Biofeedback At A Glance

In essence, biofeedback is an approach to work with tension/stress of which pertains supervising which aims to apply elective regulation over unconscious physical activities just like pulse rate, blood pressure level, skin conductance, and even muscular tension.

Image Sources: http://www.makingthemodernworld.org.uk

The basic concept is originated from animal testing (using laboratory rat) performed approximately five decades ago of which demonstrating that rats can adjust their own pulse rate if presented positive neurological stimulus each time their own heart beat accelerated or lowered. The approach that: "Thoroughly unconscious physical processes can get adjusted through controlled environment" was barely unique; Ivan Petrovich Pavlov had already shown this a long time ago, by monitoring and measuring salivation process of his own pet. Nevertheless, knowing the prospective healing utilization of the particular concept for stressed humans was completely new, thus, demanded cutting-edge devices, which leads to biofeedback technology that we know today.

So how does biofeedback work?

To simplify things, let's take a real example of biofeedback usage to overcome severe headache. Normally, a user needs to put on head sensor; which is used to capture muscle tension on the head. The head sensor sending the muscle tension data (in a form of signal) to the receiver device, then display the data along with quantified parameters so it can be monitored and analyzed. Based on what displayed on the receiver device, the user needs to achieve certain limit based on those particular parameters until it reach a desirable result. By the time the user try to achieve it, they also learn how to control muscle tension which caused that severe headache.

The Result

Based on plenty of studies carried out within more than 1 decades (1970s-1980s), it is shown that biofeedback gives positive result, allowing users to control their heart beat rate, blood pressure and many others physical function such as muscle tension. With a large number of studies which give a positive result, the National Institutes of Health came to conclusion that biofeedback is an reliable treatment for tension headaches. However, it's necessary to realize biofeedback helps with monitoring and measurement, while the key to successful treatment is the users relaxation techniques. Further Reading:  

A systematic review of the effectiveness of exercise, manual therapy, electrotherapy, relaxation training, and biofeedback in the management of temporomandibular disorder.