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6th Mar 2005

The Science of Hypnosis


Chris Smith

Helen Scales

This week we're picking the brains of two top experts on the science of hypnosis. Dr Peter Naish from the Open University discusses what hypnosis is, how stage hypnosis differs from therapeutic hypnosis, how new evidence suggests that hypnosis isn't just 'all in the mind', and whether hypnosis can reveal your former life, while Dr Tannis Laidlaw from Imperial College London talks about how hypnosis can help people give up smoking, reduce stress and improve well-being. In our second look at how Einstein has influenced science in our living rooms, Philippa Law accounts for how calculators work.

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Questions

 

Macrophages can clean up debris in the lungs. One of your guests the other week said that these phages can help the spread of lung cancer. How can this be?


 

How does a white LED work?


 

I was hypnotised and thought I was a Dutch girl from 1815. Was this my former life?


 

I really need to give up smoking but I just can't seem to do it. I have chronic pain after an operation, chronic bronchitis and my health is deteriorating, but I get depressed when I give up. Smoking to me is very much like a crutch. Could hypnotism help me?


 

I went to a hypnotist to stop smoking in the early 1980s and it worked for about a year. I went away on holiday and bought a packet of cheap cigarettes and that got me back onto smoking. Would it help if I went to a hypnotist again?


 

What are the dangers of hypnosis? Would it help with my anxiety disorder?


 

I was hypnotised when I was 25. I'm now 67 and I've smoked once in between. The session cost me &pound;4 and was worth every penny!


 

Can hypnosis help tinnitus? It was brought on by two very stressful incidents. Tinnitus is when you get noises in the ears and head that you cannot get away from. It sounds like a loud electrical transformer hum and then it will alter to a loud fizz.


 

I was hypnotised over 30 years ago and it cost me &pound;5. At the time I was very angry with the hypnotist because I didn't feel like I'd been on another plane at all. The first thing I did when I walked out was have a cigarette! However, after that first cigarette I never had another one again. Hypnosis didn't meet with my expectations but it did seem to work.


Interviews

 

How a Calculator Works

Philippa Law interviews Dr Julian Allwood &amp; Dr Lucy Green
 

Hypnotism

Dr Peter Naish from the Open University and Dr Tannis Laidlaw from Imperial College London

Fact or Fiction

The Elizabethans believed that earwigs could cure deafness
TrueTrue
The name 'dinosaur' means giant lizard
TrueTrue
The biggest bat wing span is six feet
TrueTrue
The longest hiccupping attack went on for 69 years
TrueTrue
The eyeballs of the giant coral reef fish, the Napoleon Wrasse, are a delicacy in Hong Kong
TrueTrue
Some male fruit flies produce sperm 20 times longer than their body
TrueTrue
In the month of May, children in Britain grow faster than children in Australia
TrueTrue
Ants make up a tenth of all the animals in the world
TrueTrue


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