Biofeedback

By Tom Wilson

Biofeedback

What it's best for : Headaches, urinary incontinence

May also help : Attention deficit disorder, asthma, and high blood pressure.

How it works : Stepping on the bathroom scale and seeing that you've lost a few pounds is often all the motivation you need to stick with a diet. In one sense, that's a form of biofeedback, a fancy term for getting information about your body that helps to reinforce behavior - positive reinforcement. Biofeedback machines used by doctors and psychologists provide information about processes in your body you might think are beyond your control - like regulating your skin temperature, blood circulation, and muscle tension. The information acts as positive reinforcement while you train your body to behave in a new way, usually with the help of relaxation techniques.

If you suffer from chronic headaches, for instance, a biofeedback therapist (usually a physician or psychologist) might start by attaching painless sensors to your scalp to measure the tension in your muscles. As the therapist teaches you relaxation techniques, you'll watch a screen that displays information transmitted from the sensors, often in a visual form, like a line graph. (Some devices produce sounds, or are more like a computer game.) If your muscles remain tense, the line on the graph rises; as you relax, it dips, encouraging you to relax more.

Since most people probably don't want to walk around town with electrodes attached to their heads, the goal is for them to condition their bodies to respond automatically when things go away inside. "Their systems learn to self-regulate," says psychologist Steven Baskin, Ph.D., president of the Association for Applied Psychology and Biofeedback. Baskin says about half of headache sufferers, including those who get migraines, experience at least a 50 per cent reduction in symptoms after a course of biofeedback - a success rate similar to those of the best preventive drugs.

Biofeedback can also teach you to control brain waves, heart rate, breathing, and even perspiration. But it isn't for everyone. You "have to be very motivated or it won't work," says urologist E. Ann Gormley of Dartmouth - Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon, New Hampshire. She frequently refers women with urinary incontinence to a biofeedback therapist to help them"find" their pelvic floor muscles, so they can exercise and strengthen them.

The popularity of biofeedback has waxed and waned over the years, but Baskin thinks the therapy is enjoying a renaissance, possibly because of the interest in gentler, more natural remedies. It's a promise that's hard to resist: the ability to control the inner workings of your body with a form of brainpower.