What is biofeedback therapy?

Biofeedback therapy involves training patients to control physiological processes such as muscle tension, blood pressure, or heart rate.

These processes usually occur involuntarily, however, patients who receive help from a biofeedback therapist can learn how to completely manipulate them at will.

Biofeedback is typically used to treat chronic pain, urinary incontinence, high blood pressure, tension headache, and migraine headache.

The three most common types of biofeedback therapy are:

• Thermal biofeedback – which measures skin temperature
• Electromyography – measures muscle tension
• Neurofeedback – measures brain wave activity

Biofeedback is particularly effective at treating conditions brought on by severe stress. When a person is stressed, their internal processes such as blood pressure can become irregular. Biofeedback therapy teaches these patients certain relaxation and mental exercises which can alleviate their symptoms.

Therapists can measure a patient’s performance by attaching electrodes to their skin and displaying the processes on a monitor. Eventually patients learn how to control these processes without the need to be monitored.

During a biofeedback session electrodes will be attached to the patient’s skin, which sends information to a monitoring box. The biofeedback therapist reads the measurements and through trial and error singles out mental activities that help regulate the patient’s bodily processes.

Sessions are typically less than an hour long – most people will begin to see positive results after 8 sessions. However, some patients may need a as many as 50 sessions.

Biofeedback for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). A team at East Carolina University is working toward a portable biofeedback training program that could prevent or reduce PTSD.

What is biofeedback used for?

There is a whole range of health conditions that experts believe can be treated with biofeedback therapy. In fact, it is a very popular choice over drugs, because it does not have any significant risks or cause undesirable side effects.

Other benefits of biofeedback therapy are that it is noninvasive and can be an alternative to medications, which is particularly useful for pregnant women.

Below are some examples of conditions and illnesses that may benefit from biofeedback therapy:

Urinary incontinence

The Agency for Health Care Policy and Research currently recommends biofeedback therapy as an effective form of treatment for urinary incontinence, based on very promising findings in clinical studies.

Children’s anxiety at the dentist’s

Researchers at the Narayana Dental College and Hospital in India set out to determine whether biofeedback therapy might help control children’s anxiety when receiving dental restorations. In the journal European Archives of Paediatric Dentistry they concluded “Biofeedback can be used in the initial visits for dentally anxious children and the usage of simpler biofeedback machines for these appointments in dental setup is suggested.”

Raynaud’s disease

Raynaud’s disease is a condition that causes some parts of the body to feel numb and cool in response to cold temperatures or emotional stress. It is caused by a problem of blood supply to the skin.

Some studies also indicate that thermal biofeedback can help alleviate symptoms of Raynaud’s disease, with reports revealing that 80-90% of patients experienced improved circulation and a reduced frequency of symptoms after therapy.

Chronic constipation

Findings published in the Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology, found that biofeedback treatment can successfully retrain muscles which cause chronic constipation.

The lead author of the study said “the study results show that bowel movement improvement is possible in nearly 80 percent of patients through biofeedback.”

Fecal incontinence

Scientists at the University of Lübeck in Germany found that electrical stimulation combined with biofeedback therapy helped patients with fecal incontinence.

They reported in the International Journal of Colorectal Disease that “There is sufficient evidence for the efficacy of BF (biofeedback) plus ES (electrical stimulation) combined in treating fecal incontinence. AM-MF (Amplitude-modulated medium-frequency) stimulation plus BF seems to be the most effective and safe treatment.”

Cognitive and behavioral therapies

Dr. John Krystal, Editor of Biological Psychiatry, said biofeedback may open new avenues for cognitive and behavioral therapies; he was referring to a study that found people can control the activity of certain regions of the brain when they receive feedback signals by functional magnetic resonance brain imaging (fMRI).

Chronic rectal pain

Biofeedback is also more effective than two other treatments for a type of chronic rectal pain called levator ani syndrome, according to researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Nocturnal bruxism

Nocturnal bruxism is the clenching, bracing, grinding or gnashing of the teeth and jaws during sleep.

A team at The Turner Dental Hospital, Manchester, UK, explained in the British Dental Journalthat a range of treatment strategies have been used to control nocturnal bruxism, including hypnosis, splint therapy, acupuncture, occlusal equilibration and physical therapy.

Drs. R. Needham and S. J. Davies set out to determine what effect biofeedback might have on nocturnal bruxism. Trial participants were given the Grindcare device, a biofeedback device made by Medotech, and told to wear it every night for five weeks.

Out of the 19 patients in the study, eleven (58%) reported a significant reduction in the occurrence of headaches and jaw-muscle discomfort on waking up in the morning.

The study authors concluded “The use of biofeedback could reduce the level of parafunctional activity and bring about meaningful symptomatic improvement. No adverse effects occurred throughout the study period.”