Biofeedback: An Innovative Strategy For Chronic Pain

Pain of any kind has a way of taking over your life, but when the pain becomes chronic, it settles in for the long haul, becoming a constant, and dreaded, companion. 

Nearly one-quarter of Americans report having chronic pain, which is pain that lasts for more than three months. And more than 8% of this number report pain that places considerable limits on their lives.

If you’re dealing with chronic pain and you’re looking for effective and safe solutions to improve your quality of life, you’ve come to the right place. Our team at Pain Medicine Consultants has a wide range of tools in its pain management arsenal, including an innovative therapy called biofeedback. 

Here, we look at how biofeedback works and some of its many advantages.

Disrupting the pain cycle with biofeedback

When pain becomes chronic, it can become its own disease, as your pain and stress systems get stuck in a never-ending cycle of discomfort. In a way, your body becomes trained to the pain response and automatically falls into the familiar pattern of stress and muscle tension that can exacerbate the pain.

With biofeedback, our goal is to disrupt these involuntary bodily responses to lessen the pain and disrupt the cycle.

To get started, we attach sensors to your body that measure key responders to pain, including your:

• Heart rate
• Breathing rate
• Muscle tension
• Blood pressure
• Skin and body temperature

As we record these involuntary reactions in real time, we work on mind-body therapies to help you voluntarily control these responses. This feedback is crucial to see what can work to influence things like your heart rate and muscle tension in your body. 

From visualization practices to deep breathing exercises, we figure out what works best to relax and relieve tension in your body, which can go a long way toward reducing pain.

Over time, your biofeedback becomes second nature. You're able to quickly identify when your body is in a stress response due to pain, and you can offset this response through relaxation work.

Advantages of biofeedback for chronic pain

There are many advantages to adding biofeedback to your overall chronic pain treatment plan, such as:

Biofeedback is short on risk

Did you know that up to 19% of people who take opioid-based pain medications become addicted? With biofeedback, you can reduce pain medications and rely more on safe, risk-free mind-body work.

Biofeedback works well

We want to highlight an analysis of studies on the use of biofeedback for chronic pain that found that biofeedback “is effective in improving how pain is perceived, increasing functional results, and boosting overall quality of life among a variety of patient groups.”

Biofeedback works from head to toe

Another benefit of biofeedback is that we can use it as part of a comprehensive treatment plan for any type of chronic pain, including back pain, neck pain, arthritis, and headaches.

Ultimately, biofeedback therapy is worth exploring. You have everything to gain and nothing to lose from this innovative approach to pain management.

To learn more about biofeedback for chronic pain, contact us at one of our offices in Pleasant Hill, Corte Madera, or Pleasanton, California, to schedule a consultation today.