Neurofeedback & biofeedback therapies are non-invasive treatments that can help you control how your body responds to stressful stimuli. These therapy techniques aim to help reduce the impact stress can have on your body and mental health.
Over time, stress can take a toll on your physical and mental health. Biofeedback therapy works to minimize these effects.
While it was once thought that our body’s response to stress was involuntary, biofeedback therapy suggests that we can learn to manage how our body responds to stressful stimuli.
Electrical sensors are used in biofeedback therapy to measure critical responses in your body such as temperature, heart rate, or blood pressure.
This helps you to see how your body responds to stressful situations and lets you know when you need to start using relaxation techniques to manipulate your response — be it your breathing, heart rate, or muscle tension.
Neurofeedback & biofeedback therapies essentially help you learn to manage your body’s response to stress, allowing you to relax.
Types of Therapy
Because of the range of bodily responses to stress, there are different ways to monitor biofeedback. The best type for you will depend on your specific response to stress and what your goals are.
The types of feedback therapy available include:
- Electroencephalogram (EEG) biofeedback: This technique monitors your brain waves to evaluate how your states of calm, sleep, and wakefulness are affected by stressful situations.
- electromyogram (EMG) biofeedback: Electromyogram measures muscle tension, a bodily response that tends to increase with stress.
- Galvanic skin response training: In this type of therapy, sensors are used to measure how much a subject sweats. This is important to stress management, as perspiration is closely associated with stress conditions such as anxiety and phobias.
- Temperature biofeedback: Body temperature tends to decrease during stress and temperature biofeedback monitors this through sensors. If your temperature does drop during a biofeedback therapy session, it may indicate that it’s time to begin relaxation techniques.
- heart rate variability biofeedback: This biofeedback technique measures your heart rate. A heightened heart rate is a key indicator or stress.
- Respiratory biofeedback: Our breathing patterns tend to change when we experience stress stimuli, often turning into small, shallow breaths. Respiratory biofeedback monitors your breathing patterns through a band around your abdomen and chest and lets the person monitoring the test know when your body is experiencing stress.
Therapy methods have typically been used in a clinical setting, but there are also an increasing number of at-home devices.
There are two types of at-home devices:
- sensor devices that are plugged into computers
- wearable devices
What do Neurofeedback & Biofeedback Therapies Help With?
Biofeedback therapy helps you learn how to manage your body’s automatic response to stress and feel more relaxed. This means that conditions that are exacerbated or caused by stress may benefit from biofeedback therapy.
But other conditions might also see an improvement from this therapy. These conditions include:
- Anxiety
- ADHD
- Asthma
- Pain Management
- Chronic Headaches
- High blood pressure
- Fibromyalgia
- Irritable bowel syndrome (IBS)
- Urinary incontinence
Neurofeedback Therapy at NHA
Here at Neurohealth Associates, we specialize in Neurofeedback therapy. Neurofeedback may be helpful for training your mind, especially if you are unsure about putting yourself or your child on medication. This easy, noninvasive therapy can painlessly improve your mental health condition and outlook on life. Schedule a consultation with NeuroHealth Associates today and find out how we can help you.
