Top 7 Conditions To Get Heal With Biofeedback

A feature article by Raymond Lee, Jan 25, 2008         

Summary: Biofeedback helps people take more responsibility for their health. Therefore, it is worthwhile to consider biofeedback to enhance your health condition.

 
The biofeedback industry was born. Today several thousand certified biofeedback therapists teach the technique to tens of thousands of people with dozens of ailments. Thousands more people learn biofeedback themselves using small home devices and the instruction books that come with them. Biofeedback is not a cure-all, but it helps to treat all the stress-related health problems. Here are some of the conditions that biofeedback can help.

1. Chronic Pain

Chronic pain and anxiety form a vicious cycle. The pain causes anxiety, which lowers the pain threshold. Biofeedback relieves anxiety, which raises the pain threshold and helps control chronic pain. In addition, a good deal of back pain results from muscle tension up and down the back. Biofeedback can teach people to relax all the muscles from the neck to the buttocks. Biofeedback is also useful in treating shortness of breath due to congestive heart failure as well as vaginismus (vaginal muscle contraction that makes intercourse painful or impossible) and other conditions. It is also helpful during stroke rehabilitation and artificial limb training – situations that require people to relearn the use of certain muscles.

2. Headaches

Biofeedback is one of the most effective treatments for migraine and tension headaches. With sensors placed on the head and neck, people who regularly have tension headaches become more aware of their tense spots and are better able to relax them. Migraines are believed to involve unnatural expansion and constriction of certain blood vessels in the brain. Biofeedback can teach people who often have migraines to correct this. And while biofeedback is not a cure for all headaches, you may improve your current conditions by 50 to 80 percent.

3. Raynaud’s Disease

This common condition involves the constriction of blood vessels in the fingers (and sometimes toe), that leads to cold extremities and painful extremities in cold weather. Most people given biofeedback instruction that teaches them to control their circulation reduce their discomfort by at least two-thirds.

4. Anxiety

Biofeedback teaches people to relax deeply. In that regard, it is similar to meditation and visualization and is often used in conjunction with visualization exercises. It is certainly possible to learn to relax without biofeedback, but many people are so stressed and so out of touch with their bodies that they truly don’t know how to relax, and when they do, they can’t recognize it. With biofeedback, you simply look at the monitor and you can see yourself relax.

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5. Diabetes

Many people with diabetes experience circulatory impairment in the feet and legs, which sometimes necessitates amputation of a toe, foot or limb. Biofeedback can apparently help with a key problem for people with diabetes – keeping their blood sugar (glucose) under control. Under stress we all pump glucose into the blood. Our muscles need it to react to whatever stress there is. People with diabetes, though, cannot produce enough insulin to get glucose to the cells that need it, so they have higher blood glucose levels under stressful conditions – not an ideal situation. Worse, the stress hormones released during a stressful event can make whatever insulin is present less efficient. People with diabetes who learn to relax with biofeedback, however, can reduce their blood glucose levels. People doing biofeedback experienced lower stress and glucose levels when compared with untrained people. Consistent stress levels as well as peak responses to stressful events can be lowered. You are also able to shorten the length of your stress response.

6. TMJ Syndrome

The temporomandibular joint (TMJ) is near the ear and connects the jaw to the skull. Thousands of people experience TMJ pain, which has several possible causes, among them chronic tension in the jaw muscle. It was believed that in tension-related TMJ syndrome, biofeedback provides effective long-term relief.

7. High Blood Pressure

Some of the original biofeedback studies show that the technique could teach laboratory animals to raise or lower their blood pressure. Many people use biofeedback to help control mild to moderate high blood pressure.

Raymond Lee is one of the foremost experts in the health and fitness industry and is the Founder of Bodyfixes Group specializing in body health, muscle development and dieting. He is currently the author of the latest edition of "Neck Exercises and Workouts." Visit http://www.bodyfixes.com for more information.

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