Biofeedback

In this new age of interactive technology, biofeedback should be more popular than it is. Consider this: Biofeedback is a minimally high-tech way for people to peer inside their bodies noninvasively-and then take simple actions to control their vital functions, including heart rate, pulse, blood pressure, muscle action and brain waves. In addition to treating heart disease, biofeedback can help treat sleeping disorders, headaches, back pain, urinary incontinence, digestive disorders and temporomandibular joint syndrome (TMJ).

Biofeedback practitioners hook up sophisticated instruments to the client's head or chest (or other body area) to gauge the level of brain or heart activity. The equipment used varies depending on the ailment. In any case, the procedure is painless. Biofeedback practitioners can take such measurements as muscle tension, brain waves, body temperature and heart activity and display the data on a monitor for the patient. By following the monitor's readings­for example, a blinking red light or a beeper the patient can see how deep breathing and other relaxation techniques impact his or her physiology in ways too subtle for ordinary detection. With this information in hand, the patient can amplify the appropriate technique to noticeably impact his or her condition.

Over time-generally 10 to 12 sessions­patients and clients, once aware of their own physiological reactions, learn to alter and control their responses through relaxation, deep breathing, imagery or meditation. The more they practice, the more adept they will become, since using the biofeedback method is as much a skill as a medical therapy. In effect, biofeedback enables people to consciously change physiological and biological responses that Western scientists once considered unchangeable. In so doing, people can greatly improve their health as they gain control over their bodies and minds.

Biofeedback's Future

Biofeedback has come a long way since its discovery in the 1930s and its more heady development in the 1960s. Now, thanks to technological progress, biofeedback is poised to offer patients even more control over bodily responses and reactions. It appears that thousands of clients may soon be able to receive instant readouts of the gases in their blood while they practice the technique.

Biofeedback professionals in Boulder, Colorado, and in New York City are now using machines called oxycapnometers to teach patients how to control their breathing patterns (and relaxation responses) more efficiently and more precisely. Why is this very important? Because when a person's carbon dioxide level is unbalanced, it can cause all kinds of other problems. So, rather than measuring mere chest movements or sweat responses of the skin, as is done now by biofeedback, practitioners who have access to oxycapnometers can show patients the changes in their bloodstream and nervous system before heavy breathing or nervous sweating sets in. This means that patients can cut off the effects of stress even earlier in the process.

Now all that remains is to figure out a way to bring the price of the machines down to levels that clinics under managed care can afford. Right now, the typical cost of an oxycapnometer can easily surpass $10,000.