The Study That Found Hypnotherapy Reduced Hot Flushes By 74 Percent — And Why Nobody Told You

The Study That Found Hypnotherapy Reduced Hot Flushes By 74 Percent — And Why Nobody Told You

Most women going through menopause are offered two things. Hormones or antidepressants. But a clinical trial published in a peer-reviewed medical journal found something remarkable — and it never made the headlines it deserved.

For educational purposes only. Always consult a qualified medical professional about your menopause symptoms and treatment options.

A Number Worth Sitting With

74 percent.

That is the reduction in hot flush frequency found in a randomised controlled clinical trial testing hypnotherapy in postmenopausal women.

Not a small pilot study. Not anecdotal reports from a practitioner's website. A properly designed randomised controlled trial published in Menopause — the peer-reviewed journal of the Menopause Society of America.

And the vast majority of women going through menopause have never been told this research exists.

What Hot Flushes Actually Are

Most explanations of hot flushes stop at hormones.

That is where the interesting part begins.

Hot flushes are caused by the hypothalamus — the brain's temperature regulation centre — becoming hypersensitive as oestrogen declines. During reproductive years, oestrogen maintains a wide thermoneutral zone — the temperature range within which the body does nothing. As oestrogen falls, this zone narrows dramatically. Minor fluctuations that were previously ignored now trigger an emergency cooling response.

Here is the part that changes everything.

The hypothalamus is directly influenced by the autonomic nervous system — the balance between sympathetic activation (stress response) and parasympathetic activation (rest and recovery).

Stress and anxiety narrow the thermoneutral zone further.

Calm and parasympathetic dominance widen it.

This is the neurological bridge between the mind and the hot flush.

And it is the bridge hypnotherapy crosses.

Professor Myra Hunter at King's College London has spent decades researching this connection:

"Psychological factors — particularly stress and anxiety — play a significant role in the frequency and severity of vasomotor symptoms. Interventions that address the psychological component can produce meaningful clinical improvements."

The Landmark Study

In 2013 Gary Elkins and his team at the Mind-Body Medicine Research Laboratory at Baylor University conducted a randomised controlled trial involving 187 postmenopausal women — all experiencing at least 50 hot flushes per week.

One group received five weekly sessions of clinical hypnosis. The other received structured attention therapy as a control condition.

The results were striking.

The hypnosis group experienced a 63.87 percent reduction in hot flush frequency at six weeks.

By twelve weeks the reduction had reached 74.16 percent.

The control group reduced by 9.24 percent at six weeks and 17.13 percent at twelve weeks.

Hot flush severity scores improved by 80 percent in the hypnosis group.

Sleep quality improved significantly. Daily life interference reduced. Overall quality of life scores rose substantially.

Elkins concluded:

"Clinical hypnosis is an effective and safe non-hormonal treatment for hot flashes that also improves sleep quality and overall quality of life in postmenopausal women."

What Happened Next — And Why You Still Haven't Heard Of It

The research did not stop there.

A 2016 systematic review of psychological interventions for vasomotor symptoms found consistent evidence that mind-body interventions — with hypnotherapy among the most effective — produced clinically meaningful reductions in hot flush frequency and severity.

By 2023 the North American Menopause Society formally included clinical hypnosis in its position statement as a safe, effective, evidence-based non-hormonal treatment for menopausal vasomotor symptoms.

This is the mainstream professional body for menopause medicine. Formally endorsing hypnotherapy. On the basis of peer-reviewed clinical evidence.

And yet a 2022 UK survey found fewer than 4 percent of women had been told about hypnotherapy as a treatment option by a healthcare professional.

The evidence moved. The clinical conversation largely did not.

The Self-Hypnosis Development

A significant limitation of the original research was the delivery model. Five weekly sessions with a trained clinical hypnotherapist is not accessible to most women financially or practically.

The research continued with this in mind.

In 2025 a new study was published in JAMA Network Open — one of the most respected open-access medical journals in the world.

This trial tested self-administered hypnotherapy through audio recordings against a control condition in 250 postmenopausal women.

Self-administered hypnotherapy produced significantly greater improvements in hot flush symptoms than the control condition.

JoAnn Manson at Harvard Medical School commented:

"Scientists are moving in the direction of making hypnosis more accessible. This is an important step in providing women with effective evidence-based options beyond pharmaceutical approaches."

Gary Elkins subsequently developed Evia — a hypnotherapy app built around the clinical trial protocols — making the intervention accessible without the cost of practitioner-delivered sessions.

What Actually Happens In A Session

The clinical protocol follows a consistent structure.

The induction phase uses guided progressive relaxation — physical sensations of heaviness and ease moving through the body — before transitioning into focused attention on cooling mental imagery.

A gentle breeze moving across the skin.
Cool water flowing over the hands.
Standing at the edge of a mountain lake breathing crisp cool air.
Walking through a forest in early morning.

These images are not randomly chosen. They activate specific sensory processing pathways with measurable physiological effects. Skin temperature, autonomic arousal, and heart rate variability all shift in response to vividly imagined sensory experience.

The nervous system does not distinguish cleanly between real and vividly imagined sensory experience at the level of physiological response.

This is not metaphor. It is documented neurophysiology.

David Spiegel at Stanford explains it directly:

"During hypnosis we can help people use their minds to control their bodies in ways they hadn't previously thought possible. The brain is plastic. It can learn new responses to physical stimuli — including temperature regulation."

The HRT Question — An Honest Answer

Hormone replacement therapy remains the most effective intervention for vasomotor symptoms when medically appropriate and when women choose to use it.

Hypnotherapy does not replace HRT.

It works through an entirely different mechanism and reaches different aspects of the symptom experience.

What the evidence suggests is that hypnotherapy is particularly valuable for women who cannot or choose not to use HRT, for women using HRT who still experience breakthrough symptoms, and for the psychological amplification of vasomotor symptoms — the anxiety, hypervigilance, and stress-driven frequency increases that HRT addresses less directly.

The integrative approach — HRT for hormonal stabilisation combined with hypnotherapy for nervous system regulation — is increasingly what informed menopause specialists are recommending.

The Sleep Connection

Hot flushes and sleep disruption are not separate symptoms. They are part of the same interconnected system.

Hadine Joffe at Harvard Medical School has demonstrated that menopause produces changes in sleep architecture independent of night sweats — reducing slow-wave sleep and increasing arousal sensitivity.

Anxiety — which peaks in perimenopause due to hormonal effects on GABA receptors and the amygdala — further disrupts sleep through racing thoughts and hypervigilance.

Hypnotherapy addresses multiple points in this system simultaneously.

In the Elkins trials sleep quality improvement was one of the most consistent secondary findings. Participants reported not only reduced night sweat frequency but improved sleep depth, reduced time to sleep onset, and decreased early morning waking.

Where The Evidence Still Has Gaps

Honest reporting requires acknowledging what the research has not yet answered.

Long-term follow-up data beyond twelve months is limited.

Direct comparative trials against established non-hormonal pharmacological options have not yet been conducted at scale.

Research specifically in perimenopausal women — as distinct from postmenopausal women — remains limited.

These gaps do not undermine the existing evidence. They identify where the research needs to go next.

Practical Next Steps

Speak with your GP or menopause specialist and bring the Elkins 2013 Menopause journal paper and the 2023 North American Menopause Society position statement to that conversation.

If seeking a practitioner look for clinical hypnotherapists with specific health application training. The British Society of Clinical Hypnosis and the American Society of Clinical Hypnosis maintain registers of qualified practitioners.

If cost or access is a barrier the 2025 JAMA Network Open self-hypnosis research supports structured audio-based programmes. Gary Elkins' Evia app is built on the clinical trial protocols.

Allow adequate time. Meaningful symptom reduction in the trial data developed over four to eight weeks of consistent practice.

Key Research

Elkins GR et al. Clinical Hypnosis in the Treatment of Postmenopausal Hot Flashes: A Randomized Controlled Trial. Menopause. 2013.

Elkins G et al. Self-Hypnosis for Hot Flash Management in Postmenopausal Women. JAMA Network Open. 2025.

Johnson A, Simon A, Schneider L. Psychological Interventions for Vasomotor Symptoms in Menopause. Climacteric. 2016.

North American Menopause Society. Position Statement on Non-Hormonal Management of Menopause-Associated Vasomotor Symptoms. Menopause. 2023.

Hunter MS, Chilcot J. Testing a cognitive model of menopausal hot flushes and night sweats. Journal of Psychosomatic Research. 2013.

Joffe H et al. Menopause-Associated Sleep Disturbance. Menopause. 2019.

Spiegel D. Hypnosis and Modern Medicine. Annual Review of Medicine. 2022.

Essential Reading

The Menopause Brain — Lisa Mosconi
Estrogen Matters — Avrum Bluming and Carol Tavris
Trancework — Michael Yapko

Find A Qualified Practitioner

British Society of Clinical Hypnosis — bsch.com
American Society of Clinical Hypnosis — asch.net
The Menopause Society — menopause.org
British Menopause Society — thebms.org.uk
Evia App — eviamenopause.com

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