using hypnosis means patients recover faster and hospitals save money, according to some studies. But it may require doctors to spend more time with patients beforehand to do the hypnosis and they may need more careful monitoring during surgery.
Place said waking up from the surgery was more abrupt than she’d expected. “It was like I was really in the mountains and then ‘poof,’ it was over,” Place said, laughing.
Read the entire story with photos of surgery at CBC NEWS.COM or click here
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Quitting Smoking Improves Memory
Former smokers have a better-functioning memory than those who still light up, a new study finds.
On a practical test of their recollection ability, people who on average had quit smoking for 2.5 years performed 25 percent better than current smokers did. People who had never smoked scored 37 percent better than the smokers.
“We already know that giving up smoking has huge health benefits for the body, but this study also shows how stopping smoking can have knock-on benefits for cognitive function, too,” said study researcher Tom Heffernan, a psychology professor at Northumbria University in England.
Lighting up, or learning?
The researchers aimed to measure “real world” memory abilities by sending 69 study participants on a tour of a university campus. Twenty-seven were smokers, 18 were former smokers , and 24 never smoked.
The participants were given a list of 15 locations around campus and an action to perform at each location. For example, upon reaching the library, participants were supposed to remember to check for messages on their cell phones; upon reaching the sports center, they were supposed to remember to ask about the cost of membership.
On average, the smokers performed 8.9 tasks correctly. The participants who had quit smoking averaged 11 correctly performed tasks, and those who had never smoked averaged 12.1. There were no differences between the groups in terms of their IQs, the study said.
Previous studies showed that quitting smoking improves “retrospective memory,” which is the ability to learn information and retrieve it later. The new study instead measured participants’ “prospective memory,” which is the ability to remember to carry out a particular action at some future point in time.
For example, remembering to take medication at a certain time of day requires prospective memory.
Previous research on the effect of smoking on prospective memory yielded mixed results, with some results showing smokers were worse off, and others showing no effect from smoking, the study noted.
How does it work?
Although it is unclear exactly how smoking may interfere with memory, research has shown that chronic smoking is linked to a breakdown, or atrophy, of parts of the brain.
The researchers hypothesized that smoking could damage brain areas such as the prefrontal cortex, hippocampus or thalamus; all of those regions have been linked in brain imaging studies to prospective memory, they said.
Heffernan also has studied the effects of alcohol and marijuana on memory. He and the other researchers acknowledged that their new study was small and relied on self-reports of smoking, which would be subject to inaccuracy and dishonesty on the part of participants. Future work should follow a cohort of smokers and former smokers over time, they said.
The study will be published in an upcoming issue of the journal Drug and Alcohol Dependence.
Smoking During Pregnancy May Damage Children’s Blood Vessels
Dec. 26, 2011 — If women didn’t already have enough reasons to quit smoking before pregnancy, here’s a big one: Smoking during pregnancy may set their child up for blood vessel damage, a new study shows.
Dutch scientists enrolled more than 250 children. When the children were 4 weeks old, their body dimensions and lung function were measured. At the same time, their parents completed questionnaires about such factors as smoking during pregnancy.
When the children were 5, the researchers used ultrasound to measure the thickness and flexibility of their carotid arteries, large blood vessels in the neck that supply blood to the brain. They also collected updated smoking information from their parents.
The walls of the carotid arteries in 5-year-olds whose mothers had smoked throughout pregnancy were about 19 microns thicker — about one to two times the thickness of a piece of cassette tape — and 15% stiffer than those whose mothers had not smoked.
If both parents smoked while they were in the womb, the children’s carotid arteries were nearly 28 microns thicker and 21% stiffer than those of children whose parents didn’t smoke during pregnancy. These changes may indicate damage to blood vessels that may affect their function, the study authors suggest.
The scientists did not find an effect if only the father smoked during the pregnancy, or if the mother hadn’t started smoking until after giving birth.
Smoking During Pregnancy vs. After
“The challenge there was to show that it was really smoking in pregnancy” and not exposure to cigarette smoke afterward, researcher Cuno Uiterwaal, MD, PhD, says in an email to WebMD. “To further explore that, we did this study.”
Uiterwaal, an associate professor of clinical epidemiology at the Julius Center for Health Sciences and Primary Care at the University Medical Center Utrecht, Netherlands, says, “with our findings, we think that smoking in pregnancy does play an independent role, although we know that exposure of children to [secondhand] smoke is damaging in many areas.”
“Smoking in pregnancy is bad for many reasons for the mother and certainly also for the child,” Uiterwaal says. “Our findings may well be another argument to quit during pregnancy. Many women do quit as soon as they know they’re pregnant, but not all do.”
An accompanying editorial notes than nearly 1 in 5 U.S. adults smoke, and more than half of children show biochemical evidence of exposure to secondhand smoke. “There is no known safe level of exposure,” write authors and pediatricians Susanne Tanski, MD, MPH, of Dartmouth College and Karen Wilson, MD, MPH, of the University of Rochester.
Uiterwaal’s study, Tanski and Wilson write, “provides one more piece of evidence for the importance of smoking cessation, in particular, among families with young children and those planning to have children.”
Uiterwaal’s study and Tanski and Wilson’s editorial appear online in Pediatrics.
The Message of Pain
Both emotional and physical pain are messages that we need to stop and pay attention.
When we feel pain, our first impulse is often to eradicate it with medication. This is an understandable response, but sometimes in our hurry to get rid of pain, we forget that it is the body’s way of letting us know that it needs our attention.
A headache can inform us that we’re hungry or stressed just as a sore throat might be telling us that we need to rest our voice. If we override these messages instead of responding to them, we risk worsening our condition. In addition, we create a feeling of disconnectedness between our minds and our bodies.
Physical pain is not the only kind of pain that lets us know our attention is needed. Read Article / Comment »
Ten Ways To Survive The Holidays Without Gaining Weight
With the holidays approaching, you may be anticipating, with a bit of trepidation, all the food temptation that you are likely to be subjected to.
It’s no doubt the time of year when boxes of chocolate and cookies inevitably appear on your doorstep or in the office . . and you find yourself at parties where endless spreads of sweets and high calorie dishes abound.
Cheery faces thrust rich food and beverages into your hands . . .and it may feel like you are clinging to every ounce of willpower you have, but only by a thread.
Relax, and cast your worries aside. With the following ten tips, you’ll be able to survive the holiday onslaught with a smile, and fitting into your clothes easily. . . .
Tip #1: Avoid excess hunger. Do not let yourself become ravenously hungry. Make sure that especially at this time of year, you plan regular, healthy meals for yourself so that your stomach is comfortably full. You’ll be less tempted to binge, if your blood sugar isn’t plummeting, so make sure to include enough protein in your diet.
Tip #2: Take time for physical exercise. This will keep your blood sugar stable, reduce stress, increase your metabolism, and improve your overall sense of well-being. Find an activity that’s fun for you that you can really enjoy and look forward to – perhaps a long walk while pumping to the beat of your favourite music, racquetball, or in-line skating.
Tip #3: Have foresight. Plan a strategy for those situations where you know your willpower will be tested. If you know that you will be at a party where sinful treats are likely to be plentiful, plan your course of action in advance. Keep in mind that if you totally deprive yourself, you’re very likely to binge later. Make your strategy one that you are happy with. Perhaps you’ll allow yourself to indulge in a certain number of hors d’oeuvre, but steer clear of the dessert table. Read Article / Comment »