July 3, 2000 -- When 10-year-old Amanda Mellencamp recently awoke in the middle of the night complaining of a tummy ache, her mother Ann didn't offer her Pepto-Bismol or simply invite her to snuggle up. Instead, she made a rather unorthodox suggestion: "Why don't you practice your imagery?" she asked.

So Amanda did. First she pictured a big, orange balloon inflating in her stomach and causing her stomach to hurt. Then she imagined herself drinking hot cinnamon tea to melt the balloon. As the imaginary balloon slowly disappeared, so did Amanda's pain. Twenty minutes later she was fast asleep, and the next day she felt fine.

Amanda is one of a growing number of children who are using mind-body techniques like guided imagery to cope with physical ailments. These therapies have become increasingly popular with adults in the past few years; now researchers are examining how well they might work with kids.

In fact, some experts say that kids may be even better than adults at using their imaginations to ease pain. "Adults will say, 'What do you mean there's a kitten? I don't see a kitten,' " says Susan J. Nathan, a Laguna Hills, Calif., psychologist who specializes in guided imagery. "Kids will jump right in and say, 'Oh yes, I see it -- and it has a white tail.' This type of play helps them relax, and we know that when people are in a relaxed state, they experience less pain."

Amanda learned how to practice guided imagery and relaxation techniques as part of a University of Arizona study investigating how these therapies might relieve recurrent abdominal pain (RAP). The university recently won a $5 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to establish the nation's first research center on alternative therapies for children. The RAP study is being run jointly by the university's Children's Research Center and the Program in Integrative Medicine, headed by Andrew Weil, MD.

The Mind-Body Connection

RAP afflicts as many as 5% of all kids and is notoriously difficult to cure. About half the cases can be attributed to treatable ailments like lactose intolerance, gastroesophageal reflux (known as heartburn in adults), and constipation, says William Cochran, MD, a pediatric gastroenterologist at the Geisinger Clinic in Danville, Penn. As for the other half, he says, it's difficult to tease out the cause.

Many experts, though, believe that there are some psychological factors at work. "The cause probably has something to do with stress, which can affect the nerves connected to the intestines and cause cramping," says Thomas M. Ball, MD, MPH, an assistant professor of clinical pediatrics at the University of Arizona and principal investigator of the study. That's one reason why researchers suspect that mind-body techniques might make a difference.

Another is that guided imagery -- which can be as simple as visualizing a beautiful beach or as complex as picturing immune cells attacking cancer cells -- has already been used successfully to help people cope with various types of pain. For instance, among a group of 94 adult cancer patients, those who received imagery training reported less pain than those who didn't, according to a study published in the November 1995 issue of the journal