On a mission for better health care, many people see private medical insurance as less of an expense and more of an investment. Not only will you not have to suffer the endless waiting lists of the NHS but the worry over the health of yourself and your family will be dramatically reduced as you will have the funds to pay for immediate care by a private practitioner or specialist.

Some private medical insurance companies now recognize the benefits of alternative medicine providing they are registered and recognized as having provable benefits. Of course, every alternative therapist will be sure to extol the virtues of their particular practice but for the assistance of a private medical insurance company, it has to be a recognized method of treating people.

Many physical operations and procedures are unable to be carried out without anaesthetic and this is the main area of the whole process that can cause problems. Doctors can never be quite sure just how each patient will react to anaesthesia and each patients experience of it will be different depending on their health and well being at the time.

To this end, some people are choosing to forego anaesthesia altogether and opt for a lesser used option of hypnosis before undergoing treatment. An Essex man recently used hypnosis when he had to have dentistry to remove a rotten tooth. The extent of the work that needed doing would normally require a general anaesthetic, with all the risks that poses, in hospital and he didn't want to go through this. Neither could he afford the 400 pounds bill that it would take to go private.

With this in mind, the man opted to use mind over matter and offered himself as a guinea pig in a hypnosis procedure being trialed. Remaining conscious throughout the procedure, the 54 year old father of seven said he felt nothing more than a slight sting even though it took a whole two hours to complete. The agony he had suffered before hand has now gone and he claims there is nothing that he wouldn't now have done under this procedure.

The dentist surgery that this man used is keen to list the hypnosis as an ongoing part of its work. Many patients suffer needlessly for a long time because of their fear of the dentist. This can be treated as well as giving patients the tools to control their own pain levels through nothing more than the power of their own minds. They are also given advice on how to control the pain once they have left the surgery and it begins to wear off.

Dentistry is not the only area that hypnosis is being used and it is advisable to talk to your private medical insurance company about whether or not this is something they would consider paying out for. If this is something you might consider using in the future, then it would pay to consider a private medical insurance company that offers alternative treatments as part of their service.

One man was even able to send himself into a trance before undergoing medical surgery for an operation on his hand and is thought to be the first person in the world to have done this. He heard the cracking of bones as surgeons sawed at his hand but, quite amazingly, claims he felt nothing.

After just 30 seconds, the experienced hypnotist was 'under' and the fact that he could hear the surgeon asking for a saw, hammer and chisel didn't faze him at all. It is thought that some hospitals will begin to offer this as a way of allaying the fears of some patients and in a way to reduce anaesthesia. Personally, I think I would prefer the old fashioned way of being knocked out and just take the consequences.