• The Ham and Cheese Sandwich story and
• The Chocolate-eating story                                                                          

The Ham and Cheese Sandwich story

Once upon a time, some years ago when I was starting out as a hypnotherapist, I thought that weight loss would be a good area to help people with.  My hypnotherapy diploma training hadn’t specifically covered weight loss, so I bought a ‘Hypnosis for Weight Loss’ CD from the internet (that shows you how long ago it was!)  I wanted to find out what kind of things were covered in hypnosis for weight loss.

While I was listening to the CD, I fell asleep and to this day, I don’t know exactly what was on the CD, because I never listened to it again.  Instead, I did a proper training course on hypnotherapy for weight loss.

What I do know is that, a few days after I had listened to the CD, I was out and needing to buy something for my lunch.  At that time, my sandwich of choice was a ham and cheese sandwich.  As I walked into the sandwich shop that day, the thought popped into my head: ‘Where’s the salad?’  ‘Where’s the sandwich with some veg in it?’  These were not usual thoughts for me.

I can only think that the CD must have included something along the lines of: ‘When you are choosing your food, look for the healthy options and eat those.  Seek out the fruit and vegetables….’

And I did.  I can’t remember exactly what I chose – some kind of salad bowl, I think.   Nothing wrong with a ham and cheese sandwich in moderation, but it’s certainly not the healthiest option.

I tell that story to explain what hypnosis doesn’t do:

Hypnosis makes it easier to change habitual thinking and behaviour, but it doesn’t brainwash you

What the hypnosis did was plant a helpful thought in my head.  However, it didn’t rob me of my decision-making capacity.  At the moment of choosing what to eat, I could have decided: ‘Nah, I’ll go for my default option and have the ham and cheese, thank you very much.’  Or, as I did, I acted on the helpful thought and chose a healthier lunch.

I continued acting on that helpful thought, so much so that I easily changed my eating habits.  Now, unless there is no other option, I don’t go for the ham and cheese sandwich.  I’d much rather have a salad or the avocado and rocket sandwich.

For hypnosis to work, you have to be willing to take on board the suggestions of how you want to think and behave differently that your hypnotherapist will say to you in hypnosis.  When that’s the case, it’s amazing what transformation you can get, as my next story shows.

The Chocolate-Eating Story                                                                               

A little bit later in my hypnotherapy career, a client, who wanted to change her chocolate-eating habit, came to see me.  This was a serious chocolate-eating habit.  She would have chocolate after every meal, including breakfast, and chocolate as snacks throughout the day.  It wasn’t just a couple of squares of chocolate each time; it was whole big slabs of Dairy Milk and Galaxy.  She was getting through multiple multipacks of Mars bars and Snickers every week.  Chocolate was constantly on her mind – when could she eat some next? – and she’d get anxious if she thought she was going to run out of chocolate.

For this client, it wasn’t so much that the amount of chocolate was making her put on weight or that it was affecting her health, although that was beginning to be a problem.  It was more that she had started eating in secret, hiding the chocolate and discarded wrappers from her husband and children, and she hated doing that.

As we discussed the habit, some underlying anxiety and other issues that were contributing to it emerged.  We had a few sessions to address those issues and then came to the session to target the chocolate-eating behaviour.

The following week, the client came to her next session and said: “Do you know, I haven’t eaten a single crumb of chocolate this week.  The thought of chocolate hasn’t crossed my mind.  It was only because I looked in my diary and saw that I had my session with you today, that I realised that I hadn’t had any chocolate since my session last week.”

Well, I know how effective hypnotherapy can be for all kinds of things and what great results clients can get, but even I was very pleasantly surprised and absolutely delighted that the client had got such a dramatic transformation.

I tell that story to show what hypnosis can do:

Hypnosis can help people make changes in a very short period of time

Just one session specifically on the chocolate-eating behaviour helped the client to stop the secret bingeing.  However, I always say that it wasn’t just one session on its own that did it.  The other sessions that we had on dealing with the underlying issues undoubtedly made it easier for the client to change her behaviour in such a radical way after that one session.

Even so, my experience of working with clients, and the experience of so many other hypnotherapists, is that hypnotherapy can help people make positive, lasting changes in a relatively small number of sessions.

Curious about how hypnotherapy could help you?

I’m always happy to explain how hypnotherapy works and discuss how it could help with your particular issues.

I offer a free 30-minute phone or Zoom consultation so you can find out more.

Book a phone or Zoom consultation with this link: https://calendly.com/annewilliams/free-phone-or-zoom-consultation

If the times shown aren’t convenient, please email anne@transforming-health.co.uk or phone me on 0208 546 2122 and I’ll see what other times I have available.

The post What Hypnosis Doesn’t Do and What it Can Do appeared first on Transforming Health.

Speaking confidently in public

An important meeting at your workplace is coming up, and you’ve agreed to present a few new ideas to the company. You usually feel quite nervous about this kind of thing, but you keep persuading yourself that it’ll be all right. As the time for you to speak in public draws closer and closer, you begin to regret ever agreeing to do it. The mere idea of presenting your thoughts to the team is enough to bring you out in a sweat and get your heart racing.

Does this seem like you?

It’s actually not as unusual as perhaps you might suppose. It’s calculated that as many as 1 in 10 individuals in the UK suffer some degree of social anxiety, including anxiety about public speaking, that is 6.3 million individuals.

Just how do public speaking nerves affect us?
Being nervous about speaking in public can make life extremely difficult and can have a major effect on a person’s life; from dropping out of college or not coming across positively in job interviews, to steering clear of promotion in the workplace if the new role calls for making pitches.Some common symptoms include:

• Hammering heart
• Feeling hot or sweating
• Getting red in the face
• Stomach cramps or queasiness
• Unable to concentrate
• Having a stutter
• Feeling agitated
• Not being able to sleep before social occasions

Public speaking fears run deep
Presentation nerves can originate from earlier memories of humiliation or embarrassment from our childhood. For one of my clients, it all stemmed from being made to recite a poem about rain in assembly, when she couldn’t pronounce her r’s properly as a 7-year old.  The experience was still fresh in her mind, as she relived the fear of being laughed at. You may not be able to remember the originating incidents so clearly as this, but they are all stored in the unconscious and affect the way we feel about ourselves.  For example, they may make us assume that we are sure to say something silly in front of a group of people.

Three steps to overcome public speaking nerves
It’s usually very straightforward to overcome presentation nerves or fears of speaking in public, by using hypnosis.  The first stage is to learn how to relax effectively with some good relaxation techniques.  I teach most of my clients a technique called cue-controlled relaxation, which helps them (with practice) to turn relaxation on at will.

Then, I go through a process of mental rehearsal with clients, so that they imagine how they want to behave as they make their presentation or speech – imagining themselves preparing well, feeling relaxed and confident, speaking calmly and clearly, making good eye contact with their audience etc.

The final stage is to work on all the fears and worries that are making the client nervous.  Very often people are worried that they will make a mistake and people will think they’re stupid, or they think people won’t be interested in what they’re saying, or will be critical and judge them in some way.  These fears are usually unfounded.  I go through with clients how they can think in a more helpful and realistic way, for example that their audience may not even notice if they don’t manage to follow their presentation plan or speech notes, and even if they do make a mistake, it’s not the end of the world – their audience understands that everyone makes mistakes!

How hypnosis helps increase confidence for public speaking
Hypnosis makes mental rehearsal even more powerful.  After guiding the client into a trance-like state of relaxation, I use hypnosis to start to change unconscious beliefs and fears, replacing them with more useful, constructive suggestions about how the client can think, feel and behave confidently when speaking in public. Not only can this help the client to feel comfortable and positive with public speaking and presentations, but it often has knock-on effects in other areas of their life too, after they are free of previous harmful beliefs about themselves.

After only a few sessions, lots of clients will start to experience a considerable improvement in how they react to social settings and situations.  Clients typically say that it has helped them to:

• Feel at ease, self-confident and in control while giving presentations and speeches.
• Attend business networking events, exhibitions, or make sales calls without worries or stress.
• Feel self-confident when all eyes and ears are on them.
• Actually enjoy presenting!

If you’d like to turn your public speaking nerves into public speaking confidence, please do contact me for a free, no-obligation ‘phone consultation to find out how hypnotherapy can help you.  Call 0208 546 2122 today.

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What do you want in 2015?

Did you make any New Year’s resolutions this year?  If so, you’re in good company.  A couple of weeks into 2015, how are you doing on them?  If you’re not doing too well, or you’ve given up on them already, you’re also in good company.

So, why bother with New Year’s resolutions?  If you tend to make New Year’s resolutions with hopeful enthusiasm on January 1st, only to find your motivation to keep them ebbing away before a week or so has gone by, you might ask yourself – what’s the point?  The point is what one study by a US university found – that people who make New Year’s resolutions are 10 times more likely to achieve their goals than people, who said that they wanted to make changes, but didn’t set any specific resolutions.

The top four New Year’s resolutions tend to be around losing weight, getting fitter, spending less and saving more, and getting better organised.  Basically, all hinge on changing habits at some level.  So it’s no wonder that New Year’s resolutions can be difficult to keep, if they involve changing established habits.  Habits can become remarkably ingrained.  You often do them without thinking; it’s automatic behaviour.  But the good news is that, just as you’ve learned the habits you have now, you can unlearn them and learn new, better habits, if you want to.

How can you keep your New Year’s resolutions?  Here are a few suggestions of how to make sure you keep those resolutions:

(Keep reading to the end of the post to find out my special ‘secret advantage’ way of making New Year’s resolutions stick!)

Be specific – spend some time getting crystal clear about the outcome you want.  If you want to get fitter, what does that actually mean?  How will you know when you’re fitter?  If you want to exercise more, how many times a week will you exercise, for how long and what will you do?  If you want to lose weight, what is your target weight and when do you want to reach it?  (I usually recommend to clients that they don’t use weight as their target measure, but rather use something else, like a target clothes size or body measurements, for lots of different reasons.)  You’re probably familiar with the idea of SMART goals (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, Time-bound).  You’re more likely to achieve what you want if you know exactly what you’re aiming for.

Set an intention – There’s something more powerful about saying “I intend to [save £100 a month/go the gym twice a week etc]”, than “I hope to”, or “I aim to”.  Try it – somehow the unconscious responds better to this more definite wording.  It sounds more determined.  The inner dialogue you use when you think about a goal or resolution can make all the difference to how well you achieve it.

Do you really want it?  If something inside you does a little wobble when you try saying ‘I intend to…’, it’s probably a sign that you aren’t really fully committed to your resolution.  Even if you don’t get a little wobble, it’s worth testing your resolutions.  On a scale of 0 to 10, how important is this to you?  What will it mean to you to achieve it?  Is it worth the time or the cost it’s going to take?  You need to make sure you clear away any blocks that might hold you back and that you’re making a resolution because you want to, rather than because you think you should or you ought to.

Visualise your desired outcome – Once you’re sure you do really want your resolution, begin getting a clear picture in your mind of exactly what it will be like when you’re achieving it.  When done right, visualisation is a powerful technique to build new habits and make the changes you want.  I use it all the time to help clients in hypnosis, but you can do it out of hypnosis as well. It’s not just about imagining seeing yourself doing or being what you want.  You need to make it into as full a total sensory and technicolour experience in your imagination as possible – what are you seeing and hearing?  How are you feeling?  It gets your mind used to being in the change you want and makes it easier to start building the habit in reality.

Start small – Depending on what your resolution is, you probably need to break it down into small steps that you can achieve gradually and build up over time.   This is particularly important if you’re trying to change the habits of a lifetime.  Be gentle on yourself!  If it’s more exercise you’re after and your intention is to walk every day for 20 minutes, why not start with walking a couple of times a week for 10 minutes.  Then you can build up to more week by week.

Have a reminder –  If you’re going to build a new habit, you need to focus on it every day.  Doing things regularly is the key to success.  It can help to have a reminder, whether it’s a post-it note on the fridge, an alert on your ‘phone, trainers by the door – something you’ll see, preferably early in the day, to prompt you to do what you need to do.

Take it day by day – Decide each day what you’re going to do towards your resolution, but if you don’t quite succeed on one day, accept that you’re not perfect.  Nobody is.  There’s always the next day to keep going, so persevere!  It’s been said that a habit takes about 30 days to take root, but if you want it to become truly embedded, so you just do it automatically without thinking, it takes more like twice, if not three times that long.  Don’t give up too soon!

The ‘secret advantage’ way to making New Year’s resolutions stick

Would you like to know any easy way to help keep your New Year’s resolutions?  This year, I made some New Year’s resolutions about healthy eating, daily exercise and business-related goals.  This year, I really wanted to make sure I got some good habits up and running quickly, and that I stuck to them.  So this year, I made myself a hypnosis recording and I’ve been listening to it every day.

The power of hypnosis is remarkable!  It’s been great to have helpful thoughts pop into my head, just when I need them.  At lunch time, when I’m usually tempted to eat whatever’s to hand, I find myself searching out the veg.  When I’m having a break between tasks, I find myself wondering whether now would be a good time to get out for that 20 minute walk.  When I have my mid-morning coffee, I’m saying to myself: “No, you don’t need that biscuit  You’re not hungry.”  It makes it so much easier to keep the resolutions going.

Would you like to get the secret advantage for your New Year’s resolutions?

I’ve just been working with a client today on a specific resolution she has made to make her business more successful.  In a two-hour session we were able to get clear on exactly what she wanted to do, uncover some hidden challenges that were holding her back, and get her focused on how she was going to make the changes she needed to make.  I’ll follow up the hypnosis we did in the session with a hypnosis recording that she can listen to every day to reinforce the thinking and behaviour that will make her resolution become reality.

If you’d like a New Year’s resolution booster session and hypnosis recording, please do contact me.  Until the end of January, the cost is £120, a 20% discount of what I’d normally charge.  Just e-mail anne@transforming-health.co.uk or ‘phone 0208 546 2122 to find out more.

What are your New Year’s resolutions?  Do let me know!

The post How to Keep your New Year’s Resolutions appeared first on Transforming Health.

Stop being tempted by sugary snacks

Do you find yourself constantly drawn to sweets, chocolate, crisps, cakes and biscuits?  If you find them hard to resist, is it starting to show up around your waistline, hips or other parts of your body and making it difficult for you to lose weight?

Never before have we been given such a large quantity of sugary food to choose from. Advertising and marketing for snack food items is everywhere you look, and racks of them sit temptingly at supermarket tills to catch you out on the last part of your shopping trip. These treats might be simple to ignore for people with a strong will, but for many they trigger a difficult emotional conflict.

Addicted to sugar?

It’s widely understood that smokers or alcoholics are coping with real addictions, and they are given some level of sympathy; yet those who binge or overindulge aren’t generally given such patience or understanding. This judgement from others can make problems much worse, increasing feelings of low self-esteem or thoughts of self-loathing, which overweight people often have already when they look in the mirror. Yet, people can become obsessed with snacks, most notably sweets, biscuits, crisps and cakes, in a similar way a person might become addicted to smoking cigarettes or alcohol.  I’ve worked with several people, who have described their strong pull towards chocolate as a real addiction.  That’s why people often fail to overcome their habits by willpower alone.

What attracts us to sugar so much?

Addictions and habits come from the unconscious mind. When we journey through life, we store the results of the experiences we’ve been through, and when we’re inevitably faced with difficult scenarios, our mind creates methods for us to deal with them. In the event the mind has related a specific strategy with the sense of delight or stress reduction, it makes us think that we’ve got to use this same method each and every time we feel bad.  You might be one of the many people, who turn to sugar when they comfort eat.

Children are often treated for good conduct with junk treats or snacks.  Maybe your parents used ‘treats’ like biscuits and cakes to  make you feel better when you were upset (“Stop crying. Let’s go for a McDonald’s”).  One of my clients often called in to see her granny on the way home from school, knowing that there would be a chocolate bar waiting for her.  This set up a life-long habit that eventually got out of hand.  As with this client, for so many people, sugary food becomes linked to reward, to pleasure and happy times, or to comfort.  It means that when you are feeling unhappy or discouraged, your first instinct is not to consider the situation or speak to someone about it, but to search for the biscuit tin.

Taking care of the unconscious mind

By taking care of the root of the problem in the unconscious mind, hypnotherapy can get rid of your desire to have crisps, cakes, chocolate, sweets and biscuits.  I also use cognitive-behavioural therapy to enable people to change their whole thinking about sugary snacks and to change their eating habits and behaviour.  Cognitive-behavioural therapy on its own is very effective.  When combined with hypnosis, it becomes even more powerful.  Hypnosis resolves the underlying cause of your eating habits and boosts your willpower, by replacing your usual thinking and behaviour patterns with new healthier ones, releasing you from the grip of your dependency. You learn to separate your emotions from your eating.  No longer will you need to work at avoiding the snacks that once seemed so attractive. Bypassing them can become second nature, making it so much easier for you to lose weight.

Please contact Anne at Transforming Health to find out hypnotherapy can help you stop snacking and lose weight.  E-mail anne@transforming-health.co.uk or phone 0208 546 2122.

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Fear of drowning  After all the chocolate, the show’s host Marcus Brigstocke, went on to ask Dame Kelly about her fear of drowning.  She had had nightmares about it since she was little and had never swum properly until she was 18 and had to swim 25 meters to pass Army basic training.  She described how she only just managed it, by sheer determination to join the Army and half hanging on to another girl.

Hypnotherapy to overcome fear of water  The next new thing that Dame Kelly had tried for the show was hypnotherapy to overcome her fear of water and drowning.  She rated her fear as 20 on a scale of 0 to 10 before the hypnotherapy.  She said she had been sceptical about hypnotherapy at first, but went along and had found the process relaxing and straightforward.  After the hypnotherapy, she set off for her local swimming pool to test it out.  Although a bit nervous as she approached the pool, she dived straight in.  With a friend teaching her front crawl, she talked delightedly about how she was able to swim a 25 meter length and then five more.  Dame Kelly’s rating for hypnotherapy?  10 out of 10!

Do you have a fear of water or other phobia?  If so, don’t suffer with it any longer!  Why not find out how hypnotherapy can help you, like it helped Dame Kelly – contact me on 0208 546 2122 or e-mail anne@transforming-health.co.uk.

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Sleep – simply essential 

Troubled sleeping patterns deprive millions of people from much needed uninterrupted sleep. Most crippling has to be that nothing specifically is stopping them from sleeping. Maybe this is your experience – you have a comfy bed, no distractions, you’re the correct temperature, you don’t feel exceptionally stressed, but something just won’t let you rest. If you know you need help for insomnia, hypnotherapy could be the way for you to finally get some sleep.

So what is insomnia?  Insomnia is essentially failing to get adequate or any sleep when we have ample opportunity to do so. It’s where we haven’t had the chance to rest, leaving us tired and lacking energy.

Signs of insomnia can be: difficulty going to sleep, problems sleeping at all, waking up early in the morning, waking up throughout the night, problems getting back to sleep, disturbed or stressed sleep, finding daily functioning difficult because of tiredness, mood swings and low concentration in the day because of lack of sleep.

The reason people have sleeping problems is typically very simple. Major reasons for the condition are anxiety and worry.  You might be well aware of thoughts racing through your mind, with all the day’s problems spinning around, as you go to bed for the night.  What you might be less aware of is what can be going on in your unconscious mind, which is equally unsettling and a barrier to restful sleep.  If you’re exposed to stress and anxiety over long periods, it can have a profound effect.  A lot of people begin getting anxiety attacks part way through the night, with no knowledge of what they are experiencing – only that they’re suffering from disturbed sleep. In some cases, anxious feelings can hit you without you realising what’s causing them.  People often just absorb the stresses around them without understanding how that it affects them on an unconscious level.

How to overcome sleep problems

Because insomnia has root causes at both conscious and unconscious levels, you have to deal with it at both levels.  Although conscious mind calming techniques can help (such as talking to someone before bed or mindfulness exercises) they only address the conscious part of the mind. This means that problems may continue in spite of all your efforts, because you’re not taking care of what’s going on in your unconscious mind.

With hypnotherapy for lack of sleep, you can target the underlying causes that lie hidden in your unconscious.  Hypnosis helps you to replace anxiety and stress with deeply calming thoughts.  There are a number of powerful sleep-inducing techniques I teach my clients, which help to relax the conscious mind.  By including them in hypnosis, it also means that they go deep into the unconscious mind too. What’s more, because hypnosis is so relaxing in itself, you can begin to get your body and mind back to being accustomed to rest and calm.  Hypnotherapy gets both the conscious and unconscious mind focused on the same goal of restoring your natural ability to go to sleep and stay asleep, giving you all the rest you need.

Want to find out more about how hypnotherapy could help your sleep problems?  Please contact me to book a free 30-minute consultation on 0208 546 2122 or anne@transforming-health.co.uk

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According to a survey by the Medical Health Foundation, a third of us suffer from sleep deprivation and insomnia.  It’s estimated that the NHS spends £15 million on insomnia, although many people don’t do anything about their sleep problems – they just try to get on with their lives.

The link between insomnia and obesity & diabetes

The BBC1 programme highlighted why it’s so important to get help for sleep problems.  Research has revealed that 50% of people who sleep less than 5 hours a night are obese and that there’s a link between insomnia and diabetes.  Researchers put this down to the effect of insomnia on the hormones that control hunger and appetite.  If you’re not getting an average of 7 to 8 hours sleep most nights, you’re more likely to feel hungry and less likely to feel full when you eat.  You’re more likely to get sugar cravings and because your glucose levels are higher, you’re at higher risk of diabetes.  One person featured on the programme said he ate 10 custard creams for breakfast!

The research also pointed to the bad effect that insomnia can have on your gut bacteria.  The millions of good bacteria in your gut that help you absorb nutrients from food and protect you against infections, get upset when you don’t sleep well.  When you’re sleep deprived, the bacteria extract more energy from your food, leading to more weight gain.

What’s more, a lack of sleep puts stress on the body, leading to the release of the stress hormone cortisol.  If you’ve got cortisol running round your body all the time, it’s very bad news if you’re trying to lose weight.  Cortisol encourages the body to store fat.

So what can you do to help insomnia and sleep problems?

The programme highlighted several important things to help get better sleep, as well as the well-known advice of avoiding caffeine well before bedtime:

1. Switch off phones, laptops, the TV and other screens at least 1 hour before bed.  The light from screens interferes with your body clock.
2. Keep your bedroom cool – about 17°C.
3. Avoid alcohol.  It might help you get to sleep, but it interferes with your sleep later in the night.
4. Eat a dinner rich in fibre.  Michael Mosley, the programme presenter, tried out dietary fibre in a prebiotic and reckoned it improved his sleep.  He also recommended getting more dietary fibre from foods such as lentils, chick peas, lima & butter beans and hummus.

One participant in the programme tried eating 2 kiwi fruit 1 hour before bed and gave it 7/10 for improving his sleep.

Other recommendations for getting a good night’s sleep

The kiwi fruit was a new one on me.  Among the recommendations I give to my clients on how to get a better night’s sleep, here are a couple that have been shown to work really well:

1.  Relaxation exercises – help prepare your body for sleep with relaxation before bedtime.  Some simple breathing and muscle relaxation exercises and visualisations of peaceful scenes can be very effective.  I always give clients my relaxation CD/mp3s to listen to.
2. Mindfulness – mindfulness exercises are great for calming a busy mind in preparation for sleep. I have a mindfulness CD/mp3s that I make available for clients.

Top tip for when you can’t sleep

Finally, why not try this top technique to help your sleep problems?  When you want to go to sleep, get your brain into dreaming mode by thinking in the same way as you do when you dream.  Dreams are full of flashes of often bizarre pictures and experiences, for example, seeing people from different parts of your life somewhere that they would never normally be.  Let your imagination run riot like it does when you dream – blue penguins with pink wigs sailing down your street; old school friends and the cast of your favourite TV programme having a picnic on the beach in period costume; the best memories from different holidays all jumbled together in the place you grew up – whatever takes your fancy!

Hypnotherapy to help overcome insomnia and sleep problems

As well as all these great techniques and more, hypnosis can be really effective in helping you sleep better.  Hypnosis gets your mind  into sleep mode and is a quick and easy way of retraining your mind and body to get into better sleep patterns.

Contact me for a free 45-minute consultation on how to get better sleep – e-mail anne@transforming-health.co.uk or ‘phone 0208 546 2122.

The post The serious effect on health of sleep problems – new research appeared first on Transforming Health.

WHICH FOODS TRIGGER YOUR IBS?

You may already be all too aware of which foods and drinks make your IBS symptoms worse.  Sometimes, though, I’ve had clients come to me, who found it difficult to pinpoint which foods were the culprits.  What’s become clear from seeing clients over the years is that everybody is different.  Foods that affect one person badly are fine for someone else.

Have you heard of the FODMAP diet?

If you have – great!  You’ll know that it identifies foods, which can be problematic for people with IBS.  I’ve had some clients who hadn’t heard of the FODMAP diet, so in case you’re unfamiliar with it, here is some information:

The FODMAP diet was first developed in Australia and then adapted for the UK by a team at King’s College, London.  FODMAP stands for Fermentable Oligosaccharides, Disaccharides, Monosaccharides and Polyols – no wonder they shortened it!  FODMAPs are short chain carbohydrates, which don’t get absorbed well by the small intestine.  They increase water in the small intestine, producing loose stools and then get fermented by bacteria in the large intestine, creating gas and bloating.

The FODMAP diet involves avoiding foods high in FODMAPs, which include certain vegetables and fruit, pulses, some dairy products, bran, and wheat foods, including bread, cereal and pasta.  Here’s a list of just some of them:

Vegetables:  Onions, garlic and leeks, cauliflower, cabbage, mushrooms, peas

Fruit: Apples, peaches, pears, plums

Milk: cow’s, goat’s and sheep’s, cream

Barley & rye

Cashews & pistachios

This isn’t the full list, by any means.

Also, while the FODMAP diet gives some good guidance and can help with IBS symptoms, it hasn’t totally solved things for a number of my clients.  Many of them certainly shared problems with onions, but other than that, the foods they found helpful to avoid varied enormously.  Sometimes this has included low FODMAP foods as well.  One of my clients couldn’t tolerate bananas or citrus fruit, for example, which are low FODMAP.

How best to follow the FODMAP diet

If you do want to follow the FODMAP diet, the recommendation is to stop eating high FODMAP foods for 4 to 8 weeks and then gradually re-introduce them.  Depending on whether they affect your IBS or not, you can build up a personalised list of which foods to avoid.  You can find more information about the FODMAP diet at:

https://www.kcl.ac.uk/lsm/Schools/life-course-sciences/departments/nutritional-sciences/projects/fodmaps/faq.aspx

If you haven’t done so already, it can be helpful to keep a food diary to see what triggers your IBS symptoms, noting down everything you eat and drink and in what quantities.  Maybe reducing certain things, rather than cutting them out completely, might bring you some improvements.

Find a dietitian or nutritional therapist

If you intend following the FODMAP diet, it’s best to find a dietitian or nutritional therapist qualified in its use.  They’ll make sure that you continue to have a balanced diet and don’t miss out on important nutrients for your health.  Also, avoiding high FODMAP foods is not always straightforward, because they can be hidden in packaged and processed food.  Corn syrup and some other sweeteners often used in processed foods are prime examples of that.

FODMAP app

There is a FODMAP app, which has been developed by King’s College London and Guys & St Thomas’ NHS Trust.  It helps guide you through the different stages of the FODMAP diet and scans food bar codes to help you identify suitable products.  You can download it from the usual places for £3.99 last time I looked.

It’s not all about the food, though

Avoiding certain foods can certainly be helpful, but it’s not the whole story with IBS.  Equally as important is reducing and/or managing the stress that is a key contributor to making IBS worse.   It’s essential to look at the stress you might be under from work, family commitments, financial problems and other external factors and find healthy ways of dealing with it.  It’s also essential to look at the stress you put on yourself by perfectionism, taking on too much, not saying ‘no’ and negative thinking.  Time after time, when my clients have learned to get their stress under control, I’ve seen their IBS symptoms get better and their quality of life improve in so many ways.

Would you like to transform your IBS?

Contact me for a free, 30-minute phone consultation to find out how hypnotherapy can help IBS.  Phone 0208 546 2122 or e-mail anne@transforming-health.co.uk

(Photo by Kornelija www.stockfreeimages.com)

The post The worst foods for IBS appeared first on Transforming Health.

Photo by Nadki www.stockfreeimages.com

THE ENEMY (AND FRIENDS) WITHIN

There’s more and more research coming out about the importance of gut bacteria.  It seems that they don’t just sit in your gut, minding their own business.  They can have a huge impact on your health, as recent studies into obesity and cancer treatments have discovered.

You probably know that we have trillions of bacteria in our gut, some good, some bad.  A 2017 study at the University of Copenhagen suggested that gut bacteria may be responsible for how much weight we can lose.  Another 2013 study found that slimmer people had more diverse gut bacteria than obese people, and it’s thought that different kinds of gut bacteria affect your metabolism and how you absorb calories and nutrients.  One type interferes with the hunger hormone ghrelin, causing you to eat more.  Researchers have also made links between gut bacteria and Parkinson’s Disease and in how well people respond to immunotherapy for cancer.

Gut bacteria and IBS

There are some studies* which suggest that IBS symptoms can be helped by rebalancing gut bacteria.  You may already be aware that you can boost your good gut bacteria with probiotics, which are live bacteria, and this may help reduce bloating and gas.  Probiotics are found in fermented dairy products, such as kefir and some yoghurts, and in fermented vegetables, such as sauerkraut, or you can buy them in supplement form.  Bad gut bacteria, on the other hand, thrive on sugar, so it’s helpful to cut down on the sweet stuff.

* https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3816178/

So far, the research hasn’t pinpointed which probiotics are effective in helping IBS.  A bit like the FODMAP diet (please see my blog post on The worst foods for IBS ), everybody is different and what might work really well for one person might be less effective for someone else.  A factsheet on probiotics by the British Dietetic Association recommends taking probiotics for 4 weeks and, if they don’t seem to be having any effect, try another brand or stop taking them.

Feed your good gut bacteria

If you do want to try probiotics, it’s important to know that some are killed by acid in the stomach before they can reach the gut.  There’s not much point flooding your gut with good bacteria, unless you make sure they can survive.  That’s where prebiotics come in.  I only recently found out how important prebiotics are, so if you don’t know much about them, basically, prebiotics are food for probiotics and encourage them to multiply.  Prebiotics are carbohydrates found in fruit and vegetables.  Some of the best sources are onions, garlic, asparagus, artichoke and chicory.  The trouble is that these are also high FODMAP foods.  If any of them cause you problems, bananas and tomatoes may be a good alternative, or you can get prebiotic supplements.

Are probiotics and prebiotics the answer for IBS?

If you are considering trying probiotics and prebiotics to help your IBS, it’s good to take some advice from a dietitian or nutritional therapist experienced in helping with IBS.  As with the food you eat, though, what you put into your gut is only part of the story.  You probably know all too well how stress can cause your symptoms to flare up and how anxiety as well as food can upset your digestion.  Learning to manage your stress in healthy ways and to deal with anxiety and negative emotions is equally important in keeping your IBS symptoms under control.

When I’m seeing clients to help them with IBS, we always look at how they can reduce and/or manage their stress and at what negative thinking patterns might be contributing to making their symptoms worse.  Sometimes there are issues from childhood that need to be cleared.  The good news is that once clients have been able reduce their stress levels and change negative thinking to be more positive, it’s had a positive effect on their IBS.

Would you like to transform your IBS?

Contact me for a free, 30-minute phone consultation to find out how hypnotherapy can help IBS.  Phone 0208 546 2122 or e-mail anne@transforming-health.co.uk to book a time to talk.

The post Can probiotics help IBS? appeared first on Transforming Health.

There’s a reason that so many people are finding lockdown difficult and challenging.  Many reasons, you might think, but I’d suggest one very major, significant and fundamental reason.  In fact, it’s the same reason that many people struggle with their physical, psychological and emotional wellbeing in more normal times.

Before lockdown, the main issues that I was seeing clients for were anxiety and stress, particularly stress-related conditions of insomnia and Irritable Bowel Syndrome.  What these clients had in common was feeling low and unwell, weighed down by worries, lacking energy and with all kinds of negative thoughts racing round their heads.  The first thing that I invariably cover with my clients to help them feel better, calmer and more positive is this very major, significant and fundamental reason that their wellbeing is suffering.  This reason is affecting more people during lockdown and is having such a massive impact on health and wellbeing.

I will cover this reason in several parts, because it will take more than one blog post to cover it all.

There is an approach to psychology called Human Givens, developed by psychologist Joe Griffin and psychotherapist Ivan Tyrrell.  In their years of research and helping clients with mental health issues and addiction, they developed a model of therapy designed to help people meet a range of fundamental physical, psychological and emotional needs that were essential to health and wellbeing.  They found that, when clients were better able to meet these needs that were lacking in their life, depression lifted, anxiety and stress were reduced and addictions could be overcome.

Why are so many people struggling during lockdown?

People struggle when they are not adequately meeting their ‘human givens’ needs and that’s the case now, during lockdown, even more than before.

I use the Human Givens approach with most of my clients, usually very early on in sessions.  I go through the different ‘human givens’ needs with them as the fundamentals of self-care and ask them to do an audit of how well those needs are currently being met in their life.  If they have any low scores on the audit, we discuss how they can better meet those particular needs.  Sometimes some simple, straightforward and practical changes can make a big difference to their overall sense of wellbeing.

When you find out what the ‘human givens’ are, I’m sure none of them will be a surprise.  What is surprising, is perhaps how much we take them for granted or even ignore them.  When you see what the ‘human givens’ are, you might have a clearer understanding of why so many people are finding lockdown really tough and why, in modern times, levels of stress, anxiety and depression are so high.  Lockdown and modern lifestyles make it more difficult for us to meet these fundamental human needs.

I will cover the ‘human givens’ in several parts, starting with the physical needs.  Look out for further blog posts for the rest.

Physical ‘human givens’

It won’t be any huge revelation when I tell you that the main physical ‘human givens’ are food, water, sleep and exercise.  It’s obvious that if your needs for those aren’t met, your physical and mental health will suffer.

Just a few thoughts on how best to meet those needs and on meeting them during lockdown:

Food – The importance of a healthy, balanced diet, with the right vitamins and minerals, can’t be underestimated.  Unfortunately, the current predominance of processed foods and snacks high in sugar and salt in Western diets doesn’t help provide the nutrition we need.  I’m not an expert in nutrition, but I do encourage my clients to consider how they could eat more healthily.

Watching what you eat during lockdown is even more important.  The temptation to snack may well be greater and it isn’t as easy to work off those extra calories if you’re stuck at home all the time.  It’s not just the dangers of putting on weight and the health problems that that can cause, though.  There’s increasing research evidence to show that what you eat affects not only your physical health, but your mental health too.  Recent studies point to the effect that gut bacteria can have on mood, even to the extent of being linked to depression and anxiety.  A healthy, well balanced diet will make sure your gut bacteria contribute to good physical and mental health, rather than mess it up.

So it’s even more important during lockdown to eat as healthily as possible – plenty of fruit and vegetables, of course, and reducing your sugar intake.  Keep your blood sugar level stable by avoiding sugary foods and drinks and white, refined carbohydrates like white bread, pasta and rice.  That will help to prevent energy dips and tiredness.  Caffeine and alcohol cause stress on the body, so they’re ones to avoid as well.  If you’re stressed or anxious, the last thing you want to do is rev up your nervous system even more with caffeine in any form.

Water – Water is an even greater need than food.  We can survive without food much longer than we can survive without water.  Fortunately, this is perhaps one of the easiest needs to meet during lockdown. Nearly two-thirds of the body is water, so constant hydration is vital at any time.  Among other things, it helps to keep skin and hair healthy and to control body temperature and blood pressure.  Signs of dehydration include lack of energy, irritability and confusion, so just like food, water has an effect on both our physical and mental health.

Recommended daily water intake is usually given as 2 litres for men and 1.6 litres for women, or 6 to 8 glasses.  Of course, you may need to drink more, if it’s hot or you’re exercising a lot and losing water from your body by sweating.  Your recommended daily water intake can include tea and coffee, although as already mentioned, it’s best to avoid caffeinated varieties if you’re stressed or anxious, and caffeine in large quantities is dehydrating.  Another culprit for dehydration is alcohol.  The body draws on its water reserves to flush alcohol out of the system – a further reason for reducing your alcohol consumption.

Sleep – We all know that a good night’s sleep is essential for physical and mental wellbeing.  In sleep the body repairs itself, the mind processes experiences of the day and recent findings suggest that toxins that build up in the brain while we’re awake are removed.  8 hours of sleep a night was always put forward as the average amount of sleep we should all be aiming for.  More recently it’s been recognised that everyone is different, some people need more sleep than others, and that actually 7 hours of sleep a night is a good average.

Get my top tips for dealing with sleep problems and how to get a good night’s sleep

During lockdown, I’ve seen a lot of comments about people sleeping badly for different reasons.  Stress and anxiety are clearly having an impact, as well as the disruption to normal daily routines.  I have a handout which I give to clients about some of the practical things they can do to help have a good night’s sleep.  If you’d like me to send this to you, please e-mail me at anne@transforming-health.co.uk.  One tip is to make sure that you go to bed and get up at the same times every day.  This keeps your body and mind in a good sleep habit.

If a racing mind is stopping you falling asleep or keeping you awake in the middle of the night, being able to relax both your body and your mind is key to getting you to sleep.  Switch off screens at least 30 minutes or even an hour before you want to get to sleep, because the blue light from phones, laptops and other electronic devices interferes with the release of the sleep-inducing hormone melatonin.  Use relaxation techniques, such as visualisations, progressive muscle relaxation and breathing, or mindfulness and meditation to help calm the body and the mind and get them in the right state to drift off to sleep easily.  Counting sheep is actually quite a good thing to do, as it can be a way of focusing the mind away from anxious thoughts and worries.

Insomnia is one of the issues I specialise in.  Please do contact me if you’re having problems sleeping and would like help to get a refreshing night’s sleep.

Exercise – The Government obviously recognised the importance of exercise for physical and mental health when setting out the lawful reasons for leaving home during lockdown.  Whilst it’s perfectly possible to exercise indoors in a small space,  being outdoors in the fresh air adds an extra dimension to wellbeing.  The Japanese have recognised for decades the positive effect that walking in woods or shinrin-yoku, forest bathing, has on lowering blood pressure and decreasing stress hormones.  There’s something about trees that’s calming, so even if you can’t get out for a walk in woods, walking in a park or down a tree-lined street can help lift the spirits.

Whether you exercise outdoors or indoors, it’s so important to maintain a regular exercise routine to keep the body functioning well.  Exercise releases endorphins, the ‘feel good’ hormones, so it’s one of the best things you can do to combat low mood, as well as deal with stress and anxiety.

NHS guidelines are that adults aged 19 to 64 should be active daily, break up periods of sitting with light activity, and do at least 150 minutes of moderate aerobic activity every week and strength exercises that work all the major muscle groups on two or more days a week.  However, if you’re not used to exercising regularly, start gently, build up your activity gradually and check with your GP before doing any strenuous exercise.  Also, be aware that exercising too vigorously for extended periods of time causes stress on the body.  Most of all, find exercise that you enjoy doing, whether that’s working out with Joe Wicks, cycling round your local roads or dancing round your sitting room.  That way, you’re more likely keep up a regular exercise habit.

How to survive and thrive in lockdown?  To sum up: make sure you’re meeting the physical ‘human givens’ needs:

• Eat for health and nutrition – carrots not cakes, cucumber not crisps.
• Drink plenty of water and cut down on alcohol and caffeine.
• Use relaxation techniques to help get 7 hours’ sleep a night.
• Work those muscles!  And exercise outdoors near trees.

I’ll cover the rest of the ‘human givens’ needs in later blog posts, talking about the all-important psychological and emotional needs that we neglect at our peril.  I’ll also give you details of how you can access my self-care audit in later posts.  Look out for these, coming soon.

In the mean time, I’m offering special ‘Uplift During Lockdown’ sessions to help with the following:

– unhealthy snacking and overeating

– sleep problems

– motivation to exercise

Contact me to book a free 30-minute phone consultation to get some top tips on what to do and how hypnotherapy can help – phone 0208 546 2122 or e-mail anne@transforming-health.co.uk.

The post How to Survive and Thrive During Lockdown – Part 1 appeared first on Transforming Health.