And following up on the temperature theme, migraine sufferers have also been known to learn how to easily abort migraines by warming their hands with hand warming biofeedback. Using a temperature sensor on the pad of your index finger and imagining that you are warming your hands in front of a fire will get the process started. It normally takes just a few sessions to learn how to warm your hands but continual practice for a while will definetly help. We sell temperature sensors suitable for hand warming training at GSR2/Temp at LifeMatters.com as part of the Deluxe GSR2/Temp. This nifty device also teaches a systemic generalized relaxation using the GSR.

While learning how to warm the hands from from the inside with training is the best way but putting your hands in warm water when feeling threatened by a migraine is also helpful and learning how to relax well helps as well. Some will find the Chillow combined with hand warming a powerful combination in their tool chest of natural remedies for migraine.

Considering that medication is not terribly effective for treating or improving stress related problems, the fact that biofeedback is so effective while being an alternative to medication makes this natural solution even more attractive to anyone wanting to recover from stress related problems.

She thought that perhaps this technique would work with her injured child, so she purchased a MyoTrac Home EMG unit and tried it out. What she saw was very exciting, her child was able to make a connection between injured nerves and muscles for the first time and within a few minutes Kate was seeing her child’s injured muscles move for the first time.

Kate just happens to belong to a national self-help group for those with Brachial Plexus injuries and when they had a meeting she was able to try her Myotrac EMG on about 30 people, one of whom has lived with this injuries for decades. And, everyone she tried it on was able to show improved nerve/muscle connections. Needless to say, everyone was very excited.

Even though surface emg has been used in muscle rehab for decades, the application of surface emg to this patient population seems to be new and it shows great promise.

If you or anyone you know is interested in getting more information, the group has set up a message board for sharing. Click on this link and you can read more by the group members themselves: sEMG biofeedback for use in treating Brachial Plexus Injuries. Some areas are public and some are private but there is lots of great information.

So, what is biofeedback and how does it help reduce stress?

Well, the science behind biofeedback actually started in the 1930s where it was discovered that the nervous system that controlled the fight or flight response and the relaxation response could be trained (before, it was thought the autonomic NS could not be trained). So, if this was the case how can you train it? Over the years researchers started learning how to measure the output of this nervous system by using various electronic devices and they discovered that if they made the results of these monitoring sessions available to patients that people could learn to consciously change what was before unconscious activity and difficult to change. With this biofeedback was born.

So, why is training the Autonomic Nervous System important?

Well, when the Autonomic NS is ‘out of whack’ for awhile symptoms can develop. These symptoms can be upsetting and greatly affect the quality of life. Medication doesn’t do a great job relieving these symptoms so with the development of biofeedback a non-invasive way to reduce the symptoms of chronic stress was discovered.

In the 1980s biofeedback became much more accepted into main stream medicine and the field of Behavioral Medicine was born, which used not only biofeedback but other changes in behavior to move people out of illness and toward better health.

When I was in practice as a psychotherapist and biofeedback therapist, I was referred patients by doctors for headaches, TMJ/TMD (TemporoMandibular Joint Dysfunction), jaw clenching, neck pain, chronic post whiplash pain, back pain, insomnia, irritable bowel syndrome, irritable bladder syndrome, hypertension, Reynauds Syndrome (very cold extremeties), phobias, and chronic/acute anxiety.

As you can see, the techniques are applicable to a wide range of conditions and treatment results were excellent. Biofeedback therapists are available all over the world and can be very helpful in training people how to change their behavior on a physiological level so they recover from often debilitating conditions. If you are suffering from a chronic condition I would definitely recommend discussing a referral to a biofeedback therapist with your doctor. However, one of the great advances over the last 10 years, is the development of relatively low cost biofeedback devices that can be used at home to help move the nervous system in the right direction for reducing stress and normalizing physiological function. These devices include the Resperate (to help lower blood pressure), the emWave, StressEraser and emWave PC (to synchronize the heart rate with the relaxed nervous system for stress and anxiety), the Journey to Wild Devine and Healing Rhythms (biofeedback in a game and rich instructional format) and the GSR2 (lowers skin resistance to reduce the stress response).

Using these devices at home does require motivation and persistence. The nice thing about seeing a therapist is that the therapist often helps with motivation and persistence, not to mention technical expertise and know-how. But, much of the know-how is now built into these home units so anybody who can trust themselves to follow-through and practice over time can see the possibility of better health through a better lifestyle (one that includes regular relaxation training).

I plan on discussing individual units in more depth in future posts.