Medical Student Helps Establish Hypnotherapy Research Program for Eye Pain
Article Summary
- Ashlyn Anzu Gary helped launch a research program exploring hypnotherapy for people with chronic eye pain.
- Gary worked with an ophthalmologist and a psychiatrist to organize a clinical study of people with neuropathic ocular pain.
- The researchers found hypnotherapy reduced both pain and anxiety for the patients.
When Ashlyn Anzu Gary was a first-year medical student, she watched a documentary that showed a patient undergoing a tooth extraction — without anesthesia. The patient stayed remarkably calm and pain-free by being kept in a hypnotic state under the guidance of a hypnotherapist.
Gary, who watched the film in a class about mind-body medicine at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, was fascinated. She had chosen to pursue a scholarly concentration in the Miller School’s Advancing Mind-Body Medicine Pathway because of her interest in mind-body connections stemming from training in mixed martial arts. Strengthening her mind and body to earn a black belt was certainly a feat, but the idea of using the mind to overcome the pain of a surgical procedure was, well, mind-blowing.
“I started going on PubMed and researching hypnosis,” she said. “I started finding this growing body of research suggesting that hypnotherapy could be very beneficial, as a complementary treatment approach, especially. I was really interested in the pain management aspect.”
Launching a Hypnotherapy Research Program
Gary searched for ways to learn more about hypnotherapy for her student scholarly project. She soon landed a unique opportunity to help launch an interdisciplinary clinical research program exploring hypnotherapy as a treatment for people with chronic eye pain.
Drawing on her experience coordinating clinical research at Woebot Health and Stanford Byers Center for Biodesign prior to enrolling at the Miller School, Gary helped build the novel clinical program under the direction of mentors Anat Galor, M.D., MSPH, professor of ophthalmology, and Mary Ishii, Psy.D., voluntary assistant professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences and a clinical psychologist/hypnotherapist at the Miami Burn Center.
The team focused on patients with neuropathic ocular pain (NOP), a rare disorder that occurs when the eye’s corneal nerve malfunctions. Dr. Galor, one of a handful of global NOP experts, said patients typically describe their eyes as burning, dry or achy. They often spend years unsuccessfully looking for relief with eye drops or pain medications while also struggling with mental health challenges.
“Many people who feel their eyes because their nerves are dysfunctional also have an emotional component to the pain,” Dr. Galor said. “They have depression and anxiety associated with eye pain. We wanted to see if hypnosis could help.”
Hypnotherapy to Reframe Pain
During her second and third years of medical school, Gary helped eight of Dr. Galor’s NOP patients enroll in a series of 10 hypnotherapy sessions. Dr. Ishii guided each patient into a relaxed state and used words like “soothing” and “cooling” to help them reframe their brain’s reaction to pain signals from the corneal nerve. The goal was to teach patients to view their pain as a controllable entity they could manage.
Gary reported the outcomes of Dr. Ishii’s hypnotherapy sessions to Dr. Galor. She scoured scientific literature to learn more about NOP and the use of hypnotherapy in other pain states. Plus, she invested time in thinking about ways to improve the budding program.
“Ashlyn is fantastic,” Dr. Galor said. “The active part of building the program with us clinically was above and beyond what most medical students do. We appreciate her involvement in developing a program in patient care that didn’t exist before.”
Patients Report Reduced Pain and Anxiety
Gary is now a fourth-year medical student applying to residencies in ophthalmology. She is looking forward to presenting the team’s preliminary results at a student symposium this fall.
In their pilot study, the team found that patients who completed the hypnotherapy sessions reported a drop in pain and anxiety levels, suggesting the approach warrants further investigation and implementation.
“There is a certain patient population that I think will benefit from this,” Dr. Galor said. “This is something Dr. Ishii and I want to continue working on.”
Gary said the project “widened my scope of understanding what mind-body medicine can be. Ophthalmology and hypnosis are worlds apart in terms of their medical expertise and knowledge. Being able to create dialogue between these two specialties is really special and a very unique way to approach this problem of neuropathic ocular pain.”
Tags: alumni, Dr. Anat Galor, hypnotherapy, ophthalmology, pain management, Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences