Imagination Power Can Reduce Stomach Pain Child

Children who have functional abdominal pain disorders can reduce pain by using the power of imagination. Given that medical care coupled with imagination, will reduce the pain.

Based on research from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Duke University Medical Center, found a greater benefit in children who received treatment imagination training for 6 months. These results have been published in the journal Pediatrics.

"The children can clearly reduce the abdominal pain she experienced with the aid of imagination guide audio recordings, and obtained better results than medical treatment alone," said Miranda van Tilburg, Ph.D., an assistant professor in the division of Gastroenterology and Hepatology UNC School of Medicine, as quoted from ScienceDaily, Tuesday (20/10/2009).

This research focuses on functional abdominal pain, the pain without being able to continuously identify what the underlying disease and can interfere with activities. Because this disease usually attacked around 20 percent of the children.

Previous research has found that behavioral therapy combined with effective medical treatment to reduce pain and improve quality of life. But for some children this behavior therapy can not be done because the price is expensive and requires a professional therapist.

In this study involving 34 children aged 6 years to 15 years diagnosed with functional abdominal pain. All children receive the same treatment, but some children selected at random for 8 weeks to receive your imagination guide treatment. In the end there were only 29 children in which 15 children received medical treatment and exercise the imagination while only 14 children medical treatment alone.

Session to guide the imagination developed by van Tilburg, Ólafur Palsson, Psy.D and Marsha Turner who recorded it on CD so that children can practice at home. The sessions are divided into two times a week, each session or 20-minute daily sessions with each session 10 minutes. In this session, children are taught to imagine the things that can reduce the discomfort that interfere with his stomach.

The results obtained are children who receive training imagination decreased pain in her stomach for 73.3 per cent while children who only received medical treatment only for 26.7 percent of the decline in the same pain.

Based on the results of this research, effective treatments available to cope with abdominal pain due to functional disorders is a combination of medical treatment by training the child's imagination to help reduce discomfort in the stomach.