Biofeedback training is very useful for health and prevention, 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, temporomandibular joint syndrome (TMJ), and even loss of control due to brain or nerve damage have all shown improvement when patients undergo biofeedback training.

  Biofeedback can also help people with such problems as heart dysfunctions, gastrointestinal disorders (acidity, ulcers, irritable bowel syndrome), difficulty swallowing, esophageal dysfunction, ringing in the ears, twitching of the eyelids, fatigue, and cerebral palsy. Severe structural problems like broken bones and slipped discs are among the only conditions that don't respond to biofeedback.

Stress-Related Disorders

  Biofeedback training is commonly used for the treatment of stress and stress-related disorders, including insomnia, TMJ, migraines, asthma, hypertension, gastrointestinal disorders, and muscular dysfunction.

  Insomnia: Biofeedback can often successfully treat insomnia as long as the appropriate form of biofeedback is used with the specific, corresponding type of insomnia. Melvyn Werbach, M.D., Assistant Clinical Professor at the UCLA School of Medicine and Director of the Biofeedback Medical Clinic in Tarzana, California says, that biofeedback is appropriate when insomnia is due to overactivation of the autonomic nervous system. In this case biofeedback of muscle tension and skin dampness is used  in conjunction with general relaxation techniques.

  EEG biofeedback, however, seems useful when insomnia is due to a mental/emotional problem, not a physical problem. That's why Dr.Werbach uses it particularly with people who have a problem with obsessive thinking when they try to go to sleep. Their bodies relax very nicely, but they just can't get their minds off of whatever it is that their minds go to. This is when EEG biofeedback is most effective.

  Temporomandibular Joint Syndrome: Dr. Werbach also reports using biofeedback to successfully treat TMJ. He recalls the most dramatic case in his practice: a patient who came to the UCLA Pain Control Unit after using bite plates in his mouth to stop the teeth from grinding together. His last bite plate had been a metal one, prescribed by a dentist who thought it would finally solve the problem. Instead, he bit through the metal. He had severe pain in all the typical areas associated with TMJ, and was quite depressed about the whole thing. He had tried everything. Working with him, they took biofeedback readings from the masseter muscle (the muscle involved in closing the jaw) and using them, trained him to relax his jaw. Since he was so preoccupied with his mouth, we also worked on reducing general muscle tension in the rest of his body by teaching him relaxation techniques through control of his breathing and surface finger temperature. It was strikingly effective.

  Migraines: The use of biofeedback to treat migraines began as a chance discovery at the Menninger Clinic (previously Menninger Foundation) in the early l960s. Elmer Green, Ph.D., and Alyce Green were measuring a woman's skin temperature to track her physiological changes while undergoing a series of relaxation exercises. They noticed a sudden ten-degree increase in the woman's hand temperature. When asked, she reported that she had been experiencing  a headache, and it had disappeared at that very moment.

 The Greens tought patients how to lessen migraines simply by using relaxation techniques to raise the temperature of their hands.According to a report by Steven L. Fahrion, Ph.D., Director of the Center for Applied Psychophysiology at the Menninger Clinic, biofeedback can also reduce the dosages of drugs needed to combat migraines, and sometimes remove them altogether, 

  Asthma: Especially well to biofeedback training responds asthma. A recent fifteen-month follow-up study of seventeen asthmatics, trained with biofeedback to increase their inhalation volume, found that all of the participants reported fewer emergency room visits, a lowered need for medication, and decreased instance and severity of wheezing attacks. The authors of the study, Erik Peper, Ph.D., and Vicci Tibbets of San Francisco State University, concluded, that the subjects knew they had control over their breathing by learning to increase their inhalation volume. This experience reduced their fear so that they could continue to exhale and inhale air during the onset of wheezing.

  Hypertension: Biofeedback training is an effective tool for teaching people self-regulation and relaxation to help lower blood pressure. The greatest successes in controlling hypertension are with patients who combine biofeedback training with other forms of relaxation, visualization, exercise, and a low-salt diet.

  Gastrointestinal Disorders: A specialist in the application of biofeedback to gastrointestinal disorders of Culver City, California,  Robert Grove reports great success in treating irritable bowel syndrome, colitis, a wide variety of eating disorders (including bulimia and anorexia), heartburn, and functional dyspepsia (a digestive disorder marked by stomachache, heartburn, or nausea). Dr. Grove uses motility (movement) retraining, wherein special sensors are able to pick up movement in the digestive tract and train it. He explains, that gastrointestinal disorder is a specialty area and other forms of biofeedback will fail under these conditions. For one thing, gastrointestinal disorder patients seem to be hyper-reactive to all types of stimuli such as a light being turned on or a telephone ringing-things that normally don't bother other patients. The gastrointestinal tract responds to these stimuli by shutting down, and biofeedback helps focus in on protecting or creating a protection from the arousal. The Menninger Clinic also successfully treats many people for gastrointestinal disorders, including Crohn's disease (a chronic inflammatory condition affecting the colon and/or terminal part of the small intestine) and ulcerative colitis.

  Muscular Dysfunctions: Marjorie K. Toomim, Ph.D., Director of the Biofeedback Institute of Los Angeles, uses EMG biofeedback to detect muscle imbalances in order to prevent and correct injuries. For example, a runner with problem knee muscles was hooked to the EMG, and Dr. Toomim was immediately able to see that the runner was placing a disproportionate amount of her weight to one side. The muscles on the inside of the leg were diagnosed as stronger than those on the outside. To correct the imbalance the patient needed to exercise only the outer thigh muscles. While hooked up to the EMG feedback device, the patient could see exactly when the weaker outside muscles were exercising and when the stronger inner muscles were at rest. Dr. Toomim says, that in this case, the EMG gave them information they couldn't have gotten in any other way, and it enabled the patient to take control of her own muscular re-education.

  Dr. Werbach believes biofeedback training is sometimes more effective than surgery for patients with back problems. By teaching patients both relaxation techniques and control over their muscle spasms, biofeedback helps them reduce or expel back pain.

  Psychologist Bernard Brucker of the University of Miami Medical School uses EMG biofeedback to teach patients with serious spinal injuries to walk again. Sophisticated EMG feedback replaces the sensation of motion lost by spinal cord injury, reduces muscle spasm, detects activity in muscles mistakenly believed to lack energy, and strengthens muscles so they function once again.

  Yale University research affiliate and Professor Emeritus at Rockefeller University, Neal E. Miller, along with Barry Dworkin, Ph.D., of Penn State University, developed a small biofeedback device worn on the body to treat curvature of the spine. When the wearer slouches forward, a soft beep is emitted; if he does not straighten up, a piercing alarm goes off. Several studies have shown it to be especially effective in treating kyphosis, a front-to-back curvature.

  Biofeedback can also successfully treat incontinence. A $13 billion a year problem among institutionalized elderly, it results when people lose the ability to control the muscles used for urination or defecation. A recent report from the Department of Health and Human Services analyzed twenty-two different studies and concluded that muscular reeducation through biofeedback training had a success rate ranging from 54 to 95 percent, depending on the patient group.

History of Biofeedback

 O. Hobart Mowrer was the first who nstrumented biofeedback (in 1938), when he used an alarm system triggered by urine to stop bed-wetting in children. But it was not until the late 1960s, when Barbara Brown, Ph.D., at the Veterans Administration Hospital in Sepulveda, California, and Elmer Green, Ph.D., and Alyce Green of the Menninger Foundation in Topeka, Kansas, used EEG biofeedback to observe and record the changed states/self-regulation of yogis, that biofeedback began to attract widespread attention.

  The Greens' work with yogis, and the work of Joe Kamiya to teach subjects to experience a 'drugless high' brought biofeedback to public notice. Articles on biofeedback appeared in national newspapers and magazines, and there started to be the great interest to the idea of higher states of consciousness.

An Unusual Success Story

  Melvyn Werbach, M.D., former Assistant Clinical Professor at UCLA Medical School and director of the Biofeedback Medical Clinic in Tarzana, California, was once approached by a woman whose husband had been in a coma for several months. Dr. Werbach and his colleague arranged to hook the man up to various biofeedback devices in an attempt to communicate with him. While Dr. Werbach monitored the biofeedback equipment, his colleague asked the comatose patient to concentrate on specific areas of his body. To everyone's surprise, the galvanic skin response monitor began to move with the request. Although he was in a coma, the patient was able to hear. At the end of the session, the family and staff were shocked to hear him moan loudly.

  Perhaps catalyzed by the biofeedback communication, the patient came out of his coma within a month of this initial session. Almost two years later, Dr. Werbach got a call from the patient. He says  that hearing patient's voice was one of the greatest reward in the practice of medicine.

Biofeedback Training as a Visualization Tool

  Because biofeedback training enables patients by teaching them to control one or more of their body processes, it is proving a useful addition to conventional therapies for cancer and other chronic diseases. Dr. Norris uses biofeedback training to teach cancer patients and patients with AIDS and other immune system disorders to reduce stress. Using imagery and visualization, she helps patients to become confident in the ability for self-regulation of their bodies. Her first cancer patient, nine-year-old Garrett Porter, overcame an inoperable brain tumor with the help of biofeedback-assisted visualization.

  Now more than a decade later, upwards of three hundred cancer patients have been studied at the Menninger Clinic with results ranging from increased comfort and reduced stress to a complete recovery from cancer.