Have you ever felt feverish and decided to go to bed with a hot bowl of soup? Does your choice for dessert rely on the numbers revealed on your bathroom scale? Well, then you’ve been listening to your body! Depending upon the readings on the thermometer, you decided to opt for hot soup (which supplies fluids) and rest. The figures on your bathroom scales tell you whether or not you need to take that extra helping of strawberry cake or not.
Well, then you are not a novice to biofeedback. Although you may not know it, you have been trying to ‘improve your well being by reading through the signals your body is sending you’. This is biofeedback. When doctors, physiotherapists as well as ordinary people use signals from the patient’s body to determine the course of their treatment, they’re depending on biofeedback.
In biofeedback, electronic instruments allow doctors to monitor the activities of the body – both physical as well as psychological. Clinicians have sensitive machines that may easily ‘see’ or ‘hear’ within the bodies of patients. It is not unusual to encounter individuals who are very puzzled by their own symptoms, aches and pains. These machines can detect the internal activities of an individual with far greater precision than the patient himself can.
For patients the ‘biofeedback machine’ acts like a kind of sixth-sense that guides them to the accurate functions of their bodies. According to the readings provided by the machine the biofeedback therapist makes internal adjustments. This info is useful and often proves crucial when it comes to selecting modes of treatment. The therapist is nearly like a football coach, waiting on the sidelines and giving directions to patients on how you can enhance performance.
When biofeedback first created its appearance, doctors had high hopes – probably these were too high to be realistic. They hoped that biofeedback would one day give us so much control over our bodies that we could simply ‘will’ ourselves to good health. A patient could then steer clear of taking medicines.
These days, scientists and doctors have more sensible and practical expectations. Biofeedback can help in the treatment of many diseases. It can drastically decrease post-operative pain. Disorders of the digestive system, cardiac arrhythmias, blood pressure variations, epilepsy, migraine and stress-related head aches and paralysis – these can be treated utilizing biofeedback.
Biofeedback frequently aims at changing habitual reactions to incidents that induce stress. Stress and our reaction to it’s frequently the underlying trigger of discomfort or disease. With a lot of patients, biofeedback is really a kind of skill training where patients listen in on their bodies and discover techniques that help them to avert stress or discomfort.
Physicians, psychiatrists, dentists, physiotherapists and even nurses are increasingly counting on biofeedback. Biofeedback generates amazing results when it is combined with other treatment techniques. Since it is a non-invasive and painless process, biofeedback is a useful option. Patients can be taught about factors that trigger attacks (as in the case of epilepsy and migraine) and what they have to do to deal with, decrease or eliminate the symptoms.
Biofeedback is very efficient for chronic benign issues. With this therapy, long term medications become a thing of the past and mid-night visits to the emergency room turn out to be a rarity. What’s best of all – NO more side effects!
