Smoke Cessation with nicotine

According to the American Heart Association Nicotine Replacement Therapy (NRT) is internationally recognized as the only effective treatment for smoking cessation. and is safe and effective when used as part of a comprehensive smoking cessation program. The problem is a comprehensive program. My research indicates vast holes in the scientific evidence to support Nicotine addiction as the primary cause of continued smoking. The facts are clear without a comprehensive program to redirect or eliminate the conditioned habits of smoking, relapse will occur within a year to the vast number of those attempting to quit.

If an alcholic attends an AA meeting to stop drinking he is not ask to drink a beer or glass of wine !! Why then is "NRT internationally recognized as the only effective treatment for smoke cessation" Could it be that most of the studies are paid for by the Pharmaceutical companies? carmelhypnosis@aol.com

the basics of hypnosis and hypnotherapy

The following basics can help when looking for a hypnotherapist and to help you understand hypnosis

Myths and misconceptions
• Only low-intelligent people can be hypnotized
• I will tell all my darkest secrets
• I will be under a spell or controlled
• Demons can enter my body
• I will get stuck in hypnosis
• It is a form of brainwashing
• With my personality I can’t be hypnotized

Problems concerning hypnotherapy
• The Public’s preconceived bias
• The unethical hypnotist
• The unqualified hypnotist
• Rapport with the hypnotist
• negative abreaction
• False memory syndrome
• Immediate cures
• Standard practice guidelines
• Time requirements

Steps in hypnotherapy
• Find a good hypnotist
• Rapport
• Initial fact finding interview
• Induction
• Deepening
• Therapy
• Post-hypnotic suggestions
• Conclusion- return to normal conscious thought
• Hypnotherapy is NOT a magic wand Follow-up sessions strengthen resolve

Hypnotherapy can:
• Keep you on your nutrition plan
• Alters or eliminates a bad habit
• Help control pain, stress, and anger
• Eliminates an obsession
• Minimizes or eliminate an addiction
• alleviate a phobia, past sensitizing events, sexual fatigue
• increase learning, test taking, sports skills
• increase self-esteem, self worth, self-control
• increase effectiveness of medications
• Help control a disorder
• Help you to just relax

for further information on each subject you may contact my me carmelhypnosis@aol.com

Self-hypnosis vs. Hypnotherapy

The latest craze is purchasing all types of self-help materials. With the advancements in scientific study confirming the existence and many benefits of the hypnosis phenomenon, selling self-hypnosis techniques is no exception. There are numerous self-hypnosis Books, Cd's, DVDs, I-pod and computer downloads and 900 numbers on the market today, which cover treatments for negative habits, phobias, pain, disorders, and syndromes. Unfortunately, there is a wide gap between the ability to perform self-hypnosis technique and acquiring the knowledge necessary for hypnotherapy.

Scholars have argued for some time that the term Autosuggestion takes into account the placebo effect, which occurs when a patients symptoms are altered in some way due to the individual expecting or believing that it will work. As this relates to hypnosis, self-hypnosis is a state reached by the individual, leading to the generality that Autosuggestion correlates the statement “all hypnosis is self-hypnosis.” However, the difference between, relaxation, meditation, or the auto-suggestive self-hypnosis state may be indiscernible to the lay person that has never experienced hypnosis making it often difficult to realize changes or how to proceed to correct problems.

Self-hypnosis propaganda convinces the purchaser they will be able to treat their problem, as they listen and learn the self-hypnosis procedure, through the provided self-hypnosis materials. This would be analogous to teaching yourself Basic English grammar with the aid of a CD, and then automatically feeling you had the skills to formulate a novel. Put another way, you could learn from Internet sources how to remove a skin mole, however without proper training you would not be able to determine what, if any, anesthesia would be sufficient, you removed the entire mole, whether further treatment would be required, or the mole was benign or cancerous.
Self-help materials are therefore worthless without proper, educational guidance and structure.

By contrast, hypnotherapy is therapy performed by a hypnotist while a person is in a state of hypnosis (hypnotized). The procedure includes preparation (a fact-finding screening process to determine the mode of treatment and to establish rapport and confidence with your therapist), the induction (placing the patient into the hypnotic state), deepening (taking the patient to the desired depth or level necessary for treatment to begin), therapy (the use of words and sounds to change, alter, redirect, or eliminate a past negative events, conditioned habitual responses, manage or block pain, redirect energy patterns, create new reality, eliminating or altering formed non-reality, and develop posthypnotic suggestions to help the patient cope and stay on-track until the problem can be controlled or conquered). Conclusion (bringing the patient back into a conscious alert state of well being), and Follow-up session(s) (reinforcing the initial session and post-hypnotic suggestions, and establishing new positive events).

I recommend, before purchasing self-hypnosis materials, visiting a qualified hypnotherapist to help understand and achieve the hypnotic state, and recognize how to use self-help materials wisely. I also recommend using self help materials offered through your hypnotherapist, whom you have established rapport, can design a personalized program, and understands your particular problem. For further information please contact me @ carmelhypnosis@aol.com

Hypnosis vs. Hypnotherapy

While there is renewed interest in holistic care at a time when the advancements in brain scanning techniques are proving beneficial in observing physically altered brain functions during what is commonly call hypnosis. There still continues to be much confusion, half-truths, and misconceptions concerning exactly what constitutes hypnosis and hypnotherapy. In order to dispel the negative and understand the many benefits let us take a more scientific approach to the history and clarification of hypnosis and Hypnotherapy.

To start we must differentiate hypnosis from hypnotherapy. Ask most scholars about the origin and history of hypnosis and they will tell you it can be traced back to ancient shamans, Egyptian sleep temples, and even Greek oracles and soothsayers were said to reach a place of clarity through the trance state. There are even biblical stories that refer to a word, visual stare, or chant that changed people instantaneously. Reality however, dictates that hypnosis is a naturally occurring phenomenon inherent in all higher forms of mammals and humans. What these scholars are actually defining is the origin of hypnotherapy. Hypnosis therefore is the mechanism used to access while hypnotherapy is the process for treatment. As (William Kroger PhD 1906-1995) noted; “One is not treated with hypnosis but rather through hypnosis”

More scientific turmoil began with Franz Anton Mesmer (1734-1815) and his treatments using magnets and ice water to induce what he termed animal magnetism. (We still use the word mesmerize even today to explain; a focused state). Mesmer's work caused an adversarial relationship with the medical establishment (who’s treatment of the day consisted of herbs and blood letting) to climax when a committee was sanctioned by Louis XVI to examine the theory of animal magnetism. They found that the patient's cures were due to imagination therapy rather than animal magnetism and since imagination could not be verified through scientific theory Mesmer was denounced.
What the commission’s great scientific minds overlooked; imagination therapy itself cured disease, changed habits, phobias, perceptions and decreased the sensation of pain. This led Dr. Charles D'Elson, one of Mesmer's protégées, to pronounce, “If treatment by the use of the imagination is the best treatment, why do we not make use of it.”

Taking Mesmer’s work into the linguistic arena Dr. James Braid (1795-1860) coined the word Hypnosis after Hypnos, the Greek word for sleep. This seemed appropriate, at the time, as those in hypnosis often in a deep state of relaxation, have there eyes closed, and look as if they are sleeping.

Sigmund Freud 1885 used hypnosis on neurotics to recall disturbing events that they had apparently forgotten. Unfortunately, his manner was not conducive to hypnotherapy technique and he therefore had difficulty hypnotizing patients. Freud discarded hypnosis and altered his practiced to begin developing a more cognitive approach; his system of psychoanalysis and ‘free association’.

The abandonment of hypnotherapy by Freud (even though in his later years he would praise its effectiveness), a false statement by Pavlov (a Russian psychologist) stating “hypnosis was just a stage of sleep,” and the suggestibility factor associated with Hypnosis, allowed the theatrical hypnotist to take center stage. The misconceptions were heightened with the 1894 George du Maurier's book Trilby. A character "Svengali" was introduced to the world that controlled Trilby with hypnotism. Soon after, in the 1900's films began to be made with this same Svengali character in the guise of an evil hypnotist. Though quite absurd, the concept that a hypnotized person is under complete control of the hypnotist and that evil spirits could enter your body persist and remain prevalent even today.

Hypnotherapy would not regain status, within the medical community, until World War II when, as morphine became scare and even unavailable, it was used as anesthesia and pain relief on the battlefield. Hypnotherapy was finally recognized by the American Medical Association AMA in 1958.

Today, with the advent of positron emission tomography (PET), single-photon emission-computed tomography (SPECT), and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), studies conducted on the more primitive inner brain, often referred to as the limbic system, has confirmed that hypnosis is actually a phenomenon or reactive focused state inherent in all humans and higher forms of animals. Just as stress is a phenomenon that controls our protection/defense mechanism through the release of adrenaline and cortisol (the flight or fight hormones) hypnosis can be said to control our relaxation mechanism through the release of endorphins. An increase in regional cerebral blood flow, when mental images are induced by multi-layered language through the imagination pathway by a qualified hypnotherapist, was observed in the thalamic nuclei, anterior cingulate, and insular cortices. Hypnotherapy decreased both pain sensations and the unpleasantness of conditioned habitual response stimuli.

With continued evaluation of the hypnosis phenomenon, its continued success rate with no adverse side-effects, and more stringent licensure and procedural standards for hypnotherapists, imagination medicine may one-day regain prominence with-in main stream medicine?
for more information contact carmelhypnosis@aol.com

Think Chantix side effects are bad? Just wait

Since 1988 when then Surgeon General C. Edward Coop announced “that nicotine was as addictive as cocaine or heroin” every governmental agency, non-profit organization, hospital, and university has and continues to be the sales spokesperson for the chemical models of smoke cessation. These models, ranging from Nicotine Replacement Therapy (NRT), antidepressants like Bupropion (Zyban and Wellbutrin), anesthesia shots, and Varenicline (a derivate of the poison Cytisine) sold as Chantix, unfortunately contain very adverse and potentially lethal side- effects, are costly, and have very high relapse rates, which range as high as 95% in the fist year.

Chantix the new wonder pill to emerge is proving dangerous to many smokers. Since Chantix's approval in May 2006 there had been 26 "severe adverse effects". Chantix has been linked according to the FDA to at least 40 suicides and 400 attempted suicides, over 397 cases of possible psychosis, and 525 reports of hostility or aggression with many of the patients reporting hallucinations and thoughts of killing people. This has prompted the Veterans Administration to inform 32,000 veterans that they are using a drug linked to suicide or violent behavior. The FAA as also banned the use of Chantix for all pilots and air-traffic controllers. Chantix is also banned for all truck drivers.

It may get worse!! Nabi Biopharmaceuticals is already developing NicVAX -- a vaccine to treat nicotine addiction and prevent smoking relapse. The vaccine is designed to stimulate the immune system to produce antibodies that bind to nicotine. A nicotine molecule attached to an antibody is too large to cross the blood-brain barrier. Nabi says, NicVAX blocks nicotine from reaching its receptors in the brain and prevents the highly-addictive pleasure sensation experienced by smokers and users of nicotine products.
Nabi also said in 2007 that trials are expected to show that antibodies from NicVAX will last 12 months or longer. If that proves to be true, it would support getting through the 95 percent relapse rate in the critical first year.

The problem once again the side-effects First, a university of Michigan study concluded that only 32% of smokers are nicotine dependent (this researcher feels that is on the high side). However, if this figure is true then 65% to 75% of smokers do not continue to smoke because of Nicotine addiction. Second, we must look at the averse and potentially lethal side-effects, to wit, one in particular come to mind. We know that nicotine mimics the neuro-transmitter acetylcholine and binds to it receptors in the brain. Since the anti-body’s are designed to seek out nicotine and bind to it, once a person has stopped all nicotine injection these anti-bodies will in essence lose their job and just move aimlessly through the body. Since nature is always in flux suppose these anti-bodies were to mutate ever-so-slightly and begin to block, alter, or destroy the receptors for acetylcholine at the neuromuscular junction? This would in-turn prevent muscle contraction from occurring producing a disorder called Myasthenia Gravis, a debilitating and potentially lethal muscle disease.

When you are ready to stop smoking in an effective and healthy manner, with no adverse side-effects, use the non-chemical herb-free, safe, and reusable TobaccoB’Gone Stop for Life System.
When the want is gone the need is gone and you can…. Stop for Life
For more information carmelhypnosis@aol.com

Auditory linguistic focused imagery™

BY Richard L Erickson, PhD HHCP LPHt

In the early 1900s, Albert Einstein remarked, “Imagination is more powerful than knowledge.”
When it comes to enabling and directing imagination’s ability to carry information, language can be more powerful than any drug. Proper linguistics and background sounds helped in the development of Auditory Linguistic Focused Imagery™ or (ALFI.)

ALFI stimulates the imaginary pathway by focused attention using the transmission and reception of multi layered language and sounds to reverse or control certain pain and Conditioned Habitual Responses (CHR) by altering or even eliminating past and /or recurring sensitizing events.
Applied in specific and systematic stages, ALFI uses a combination of accepted expressive techniques including: confusion, misdirection, modification, age regression, age progression, anchoring, time distortion, suggestion, concentrated attention, reverse suggestion, covert imagery, role playing, post suggestion imagery, bonding, and systematic desensitization.

Recent studies on two transition areas of the brain; the Insular cortex and Cingulate Gyrus; which form feelings and ideas by connecting the logical neocortex and the reactionary Limbic system are helping verify the importance of their ability to promote habit control, which is especially helpful with the leading cause of tobacco use, phobias, pain issues, weight gain, stress, anxiety, and long-term drug use.
Studies, Through the use of positron emission tomography PET scan and Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (FMRI), are showing promising results as these areas have demonstrated increased activity when stimulated both pharmacological and by using focused imagery techniques often associated with medical hypnosis.

Research has shown that the Cingulate Gyrus, which receives inputs from the anterior nucleus of the thalamus, the neocortex, as well as from somatosensory areas of the cerebral cortex functions as an integral part of the limbic system, which is involved with emotion formation, processing, learning, and memory.
The insular cortex, in particular its most anterior portion is considered a limbic-related cortex. The insula has increasingly become the focus of attention for its role in subjective emotional experience giving rise to conscious feelings and the neurobiological formulation of ideas.

According to research conducted by the neuroscientist Paul McLean when we are unusually emotionally aroused these areas of the brain become temporarily blocked due to hyperactivity in the older emotionally controlled limbic system. At this point it is the irrational seat of emotion that is responsible for perceptions of what is reality and truth, and as a result, the rational brain cannot regulate our emotional instinctive behaviors through self-control; what we commonly call willpower. This blockage and subsequent transfer of control gives rise to Habitual Conditioned Responses that are contrary to ration thought forming an unreality state.

There are many examples of the unreality state, which is not logical i.e. certain pain disorders and syndromes, obsessive-compulsive disorder, self mutilation, emotional eating, imaginary gag response, anxiety, phobias, physical addictions and Tobacco use.

ALFI has shown efficacy as an adjunct or stand alone therapy to standard medical practice with a variety of conditions.

For more information contact carmelhypnosis@aol.com

Chantix: Poisoning the smoker

The FDA, earlier this year, issued a public safety advisory about Chantix, a pill that acts on the nicotine receptors in the brain, causing psychiatric symptoms including suicidal thoughts and suicidal tendencies. Since Chantix's approval in May 2006 until the end of December 2007, the FDA had received 227 domestic reports of suicidal acts, thoughts or behaviors, 397 cases of possible psychosis and 525 reports of hostility or aggression with many of the patients reporting hallucinations and thoughts of killing people. This also included 28 suicides. The FAA has band the use of Chantix for all pilots and air traffic controllers.
Included in every Phase trial of chemical replacement there is intense behavioral modification courses. Little mention of the effects on smokers from these courses is ever mentioned with regard to their efficacy as a stand alone program even though when no intervention is involved, all chemical smoke cessation products have low efficacy rates and potentially lethal and side-effects. Isn’t it time local, state, and federal governmental agencies along with leading universities and non-profit organizations cease to be the sales force for big Pharma and start looking at alternative cessation methods that have much higher efficacy rates with lower to no side-effects? The TobaccoB'Gone System is non-chemical safe and effective for both smoke cessation and relapse prevention carmelhypnosis@aol.com

NRT distributing a poison

According to the American Heart Association Nicotine Replacement Therapy (NRT) is internationally recognized as the only effective treatment for smoking cessation, and is safe and effective when used as part of a comprehensive smoking cessation program.
The problem is a comprehensive program. My research indicates vast holes in the scientific evidence to support Nicotine addiction as the primary cause of continued smoking in some 85% of cases. The facts are clear without a comprehensive program to redirect or eliminate the conditioned habits of smoking, relapse will occur within a year to the vast number of those attempting to quit.
If an alcoholic attends an AA meeting to stop drinking he is not ask to drink a beer or glass of wine!! Why then is "NRT internationally recognized as the only effective treatment for smoke cessation" Could it be that most of the studies are paid for by the pharmaceutical companies? for more contact me carmelhypnosis@aol.com

Attention hypnotists; new relapse prevention tool

Hypnotherapy sessions are very effective in smoke cessation. However, most smokers tend to relapse within a year unless there is proper reinforcement of suggestion. I have spent ten years in developing a system to help hypnotist's patients stay smoke free. The tobaccoB'Gone Stop for life System is a relapse prevention program that will enhance any hypnotherapy session(s).
for more information about the benefits and wholesale pricing please contact me carmelhypnosis@aol.com

Clinical Hypnosis One-on-One sessions

In today’s ever increasing stressful socioeconomic environment emphasis should be focused on the advantages of clinical hypnosis.
Unfortunately, inadequate training and state licensure plus myths, half-truths, and suspicions surrounding Medical hypnotherapy have most physicians prescribing medications rather than hypnotherapy for certain problems like weight gain, smoking, nail biting, bed wetting, thumb sucking, test-taking, sports enhancement, certain addictions, pain issues, phobias, and disorders. These medications often have multiple contraindications that are excessive and even potentially fatal while concentrating mainly on the "effects” not the “causations.”
By contrast, through therapy, Medical hypnosis assaults the "cause" of the problem, It, therefore, is important to understand that one is not treated with hypnosis but rather through hypnosis by redirecting or even eliminating Negative habits, emotions, and perceptions; plus helping pain threshold, self-esteem, and confidence. When the ‘want’ is eliminated the ‘need’ is eliminated
Although, over-the-counter books on hypnosis may be somewhat informative as to the scientific nature of the hypnotic phenomenon, because you read while in your conscious state, are not effective tools for hypnosis. Store bought Cd's or Internet sites are also somewhat effective, but many still use theatrical tactics like aversion therapy, are usually too general in nature, and establishes little rapport between the hypnotherapist and the patients.
Choosing the right qualified hypnotherapist with credentials, rapport, and past efficacy is therefore very important. One-on-one sessions are most desirable over groups, in correcting conditioned habitual responses, as each patient has different and sometime multiple past and present sensitizing events.
As increased scientific study confirms the validity of medical hypnosis our stressful society will benefit. carmelhypnosis@aol.com