Bio-Feedback
Biofeedback is the use of external devices to provide and individual feedback about the way the body is functioning. When we experience physical or emotional distress, our body changes as a result of the experience. By sensitively monitoring things such as electrical muscle activity, heart rate variability, respiration, and skin temperature. These signials are translated into a form you will be able to detect: a tone, light, or change in an image on a computer screen. By becoming aware of the changes in your body, you will learn techniques to counteract the symptoms of distress, and improve your body's functioning. You will make internal adjustments through the feedback you receive from the computer, and practice making these adjustments in order to improve your body's functioning.
Biofeedback is typically used for:
- Migraine headaches & tension headaches
- Many types of pain
- Disorders of the digestive system
- High blood pressure
- Raynaud's disease
Stressful events produce strong emotions, which arouse certain physical responses. Many of these responses are controlled by the sympathetic nervous system, the network of nerve tissues that helps prepare the body to meet emergencies by "flight or fight." Historically, this developed in order to survive when faced with fear of threat. When this reaction is triggered a cascade of events occurs:
- Sequences of nerve cell firing occurs and chemicals like adrenaline, noradrenaline and cortisol are released into the bloodstream
- Respiratory rate increases
- Pupils dilate to let in more light in, awareness intensifies, sight sharpens
- Sweat pours out
- Blood is shunted away from our digestive tract and directed into our muscles and limbs, which require extra energy and fuel for running and fighting
- The gastrointestinal tract, including the stomach and intestines, slows down to reduce the energy expensed in digestion
- The heart beats faster, and blood pressure rises
- Impulses quicken
- Perception of pain diminishes
- Immune system mobilizes with increased activation
Typically, people calm down when a stressful event is over especially if they have done something to cope with it. However, many of the major stresses today trigger the full activation of our fight or flight response without the ability to act, causing us to become aggressive, hypervigilant and over-reactive, as well as a cumulative buildup of stress hormones. If not properly metabolized over time, excessive stress can lead to disorders of our autonomic nervous system (causing headache, irritable bowel syndrome, high blood pressure and the like) and disorders of our hormonal and immune systems (creating susceptibility to infection, chronic fatigue, depression, and autoimmune diseases like rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, and allergies.) Biofeedback is often aimed at changing habitual reactions to stress that can cause pain or disease.
Other techniques are often used in combination with biofeedback, such as relaxation exercises, learning to identify the circumstances that trigger symptoms, and learning how to avoid or cope with these stressful events. It cannot cure disease or by itself make a person healthy.
Success of the treatment is highly entwined in the patient's active participation. You must examine your daily life and learn if and how you are contributing to your own distress. You will become aware that, through your own effort, you will be able to improve some of your physical ailments. You must commit to practicing biofeedback or relaxation, change bad habits, and accept responsibility for maintaining your own health.