Biofeedback - What is Alternative Medicine?

For thousands of years, Eastern mystics have demonstrated their ability to control their heart rate, skin temperature, blood pressure, and other “involuntary” functions through concentration and will power. Western physicians have begun experimenting with biofeedback machines to accomplish the same result. People suffering from migraine headaches, for example, can be connected to biofeedback machines which monitor their bodily functions such as skin temperature, blood pressure, sweat, and electrical responses. Once they are hooked up to a machine, patients learn to consciously will a desired result, such as lowering their blood pressure. Electrodes attached to the body provide readings, giving patients the feedback necessary to determine whether their mental powers are causing the desired physiological change.

Biofeedback training has a range of applications in medicine, particularly in cases where psychological factors play a role. Sleep disorders, hyperactivity in children, and other behavioral disorders respond well to biofeedback training, as do dysfunctions stemming from inadequate control over muscles or muscle groups. Incontinence, postural problems, back pain, temporamandibular joint syndrome (TMJ), and loss of control due to brain or nerve damage have been relieved when patients undergo biofeedback training, according to Alternative Medicine: The Definitive Guide .

Biofeedback has also been effective in treating heart dysfunctions, gastrointestinal disorders (acidity, ulcers, irritable bowel syndrome), difficulty in swallowing, esophageal dysfunctions, ringing in the ears, twitching of the eyelids, fatigue, and cerebral palsy. Severe structural problems such as broken bones and slipped discs, on the other hand, do not appear to respond to biofeedback therapy.

Biofeedback offers promise as one method of partially treating depression. R. Kaiser, for example, reports in the July 1992 issue of Headaches that biofeedback relieved depression in 85% of 28 patients between the ages of 13 and 18 who complained of chronic daily headaches caused by depression.

Along with pelvic muscle exercises, biofeedback has been used to effectively treat urinary or sphincter incontinence. Several studies found symptom reduction rates of 78–90%. Alternative Medicine: What Works, for example, reports one single-blind clinical trial conducted by Dr. P. Burns of the School of Nursing at the State University of New York at Buffalo which showed that biofeedback and pelvic muscle exercises maintained and improved urinary functioning in 135 women. Burns concluded that “the number of incontinent episodes decreased significantly in the biofeedback and pelvic muscle exercise subjects but not in the control subjects for all severity of incontinence frequency subgroups.” Biofeedback has also been used as an adjunct therapy in physical training of people with spinal cord injuries, although exercise therapy has proven much more important.

M. A. Bennings, in the January 1993 Archives of Disease in Childhood, and N. R. Binnie, in the September-October World Journal of Surgery, report how clinicians have used biofeedback to treat rectal ulcer syndrome, pediatric sickle-cell anemia, and cerebral palsy in children. R. E. Thomas, in the April 1993 issue of Ergonomics, writes that it may prove helpful in treating carpal tunnel syndrome (CTS) as well.

Biofeedback has also been incorporated as a noninvasive technique for controlling parasympathetic cardiac arryhmia. One Australian study suggests that biofeedback therapy can help patients recover from strokes. Biofeedback has also proven very effective in treating alcoholism, and preventing relapses. E. Saxb in the September 1995 issue of Journal of Clinical Psychology reports a very promising clinical trial in which 14 alcoholic outpatients used biofeedback brainwave treatment for alcohol abuse. After temperature biofeedback pretraining, subjects completed two 40-minute session of alpha-theta brainwave neurofeedback training (BWNT). Twenty-one month follow-up data indicated sustained prevention of relapse in 12 alcoholics who completed treatment.

Biofeedback has also been used to relieve posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in Vietnam War veterans, according to an article by Dr. S. Vilerin the April 1995 issue of the Journal of Traumatic Stress . The program resulted in significant improvement in anxiety, anger, depression, isolation, intrusive thoughts (of combat experiences), flashbacks, nightmares (of combat experiences), and relationship problems.

Limited trials have shown the ability of biofeedback to control hyperactivity in children. Finally, it may offer a direct symptomatic treatment for reflex sympathetic dystrophy (RSD), an unusual debilitating chronic pain syndrome thought to be associated with continuous excessive discharge of regional sympathetic nerves. For a complete list of clinical trials using biofeedback and more information and referrals, contact the Association of Applied Psychophysiology and Biofeedback.