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Children who have  abdominal pain disorders or “stomach cram” could reduce it`s pain by using the power of imagination. it is known that medical care coupled with imagination, often will reduce the pain of this type

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 there own abdominal pain they experienced with the aid of imagination guide trough  an audio recordings, and for them they could also obtained faster medication results success 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/stomach pain,in other words  pain that cant  be detected where the source of pain come from.

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 can 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.

This study involving 29 children aged 6 years to 15 years diagnosed and complaint to have dis-functional abdominal pain. All children receive the same treatment, but some children selected at random for 8 weeks to receive  imagination guide treatment. there were only  15 children who received medical treatment plus imagination exercise while the rest 14 only receive medical treatment alone.

Session to guide  imagination exercise 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 is 20-minute daily sessions with 10 minutes sub session. In this excercise, children are taught to build there own imagination to reduce the pain trough a story telling

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