HYPNOSIS FOR HOT FLUSHES
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Episode 225:
Show Notes
Episode 225:
Transcript
Dr Mary Barson (0:04) Hello, my lovely friends. I am Dr Mary Barson Barson.
Dr Lucy Burns (0:09) And I'm Dr Lucy Burns. We are doctors and weight management and metabolic health experts.
Both (0:16) And this is the Real Health and Weight Loss podcast!
Dr Lucy Burns (0:23) Hello, lovelies. We are super excited to be bringing you this series in Menopause, where we're interviewing guests on their expert subjects regarding perimenopause, menopause, and beyond. As always, any information in this podcast is just considered general advice and we would urge you to seek medical attention if you have any concerns about your health. If you're interested in exploring the symptoms of menopause or perimenopause, we have a checklist that you can download at our website, www.rlmedicine.com/checklist or as always, you can click the link in the show notes. Thanks, lovelies, enjoy this series!
Dr Lucy Burns (00:58) Hello, my lovely friend, Dr Lucy here this morning. How are you? It is freezing in Melbourne this morning and you know, I spend a lot of time moaning about the cold. Although one of the things I always tell myself is it doesn't matter because you know, what am I going to do? I can't hibernate. So I just have to crack on with things. Uh, so as part of cracking on, I am recording today with my gorgeous colleague and lovely friend, Dr Mary. Hello, Mary, how are you this morning?
Dr Mary Barson (01:29) I'm good, I'm good, I'm actually fairly warm inside my cosy, cosy little cottage. Got the wood fire going, looking outside there and it is pretty bleak. I've got two kids that for whatever reason, just refuse to wear warm clothes. So it's adding this whole other, you know, distressing layer to my life at the moment. Yep. Both of them, the two-year-old, and the 11-year-old, for their own reasons, just refuse to dress warm. The 11-year-old, I'm letting her make her own choices, but I'm tying myself in knots with the two-year-old who won't put a coat on, but you know, I'm working on it.
Dr Lucy Burns (02:10) Yeah. You know what though? It's interesting because I think this is a thing that lots of parents, and I remember struggling with this, you know, are they too hot? Are they too cold? Oh my God. You know, the poor kid had to cardigan off and on about 16 times in a day, as I'm there trying to predict what their thermoregulation is which is a little segue into our topic today. It is interesting because as you know, babies have much higher levels of brown fat per, you know, a kilo of the body than adults do. So they do regulate completely differently from us.
Dr Mary Barson (02:49) That's right. So when he says, no beanie om, no beanie om, maybe I should listen to him.
Dr Lucy Burns (02:55) Indeed he may well be a wise little man.
Dr Mary Barson (02:58) That's right. Thermoregulation. Fascinating topic. Highly relevant today.
Dr Lucy Burns (03:05) Fascinating topic. Highly relevant today. Indeed, indeed. So today we are talking all things hot flushes/hot flashes. If you're in the Northern hemisphere in Australia, and I think England, it's referred to as hot flushes. And there are women fanning their faces all over the place.
Dr Mary Barson (03:28) Yes, there is. And they can be such a distressing symptom of menopause. The hot flashes or the hot flushes are often the ones that people find most distressing. Socially distressing and physically distressing, they disrupt sleep, and they can cause anxiety around them. It can be not very fun at all. And there are lots of effective treatment options out there. So if you're a beautiful person going through the menopausal transition, or if you know beautiful people going through the menopausal transition, this is a topic relevant to every human on this planet. There are definitely options out there and I think it's important to know about your options. And today we're going to talk about some of these options.
Dr Lucy Burns (04:18) Absolutely. So, you know, I mean, look, at the end of the day, we know that the thermoregulation occurs in our brain. It's a brain thing. Who knew? You know, it's not yet a tip of your fingers thing necessarily. Your central thermoregulation, your body temperature, the thermostat. It is in your brain and in the hypothalamus area. So we know that estrogen has a huge influence over this, which is why when people are going through perimenopause and even post-menopause and beyond, they can have trouble regulating their body temperature in a way that has never happened before.
Dr Mary Barson (05:02) Yes and it can be extremely distressing. And during our menopause series, we've been talking about, you know, treatment options. There are quite a few treatment options if you are experiencing this poor thermoregulation issue, inside your beautiful brain, there are certainly hormone replacements, and treatments, that can be extremely helpful. There are other pharmaceutical medications that aren't hormone-related, that can be extremely useful. Some have been around for ages. Some are really, really new, but today I wanted to talk about some of these non-drug options, which can be used on their own or in combination with medications, which have the potential to be extremely powerful, as well as extremely safe. Lucy, would you like to tell us a bit more about these?
Dr Lucy Burns (06:00) Yeah, absolutely. So we were looking on the Australasian Menopause Society website, and they have a fantastic traffic light system which we love. The traffic light system looks at a whole range of alternative or complementary therapies and ranks them. Red is for treatments that have either been proven to be unhelpful, like not effective or are potentially unsafe. And this is one of the tricky things, is that there's lots of botanical, herbal, natural therapies But unlike drug therapies, most of them don't need to go through rigorous testing. So people might do a small trial and it might look like this is a really effective solution. But when you dig into the nuts and bolts of the trial, you'll see the trial was on, you know, 30 people or 15 people, like they're just not rigorous. Now, this is not to say that they're not effective. But what we can say is that there's no evidence to prove that they are, which is really what evidence-based medicine is all about. So the traffic light system, if there's no evidence or conflicting evidence, if they're unsafe or there's concerns about safety, then they're given a red dot. With the yellow dot, it might be that there are mild concerns about safety or that the evidence is not there. And then the green dot, which is of course the one we like, is that again, evidence may or may not be there, but that they're safe. So therefore, you know, you can have a crack and you're not going to put yourself at any harm.
Dr Mary Barson (07:50) That's right. You're not going to inadvertently cause liver failure or, or something else, which is something we definitely don't want. The three therapies we thought that we would highlight today because they are absolutely up our alley, things that we do with our beautiful members in our courses and our membership programs all the time is this mind, body medicine, this mind, body connection and using treatments that can powerfully tap into the potential of your mind to improve your physical symptoms as well as your well being. I find this amazingly fascinating. It is evidence-based and it's safe and it's something that, you can just have a go at without worrying about any risks. It's amazing. Very, very safe.
Dr Lucy Burns (08:44) Absolutely. So the three mind-body practices that are given the green light are yoga, CBT or Cognitive Behavioural Therapy. And our favourite hypnosis. Love hypnosis. Yeah. So as a little summary, yoga is an ancient practice, and we did recently have a guest Emma Walkinshaw, who spoke to us about her yoga practice, and in fact is a guest expert inside Momentum, our membership in August. So we are teaching our members about yoga, various forms of yoga that, again, most people think yoga is, you know, sitting cross-legged or heaven forbid, a headstand, something complex, but it is a much more, much more gentle process. So there's that. CBT, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, again, is something we use a lot in the 12 Week Mind Body Rebalance, looking at thoughts, and feelings. We also talked about with Dr Ivana earlier in our series, particularly around how that impacts women transitioning through menopause, but today, Dr Mary, you being in particular, the hypnosis guru, I thought we would talk a lot about how hypnosis can help. Like, it sort of sounds weird. People are going, what? How does hypnosis help menopause?
Dr Mary Barson (10:10) Sounds a bit odd, I could imagine that for people who aren't familiar with hypnosis, and I think that it is not widely understood by many people. Hypnosis combines mindfulness and guided imagery to be able to really tap into your own subconscious power and your brain is extremely powerful. Our entire life is interpreted through our brain and our brain tries to make sense of the world. It tries to keep us safe. It does things that although come from the past, point of view of trying to keep you safe are not always helpful. Like, you know, pain is an example. Pain is something that we feel to try and keep us safe. You know, don't touch the hot fire again. That really, really hurts. We've got that memory of that pain. But we can find ourselves in situations where we've got chronic pain, where there is no longer an injury there, but there is this sort of memory of pain that we're still experiencing as a kind of misfiring. It's like, you know, it's the smoke alarm going off because you just boiled the kettle, not because there's actually a fire going on. And hypnosis has the power to help our brain. Reintegrate, calm down and change the way that we interpret signals from our bodies, signals from the world in a way that's just so much more helpful, functional, and effective in many, many ways, hypnosis can safely give us all kinds of relief and it can give us relief from hot flashes as well.
Dr Lucy Burns (12:03) Yeah, which sounds bizarre and amazing. And the crack here is that there is evidence. There are papers. They've done trials. So this isn't just us tapping our woo-woo drum, this is the evidence-based ability to help women feel better using a very safe, portable, easy process.
Dr Mary Barson (12:31) That's right. If you're using guided hypnosis, for example, which is super easy, all you need is some headphones in your phone and you can do it absolutely anywhere. So we can use hypnosis to empower women to regulate their body temperature to change the way that they perceive changes in the temperatures to help that actually at the level of their brain, help regulate their body temperature can also use hypnosis to improve sleep, which is so incredibly important to everything, but particularly important for us navigating that menopausal transition. And you can do this with hypnosis. You need to have someone who's skilled in hypnosis, but as we'll talk about later, you can also access pre-recorded downloads. You don't need to pay for one-on-one time with the hypnotherapist necessarily. But the combination of getting you in a beautiful relaxed state, that's the first part of hypnosis. Hypnosis involves relaxation, like a meditation. It's lovely, it's calming, you're nice and relaxed. And then when you're in that calm, relaxed state, we can use guided imagery or positive suggestions to help really deeply embed these positive changes that you want to make, to the positive ideas that you are in control, this positive concept that you are able to regulate your own body temperature, that you can change the way your body perceives changes in your temperature, that you can sleep soundly for as long as you like, that you can reduce your sensation of pain. All of these beautiful positive things can happen when you're in that lovely, relaxed state. I think it's also really important to say that hypnosis, is a powerful mind-body intervention, but you're always in control with hypnosis. You're just relaxed. It's not like someone has completely come over and taken over your body. You're just in a nice or your brain. Or your brain. Exactly. You're in a nice relaxed state and you can't be hypnotised to do or believe anything that you don't want to do or belief that it does not work that way. What it can do is peel back those layers of resistance and help those changes and those positive suggestions embed more deeply in your brain so the changes can come about fast, and easily.
Dr Lucy Burns (15:03) Yeah, absolutely. And when you break it down, whilst it initially sounds like a stretch, it's actually not because everything that happens in our body starts in our brain. Like all our hormones, the hormonal process all starts in the brain, the brain, you know, it's like the knee bone connects to the thigh bone. The hypothalamus connects to the pituitary connects to then all the organs and sends out just neurotransmitters. So if we can learn to master some aspects of our brain here, then at a really basic level, we can have control over these neurotransmitters. And we see this in particular with stress management, for example, which we keep saying stress management is not the absence of external stressors. It's the way you deal with them. So, you know, most people's stress management plan is to run away to a deserted island. And, uh, most of us don't. don't own any islands. So sad. Yeah, sad but true. If we can therefore go, well, there are external stressors around, how do I manage those? And this is the power of, of our mind.
Dr Mary Barson (16:33) Our mind is incredibly powerful. This is the whole concept behind mind, body medicine, and I don't think that it's considered woo anymore. To acknowledge that meditation really helps improve our physical health, our regular meditation practice can help improve our physical health. The way that our brain can change our bodies, I just love this little mental exercise of imagining biting into a lemon. So you're just imagining it, and as you imagine biting into a lemon. You can feel the changes in your mouth, you can feel that salivation. And that's just a thought that has created a physical change in our body. And that is the power, like our physical body, we experience it in our brain, it is controlled by our brain, and we have quite a lot of control over our own brains. We really, really do, in a beautiful, gentle, calm, empowering way, there is a lot we can do to influence our brain in a positive way. Because as we've mentioned, sometimes if we let our brain go completely to its own devices, it can go off in ways that are not helpful. It's trying to be helpful, but it's not.
Dr Lucy Burns (17:44) Indeed. Indeed. And you know, I have heard, well, we talk a lot about the amygdala being, you know, our emotional centre and that it really is like a toddler running rampant through the house with maybe a pair of scissors and you think, I just need to contain you somewhat. That's right. Yes. So yes, developing self-mastery. I mean, it is, I mean, there are people who have done enormously challenging things simply by using their minds. And in fact, you mentioned it earlier where before offline, when we were talking about our mentor who taught us both hypnosis, he has done some real things that, you know, most of us wouldn't be able to do. He's had dental procedures without pain by, you know, doing self-hypnosis. So there are some really, not necessarily extreme, but complex things that we can overcome using hypnosis. So therefore, if we dial it back again a bit and think, well, we could use it for simple things, like how good is that?
Dr Mary Barson (19:03) And it's accessible to everyone. You don't need to be, you know, an incredible self-hypnosis guru who can do, you know, dental procedures with only using hypnosis for analgesia. That's awesome. But, you know, that's not necessarily what we need. You can use it for really simple, simple things. Simple things can be powerful and, you know, it's something safe that you can access straight away.
Dr Lucy Burns (19:26) Absolutely. And I think that it's useful for things like, as we've talked about hot flushes, and also stress management. Now, again, you mentioned meditation earlier, and I think we just probably need to spend a couple of sentences talking about the difference between hypnosis and meditation because they are different. So Miss, would you like to explain that?
Dr Mary Barson (19:51) Yeah, there's a big overlap between them. So hypnosis shares similarities with meditation in that you get down into this lovely relaxed state. So both of them involve inducing a relaxed physical and mental state. And it has a name, it's called the relaxation response. I love it when things are named fairly simply. And when you're in the relaxation response, clear, not clever. That's right. Exactly. When you're in the relaxation response there are like, measurable differences in your physiology that are going on. But simply, you just feel calm, you feel relaxed, you feel good. And you're activating your the relaxation pathways in your brain the neural pathways, the relaxation hormonal pathways, you feel really, really good. And it's very, very beneficial. Meditation, a very common type of meditation is mindfulness meditation, where you have the added benefit of practicing focusing and refocusing your mind. And it's the refocusing that's important in mindfulness. I know we've had podcasts before we've talked about mindfulness. So we'll, it's awesome, but we'll leave it there. Hypnosis shares that same relaxation. So you get down into that lovely relaxed state. And in that lovely relaxed state, you've got different brainwaves, you've got different hormonal and neurochemical processes going on, you're nice and relaxed. But then you have, this is where the skilled practitioner comes in, and you have the positive suggestions. It's the guided imagery and the suggestions that cement. what we call cognitive anchors into your mind. And just like, sort of like pillars of thought from which, you know, you can, you can pull forward and make beautiful changes. So that's the difference. They're similar but different.
Dr Lucy Burns (21:55) Yeah, absolutely. And for people that can't do visualisation for which they're, you know, there are a reasonable number of people who don't have that ability. to I think it's called the mind's eye like they just can't see things. You can still do hypnosis by just listening. It's ultimately a listening tool.
Dr Mary Barson (22:20) Yes. It can be verbal. It can be visual. Everybody is hypnotisable. It's a human trait that we all share and it can be effective for everyone.
Dr Lucy Burns (22:33) Absolutely. Absolutely. Which I guess brings us then to our next offering that we have. Again, when we make things, make products, create offers, we do so because people have asked us to do it, or there seems to be, you know, a need. So we thought we would make a little bundle of hypnosis that is particularly helpful for women transitioning through menopause and beyond. So either peri or post, because again, there's overlap in symptoms. So just because you've been through. menopause, as in you finished your periods, you've, you know, the turmoil of the up and down of estrogen. Lots of women still have symptoms of estrogen deficiency, which include things like hot flushes, and stress. All of those things that come from low estrogen levels. So this bundle of hypnosis are helpful for either the peris and the posts.
Dr Mary Barson (23:48) Yep. They are.
Dr Lucy Burns (23:50) So, Miss, would you like to explain what, what's in them?
Dr Mary Barson (23:53) Yeah. So we have a beautiful hypnosis on hot flushes, on how to, you know, get relief and improve hot flushes. So there's that one. We have hypnosis on optimising your sleep to help you have a beautiful, deep, lovely, long-lasting, effective sleep. We've got hypnosis on reducing your stress and improving your resilience to the stress in your life that you can't avoid because yet we can't all go off and buy desert islands, uh, sadly. We have hypnosis on improving your motivation to move your beautiful body and to cultivate a joy of movement because being strong and moving your muscles is also incredibly important for the metabolic aspects of menopause. And we'll be talking more about metabolic aspects next week. So that's our little bundle of feel-better hypnosis for gorgeous women.
Dr Lucy Burns (24:58) Absolutely. And that is, I mean, I think that's the, the crux of it is that women are seeking therapies around that perimenopause because they want to feel better. So, you know, some women are requiring needing, seeking MHT as part of that treatment. And you know, we've done a big episode on that already. Other people are looking at alternative therapies and this is an option for using the mind and body medicine. And at the end of the day, what we want for everybody in the world is to feel better. That's right. Absolutely. So lovelies, if you're interested in this little bundle, you just go to rlmedicine.com/feel better and you can have a look at that there. The other thing is that if we have the next round of the 12 Week Mind Body Rebalance coming up and that'll be a little bonus for anybody who joins the 12 weeks. Next week, I love it, Miss. You did mention we are going to be talking all about the metabolic health changes that come with menopause, which are significant and under-discussed. I think, you know, hot flushes are one thing, absolutely, but the metabolic mayhem. that can occur around menopause is monumental.
Dr Mary Barson (26:22) Monumental metabolic mayhem of menopause. Yes, indeed.
Dr Lucy Burns (26:27) So that's what you've got to look forward to next week.
Dr Mary Barson (26:30) All right. Lovely ones, thank you so much for joining us.
Dr Lucy Burns (26:35) Indeed. Indeed. Have a great week. Bye for now.
Dr Lucy Burns (26:43) The information shared on the Real Health and Weight Loss Podcast, including show notes and links, provides general information only. It is not a substitute, nor is it intended to provide individualised medical advice, diagnosis or treatment, nor can it be construed as such. Please consult your doctor for any medical concerns.
