"Women sweltering under a plague of hot flashes might consider an old strategy to reduce their misery says new research harnessing the power of suggestion. Clinical hypnosis that prompted women to chill in the face of hot flashes was highly effective says a new study driving down both the number and the severity of episodes that women suffered and improving sleep quality and the extent to which the episodes interfered with daily life. The postmenopausal women in this trial suffered at least eight hot flashes a day  as many as  a week. Although hormone replacement therapy has been found highly effective in reducing the physical symptoms that accompany midlife hormonal changes its safety for all women is widely debated. The landmark Womens Health Initiative study suggested that treatments that combine estrogen and progesterone might raise a womans likelihood of dementia stroke and breast cancer. Other medications used to treat hot flashes  the bloodpressure medication clonidine the antidepressant paroxetine and the antiseizure medication gapapentin  can have unacceptable side effects as well. Hypnosis by contrast comes with no known risks. It is among the many nondrug treatments to which women turn for hot flash relief. In trials the National Center for Alternative and Complementary Medicine has found that yoga acupuncture qi gong and some meditationbased therapies can be effective in reducing menopausal symptoms. But black cohosh an herbal supplement has proved largely ineffective. The latest research published online in the journal Menopause compared the effects of five minute sessions of therapeutic hypnosis with those of a placebo treatment in which a therapist listened attentively to a subjects complaints for five sessions. For the  postmenopausal women who got the hypnosis treatment the sessions included hypnotic induction instructions for selfhypnosis and specific suggestions for mental imagery that would conjure the comforting sensations of coolness relaxation and safe places. On several measures including a gauge of skinconductance that detected a rise in body temperature the subjects who got the hypnotherapy sessions experienced a marked improvement in their experience of menopausal symptoms. The frequency of hot flashes in the hypnotherapy group dropped by  percent at six weeks and  percent at  weeks compared to drops of  percent and  percent at six and  weeks respectively among those in the trials control condition. A measure of the severity and frequency of hot flashes showed an average  percent improvement in the hypnosis group at six weeks versus  percent in the control group  and an  percent improvement at the week mark among the women who got hypnosis versus  percent at  weeks. Hypnotherapy also reduced hot flashes measured by electrodes that showed changes in skin conductance that would be seen with hot flashes. At six weeks women in the hypnotherapy group had  percent fewer hot flashes than at the outset and  percent fewer hot flashes at  weeks while those in the control group experienced a slight rise in hot flashes at six week and a  percent drop at  weeks."