How Biofeedback Can Ease Your Migraines

Most people are used to getting headaches every once in a while. They are often brought on by stress, tension or perhaps a cold or the flu. But migraine headaches are much more serious and much more painful. Migraines are usually characterized as being on one side of the head. In addition, the pain is so intense that it often causes impaired vision and nausea in the individual. These types of headaches are debilitating, and they are unfortunately often recurring.

Dealing With Migraine Headaches

There are many ways that individuals deal with migraines. Some people go to caffeine as soon as they feel one coming on. Sometimes, caffeine can quell a migraine before it even starts. Others take over the counter pain medications or simply try to go to sleep. One up and coming solution to aiding recovery of migraine headaches is called biofeedback.

What Is Biofeedback?

Biofeedback is a medical solution to migraines and other bodily pains and discomforts that does not involve the use of medication. For this reason, it is often seen as an alternative medicine technique, but it has proven to be very useful and effective in many realms.

The biofeedback technique helps individuals to cope with and control the functions of their body purposefully instead of simply allowing their bodies to do as they please. Because we most often think of our bodies as acting of their own accord, biofeedback might seem like an unlikely solution. But actually, there are many studies that prove a more controllable relationship between the mind and the body. At its core, biofeedback aims to teach individuals how to control their bodies or at least how to relax them.

How Biofeedback Can Ease Your Migraines

When you are strained or stressed, your body naturally tenses up, and your muscles become more strained. This is a normal response, but it can yield painful results such as migraines. Furthermore, the strain and stress that causes this tension and the subsequent migraines is often unwarranted. Humans have built-in stress receptors. Long ago, when we were meant to fight off predators, these stress receptors were very helpful. But today, they might be set off when we simply have a bad day. This means that a migraine might be triggered by something as small as one spilt cup of coffee or an extra 20 minutes in traffic.

If it was tension from stress that caused a migraine, biofeedback says that relaxation and muscle tension relief is the answer to getting rid of the migraine.

How Does Biofeedback Work?

During a biofeedback session, the individual is hooked up to several monitors that keep track of physical responses in the body. These monitors usually track body temperature and overall muscle tension, but they might track other things as well.

From here, the individual attempts to relax themselves in different ways as they watch their physical progress with the monitoring machines. Deep breathing exercises, meditation, progressive muscle relaxation and hand-warming techniques might all be used. The research behind biofeedback has been ongoing for the last 25 years. And all in all, it has shown much progress in terms of alleviating migraine headache pain.