What Are Biofeedback Techniques?
Biofeedback is a teaching tool that can help you become aware of, recognize, and manage stress and tension in your body that can exacerbate pain, mental suffering and other negative reflexes. Rather than a cure, biofeedback is a method for treating a variety of physical and mental ailments. It does not replace but is used in addition to available medical treatment for the offending condition, which can include migraine headaches, arthritis, anxiety attacks, depression, incontinence, athletic injuries or back pain.
Why Biofeedback Is an Important Adjunct to Usual Medical Treatments
Frequently, medications are available for people with chronic pain or mental disorders. But drugs do not always alleviate pain or mental suffering satisfactorily, so biofeedback is an important weapon in any patient's arsenal. Once mastered, biofeedback can actually help you reduce pain or mental suffering and even prevent a migraine headache, for example, from getting a grip. You may also be able to taper off of certain medications eventually if biofeedback works for you.
How Biofeedback Works
By actually seeing how your body's physical processes react to pain, worry or anxiety, you can learn interrupt the cause-and-effect mechanism. During your biofeedback training, you will see an actual link between what is going on in your mind and your breathing, heart rate, blood pressure, skin temperature, perspiration, muscle tension and brain activity.
What Happens During Biofeedback
Your physician will refer you to a licensed biofeedback expert in your area. The biofeedback therapist may attach very sensitive electrode sensors to your forehead, back, finger, neck and other relevant areas to monitor your breathing and heart rate, your blood pressure, skin temperature, perspiration rate, muscle tension and brain activity.
The therapist will first help you to reach a state of relaxation, so you can observe as the sensors record bodily changes. For example, your skin temperature will increase, indicating that your circulation is improving; your muscles will slow their tightening process; and your heart rate will slow. A polygraph test is based on the same principle.
The therapist will then cause a state of tension and stress in your body by asking you about any troubling issues in your life. You will then be able to actually watch the physical changes, such as a quickened pulse, rising blood pressure, dropping skin temperature, and tightening neck muscles.
After this phase, the biofeedback therapist will teach you reduce your tension through muscle relaxation techniques, refocused thinking or deep breathing, thereby visibly returning the signals back to normal levels.
After a number of sessions --- up to 20 or more, depending on the particular tension-producing condition --- the connection between your state of mind and your bodily processes will be clear, and you will be able to put your new, learned behavior to work for you without the sensors and monitors.
The Potential of Biofeedback for Children
Because research has demonstrated its effectiveness, biofeedback is being used more and more for children with tension headaches, epilepsy, hyperactivity, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), learning disabilities, sleep disorders, incontinence, high blood pressure and mild brain injuries. Children learn faster than adults because they have not yet established ingrained pain reactions that need to be overcome.
The Added Benefits of Biofeedback
Besides helping you feel better and use fewer drugs, biofeedback can enable you to miss fewer days of work and school, and improve the quality and quantity of your leisure time. You can sleep better, be more productive, and gain self-esteem and a more positive attitude. Your family life may improve as you are able to concentrate on important matters, improve the duration of your patience, and reclaim your sense of humor.
Tags: blood pressure, pain mental, skin temperature, heart rate, mental suffering