Hypnosis for Psoriasis
How to use hypnosis to help alleviate psoriasis.
According to the NHS (www.nhs.uk), psoriasis is a skin condition that causes red, flaky, crusty patches of skin covered with silvery scales.
These patches normally appear on your elbows, knees, scalp and lower back, but can appear anywhere on your body.
Most people are only affected with small patches. In some cases, the patches can be itchy or sore.
Psoriasis affects around 2% of people in the UK. It can start at any age, but most often develops in adults under 35 years old, and affects men and women equally.
The severity of psoriasis varies greatly from person to person. For some it’s just a minor irritation, but for others it can majorly affect their quality of life.
Psoriasis is a long-lasting (chronic) disease that usually involves periods when you have no symptoms or mild symptoms, followed by periods when symptoms are more severe.
What will I learn in this blog?
• That psoriasis symptoms are episodic
• What may trigger an attack and hw to stop it
• The hypnosis can help with underlying factors
• How lo minimise the effects of living with the condition
Why does it happen?
People with psoriasis have an increased production of skin cells.
Skin cells are normally made and replaced every 3 to 4 weeks, but in psoriasis this process only takes about 3 to 7 days.
The resulting build-up of skin cells is what creates the patches associated with psoriasis.
Although the process is not fully understood, it’s thought to be related to a problem with the immune system. The immune system is your body’s defence against disease and infection, but it attacks healthy skin cells by mistake in people with psoriasis.
Psoriasis can run in families, although the exact role genetics plays in causing psoriasis is unclear.
Many people’s psoriasis symptoms start or become worse because of a certain event, known as a trigger. Possible triggers of psoriasis include an injury to your skin, throat infections and using certain medicines.
The condition is not contagious, so it cannot be spread from person to person.
How is it treated?
There’s no cure for psoriasis, but a range of treatments can improve symptoms and the appearance of skin patches.
In most cases, the first treatment used will be a topical treatment, such as vitamin D analogues or topical corticosteroids. Topical treatments are creams and ointments applied to the skin.
If these are not effective, or your condition is more severe, a treatment called phototherapy may be used. Phototherapy involves exposing your skin to certain types of ultraviolet light.
In severe cases, where the above treatments are ineffective, systemic treatments may be used. These are oral or injected medicines that work throughout the whole body.
What can trigger an attack?
According to Medical News Today, psoriasis tends to involve flares, when symptoms get worse, and times of remission, when a person may have no symptoms.
Avoiding triggers, where possible, may help prevent a flare. Common triggers include:
•Stress
•Smoking
•Skin injury, including cuts, scrapes, and sunburn
•Certain medications, including some drugs for high blood pressure, psychiatric disorders, arthritis, and malaria
•Infections and illnesses, such as strep throat, colds, and other common conditions
Triggers vary between individuals. People who can identify their triggers should find it easier to avoid them.
Ok – sound great – now tell me about how hypnosis can help!
Most of the current treatments for psoriasis are topical creams to treat the symptoms: red and flaky skin. Hypnotherapy gets under the skin (metaphorically) to look at the causes of psoriasis.
We know that stress can be a factor in a psoriasis flare-up, and hypnosis is very useful in helping someone to be more calm, relaxed and confident.
Often with this kind of condition, people experience a vicious circle of having stress in their lives that precipitates the psoriasis, and then the psoriasis that precipitates even more stress!
Personally, I often see psoriasis as ‘emotional armour plating’. In my experience, I often find there lies a soft soul behind a thick skin.
So, hypnotherapy can work on 2 levels: firstly to deal with some of the underlying lifestyle factors like stress and smoking which may cause an outbreak, and secondly to see if there are any emotional reasons behind the problem.
You might think it odd that we can influence the incorrect formation of skin by our thoughts, but we are a lot more in control of the automatic systems in our body than we think!
For example, the digestion of food and the beating of the heart are completely automatic processes (thankfully), yet we can have a strong influence over them, just by using our conscious thoughts.
Don’t believe me? OK, think of something really tasty you would like for lunch or dinner, something really delicious. Now your mouth is producing saliva, and your tummy will start to rumble as your gallbladder releases bile to start to break down the fatty acids you were imagining. You produced that effect just by thinking.
Now think about someone who has done something horrible to you in the past. And, your heart is beating faster, your blood pressure has inflated slightly and the adrenal glands above your kidneys are producing the stress hormone cortisol. Again, all this happens just by the application of a little conscious thought.
The mind body connection has been accepted for many years; your ability to cure yourself lies in the patterns of your thoughts.
Your skin is a reflection of the innermost parts of your body. For example, if you get angry, your skin reddens. Is it really that far of a leap to say that if you feel vulnerable your ski hardens?
Using therapeutic hypnosis, we can look into what is causing the unwanted inflammation and help you to feel more calm and relaxed, to increase your self confidence and feel better about the way you look and feel.
Of course, change can take time, which is why we can make a special self-hypnosis recording to help to rebalance your skin for better health.
CASE STUDY
Your Mind Could Fix Your Skin.
At least that’s the idea behind an emerging medical specialty that explores the interaction between the mind and the skin. Its practitioners believe that for some patients, stress may play a role in skin conditions from acne to psoriasis, rosacea, warts, eczema, blushing and hives.
These doctors, who identify themselves as psychodermatologists — “derm shrinks” or “skin shrinks” for short — concentrate less on medicating the skin and more on getting at the psychological components of what ails it. They do not ignore traditional medicine. But they add treatments like psychotherapy, meditation, relaxation, hypnosis, acupuncture, yoga, tai chi and even anti-anxiety drugs.
These strategies, psychodermatologists say, have the potential to help the tens of millions of people who suffer from chronic skin ailments. And many patients, frustrated by skin conditions that seem resistant to traditional medicine, are apparently willing to give them a try.
What did I learn here?
The psoriasis has its origins in our mind as well as our body. Hypnosis can help to redress the imbalance that causes our emotions to reflect in our skin.
Generally you should expect to have 3 to 4 sessions of treatment and and have a custom-made recording to start re-balancing your skin to be more healthy.
If you’d like to find out more about how hypnosis can help you, have a look at our website, the https://thehypnosisclinic.com. We offer a free initial consultation, either by a Telehealth video link or at our clinic right in the heart of London’s Regent Street.
Or if you fancy a chat, just give us a call.
