Eliminating Stress With Biofeedback Therapy
Posted on 08. Feb, 2011 by Matthew Hallett in Stress
When people become angry or upset, their bodies react with higher blood pressure and faster pulse and they also experience changes in skin temperature as well. They may remain in this condition for a very long time, which aggravates their condition including sleep difficulties, fatigue, pain, and others. You should work on what is currently troubling you by participating in a talk therapy group and discussing it with a professional. Another option is to learn an effective way to change and control your own physical responses. It’s difficult to stay distressed if your pulse and blood pressure drop to a normal level, your body temperature stabilizes and your breathing steadies.
Can you really restraint your unwanted body changes, such as high blood pressure and skin temperature? Proponents of biofeedback (a treatment that works by allowing users to manage their body responses through concentration and observation of physical changes with electronic devices) believe that we can, they are convinced that biofeedback training may allow us to become more relaxed and more focused.
Each biofeedback professionals use different methods, but generally, the patient sits in front of monitors. One monitor observes skin temperature on the arm or hand. Another monitor reads the pulse and often placed on your finger. Other monitors can be used to take different body measurements, for example, blood pressure, skin humidity and skin conductivity. The person views a line of graph that represents pulse or temperature on the monitors, and is asked to relax. After enough relaxation, he can see the figures dropping down. As he relaxes further, all measurements indicate normal physical characteristics (the operator will consider them as base line measurements). If the individual gets too excited, the line begins to climb up.
If the method works, it allows someone to know how to decrease all signs of stress. After repeated treatments, that person can learn how to reach an adequate state of relaxation, which he can duplicate when he’s not hooked up to those sensors, devices and monitors.
That’s in theory, anyway. But it may not always work, especially with those who are highly excitable. As he sees the graph drops, he can immediately become stimulated, causing higher stress levels and consequently, altered physical responses. For certain people, matching success with relaxation is very difficult.
Certain studies of the effects of biofeedback have shown that patients with fibromyalgia have successfully lowered their pain, fatigue, and morning stiffness and also improved their sleep.
Biofeedback may work well on people with certain disorders, such as fibromyalgia. People with fibromyalgia have higher temperature differences and also blood flow differences, compared to normal people. Because the actual problem is body response, you can find out how to manage your physical responses, while mastering your fibromyalgia symptoms. The ability to manage your physical responses won’t necessarily mean that you can banish all fatigue and pain forever from your life. But if biofeedback can work well, it may prove to be a huge advantage, and an opportunity to improve your condition.
Just like other treatments, biofeedback therapy has some benefits and liabilities. We start with the bad ones first:
• Most health-insurance companies do not provide coverage for this treatment, so the sessions may be expensive.
• Identifying a good professional who has the tools and qualified to provide the treatment may be tricky.
• The treatment takes time. Biofeedback results won’t occur in the first couple of sessions, and often it may take months before you see significant results, definitely a bad thing if you are using your own money to pay for these treatments.
One big advantage is that if this method works, your improvement will be more permanent. Experts also conclude that you can apply a few things you learn from biofeedback therapy to your daily life. After a complete mastery of the technique, there is no need to get yourself hooked up to those machines and monitors. Instead, when you start to feel signs of emotional problems, you can (at least, in theory) call upon everything you’ve gained through those biofeedback therapy. In one research, patients could still effectively use techniques they’d learned six months previously. They hadn’t forgotten or lost faith on the techniques, although no one guided them.
There have been some claims that by taking biofeedback therapy, people with cancer can stop or at least slow the development of cancer. These promises are lies. It is cruel to offer false hopes to patients who already face a great deal of emotional and mental hardships.
Even so, biofeedback therapy may become an excellent complimentary therapy for people with cancer, as they are undergoing chemotherapy, surgery or radiation therapy. Biofeedback can’t stop cancer. It isn’t a cure cancer, either, even so cancer patients may experience significant improvement on their stress level, pain, and muscle tension. This will help them to endure the difficult and often frustrating cancer treatment and improve their chance to have a full recovery.
Generally, therapists and psychologists are likely people who know how to perform biofeedback training to the stressed-out people who need it. These professionals have the tools, and the knowledge to know employ the technique effectively and to help you to gain this new ability. You may ask your psychiatrist and other experts you know to recommend biofeedback therapists. If there is a major hospital or university nearby, you can call its PR department to know whether they offer biofeedback therapy.
