What is Biofeedback?

What is Biofeedback and how can it help me?

Bio-feedback can help you control pain and diminish stress which is an important first step towards implementing lasting solutions for chronic lower back pain or other types of body pain. In its simplest form, listening to your heart beat with a stethoscope is an example of Biofeedback.  You are getting feedback from an ‘involuntary function’ of your body which, you are normally unaware of.

There are many biological rhythms of which we are totally unaware, such as, changes in blood flow through our arteries, changes in skin temperature, as well as changes related to our brain wave frequencies. Under normal conditions, we are ‘blind’ to these things as well as many others.

Consciously we can control certain body functions such as our muscles to get us around while others such as our heart beat, blood flow and digestion are automatically controlled.

Researchers discovered that if you are given a visual or auditory signal that corresponds to an involuntary body function that you can, by focusing your attention on that signal, begin to affect that function.  This discovery was revolutionary because, it now became possible to influence what was once thought of as an ‘Involuntary Bodily Function’.

What is an example of Biofeedback?

Let’s take the example of controlling skin temperature on the palm of your hand. This experiment might consist of the following. We attach a temperature sensor to the palm of one hand and every time the temperature increases a red light comes on and every time it decreases, a blue light comes on. You are given instructions to focus on the blue light and attempt to cause it to turn on more frequently.  Researchers would find that you are in fact able to turn the blue light on more frequently. By doing so are actually constricting blood vessels in the hand, reducing blood flow and consequently, decreasing palm temperature.  Normally, control of blood flow is ‘involuntary’.

What is Biofeedback good for?

What is really exciting about this discovery is that it has many applications for health and well being.  Back in the 1970’s when these experiments were being conducted technology was not what it is today. In those days, monitoring brain waves required going to a lab and being hooked up to a huge and very expensive apparatus. These days, using sophisticated software and mirco-chip technology, Biofeedback can be applied to measuring and positively influencing changes in heart rate (emwave technology) as well as influencing states of consciousness using brain wave monitoring in ways that are sophisticated, pragmatic and accessible to the average person.

This is great news for you and me because now we are able to use ‘State of the Art Technology’ that is accessible and affordable to take charge of our health using the best modern science has to offer.

To find out more about emwave technology and how it helps you manage stress.

Please follow this link: emWave

By; Eddy Basch DO