Chronic kidney disease: how hypnosis can help you

Having kidney disease is very unpleasant. After all, it can kill you. Fortunately, the kidney dialysis machine exists, but it is still no fun to be chained to it regularly. In the process, you have to take all sorts of things into account so that you don't poison yourself before your next kidney dialysis appointment.

Chronic kidney disease

If you suffer from chronic kidney disease, it means that the function of your kidneys is getting worse. Your kidneys filter waste and toxins from your body, which you urinate out when you go to the toilet. Only when that stops working properly, you are actually slowly poisoning yourself.

Symptoms of incipient kidney failure include:

1. Nausea
2. Surrender
3. Loss of appetite
4. Fatigue and feeling weak
5. Sleep Problems
6. Having to go to the toilet more or less to urinate
7. Being mentally less sharp
8. Muscle Cramps
9. Swollen feet and ankles
10. Dry itchy skin
11. High blood pressure that does not control well
12. Difficulty breathing
13. Chest Pain

Causes of chronic kidney disease are:

1. Type I and II Diabetes
2. High blood pressure
3. Inflammation of the parts of the kidney that filter
4. Inflammation of other parts of the kidney
5. Long obstruction of your urinary tract, such as from a kidney stone, enlarged prostate and certain cancers
6. Urine that for some reason goes back into the kidney instead of staying in the bladder
7. Recurrent kidney infections[1].

Kidney disease hereditary

There are factors that can cause kidney disease to be hereditary, but that doesn't mean your children will suffer from it. It just means it is more likely[2]. This means that if you suffer from kidney failure, it is extra important for your children to live a healthy life and avoid problems such as type II diabetes and high blood pressure. It is also important for your children to seek help when they suffer from kidney stones or other urinary tract obstructions.

Living with kidney disease

Living with chronic kidney disease also has a significant impact on your mental health. Suddenly, you have to give up some of the freedom in your life because, without dialysis, for example, you cannot survive.

Even though you continue to live, this can still be somewhat depressing. There is even evidence that people suffering from chronic kidney disease exhibit symptoms similar to those with PTSD, because they must constantly adapt their lives. Preventing depression and managing stress, pain, and emotions such as anger, guilt, and shame are important for people with kidney disease and for those around them.

There are multiple ways to do this, such as with Ericksonian hypnosis, mindfulness meditation and compassion meditation[3].

Practical and mental help with hypnosis

One of the things you will be asked to do if you suffer from chronic kidney failure is to modify your lifestyle to prevent further deterioration. Those often include adjusting your diet, keeping up your exercise, quitting smoking and stopping drinking alcohol[4].

Hypnosis can help with all of these issues. For example, many people know that quitting smoking is easy with the help of hypnosis.

Also, people who love a drink and have difficulty staying away from it can get help to stop drinking with hypnosis anyway.

Modifying the diet with kidney disease mainly involves trying to eat less protein. So this is a completely different goal than if you want to lose weight, for example. Then proteins are often actually recommended. In addition, you then have to find the right balance between fats and carbohydrates.

If the kidney damage is due to high blood pressure, they look at reducing salt in the diet, and if the kidney damage is due to obesity, they look at a diet where you can lose weight (but without eating too much protein)[5].

When having kidney disease, a vegan diet, a diet without animal protein, can do a lot for your health[6].

Research shows that hypnosis helps overweight people change their diet[7].

You may have all sorts of barriers and beliefs that make it difficult for you to eat plant-based foods. You might be afraid it’s too expensive, or you might simply not like vegetables.

With hypnosis, you can then change the taste perception of food, making you like vegetables. In some conditions in pediatrics, for example, hypnosis is used to change the taste of a drug, so that the not-so-pleasant taste of a pill does not prevent your child from taking the drug[8]. Of course, this is even better to use with healthy food than with medication.

In addition, hypnosis can help you improve your self-esteem, making you feel that you’re worth eating healthy food—even if it costs a little more.

Managing pain with hypnosis

In addition, chronic kidney disease can also be painful, but painkillers are not properly eliminated by the malfunctioning kidneys. So then it's helpful that you can reduce pain medication as much as possible.

Hypnosis can also play a role in this[9].

A meta-analysis comparing multiple studies in which hypnosis was used to treat chronic pain showed that hypnosis is more effective than other treatments, such as education, distraction, and physical therapy.

They also noted that, in cases of chronic pain, treatment often involves not only hypnotherapy but also self-hypnosis[10].

In therapy, for example, the effect of pain on your life is addressed, and you can get suggestions to change your view of that effect so that you suffer less.

In addition, visualizations are often used in pain. Initially, visualizations are often used to help you relax, such as visualizing yourself lying in a nice place and being nice and relaxed.

Then you can get a visualization that helps you reduce pain. There are all kinds of variations for this, such as a type of light that cleanses and purifies your body, making the pain go away.

Another visualization may be that you can turn your pain louder and softer with a kind of volume knob.

If these types of visualizations work during treatment, you are then taught how to use such visualizations at home with self-hypnosis at times when you suffer from your chronic pain.

You can then think of self-hypnosis as a kind of substitute for a painkiller you would otherwise take.

Grief and mental pain

In addition to the help hypnosis can provide for lifestyle changes and dealing with chronic pain from chronic kidney failure, hypnosis can also help you deal with the emotional pain you may experience from chronic kidney failure.

For example, many people suffer from the time they lose because they are then chained to dialysis, this then causes sadness and a kind of mental dip[11]. In addition, it is also a very anxious situation, because you have to wait for a kidney donor, which can often give a double feeling, because then someone has to die or sacrifice a kidney.

For example, hypnosis can help you shift your focus from the time you lose from dialysis to the time you gain from dialysis. Thereby, you can also see the time on dialysis as me-time, where you don't have to fulfill all kinds of social or work-related obligations for a while.

To understand why dialysis causes you to feel negative emotions, a hypnotherapist can help you identify the beliefs you hold about life that are making you feel sad. The hypnotherapist can then help you reframe those beliefs, so that the time you spend undergoing dialysis treatment no longer feels like such a burden, but might even be something that makes you a little happier or simply leaves you feeling neutral about it.

You can perform techniques where you go back to the moment when limiting beliefs arose or, instead, visualize how to have a happy future despite kidney dialysis. This alone can do a lot to feel relief from your mental symptoms.

Would you like to learn more about how hypnosis works and how it can help people with all kinds of issues? Then join us for the free online masterclass.

Or sign up for one of our training programs. Ideal if you want to help others (or yourself).

Sources: