Article Medically Reviewed By:
Karen Olness, MD, FAAP
Professor of Pediatrics, Family Medicine, and Global Health Case Western Reserve University Cleveland, OH
Overview
What Is It?
Biofeedback is a therapeutic technique that teaches you how to control physical responses such as breathing, muscle tension, hand temperature, heart rate, blood pressure and brain activity that are not normally controlled voluntarily.
Biofeedback is a therapeutic technique that teaches you how to control physical responses such as breathing, muscle tension, hand temperature, heart rate, blood pressure and brain activity that are not normally controlled voluntarily. This control is achieved by learning how to focus on and modify signals from your body. Biofeedback may be used to help people change the way their bodies respond to a variety of conditions, including chronic pain, stress and anxiety, to name a few. The skill typically is taught by a health care professional with expertise in the techniques and uses a handfulof clinical, noninvasive instruments. Once you understand how the technique is applied, and after some practice, it is usually possible to use the skill independently.
To understand biofeedback, think of a thermometer—an external device that measures a physiological change. Biofeedback uses electronic or electromechanical instruments to monitor, measure, process and feed back information about blood pressure, muscle tension, heart rate, brain waves and other physiological functions.
Audio and/or visual feedback signals reflect this activity. This gives you greater awareness and voluntary control: First you learn to control the external signal and, eventually, you learn to recognize and use internal cues.
Biofeedback is a relatively recent approach, first developed in the 1940s. The term came into use around 1969 to describe procedures that trained research subjects to alter brain activity, blood pressure, muscle tension, heart rate and other "involuntary" bodily functions. The goal is to train you, primarily by changing thought processes, to control physiologic responses.
At first, biofeedback was viewed with skepticism, but it has been increasingly accepted by mainstream health care professionals and insurers. In the last 30 years, scientists have been exploring the mind/body connection. More acceptance and widespread use of biofeedback therapy has resulted.
Studies indicate that it is an effective therapy. Its use is supported by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for treatment of a range of illnesses and ailments.
Biofeedback is most helpful for conditions involving muscle tension. It's a particularly useful therapy for reducing stress and anxiety, and the NIH has approved its use in the treatment of chronic pain and insomnia. Biofeedback can be used as both a primary and secondary treatment. Secondary treatments are used in conjunction with traditional medicine. In these cases, biofeedback would be used to deal with ...
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