The American Pain Foundation and
the Veterans of Foreign Wars of the United States have explored what they term the personality of pain, accentuating
the individual nature of pain perception and the many complex variables that
affect the outcome of pain management treatments and therapies. Research supports the viewpoint that
pain perception is a function of multiple brain processes that sense the
location and extent of damage and evaluate the pain signal in light of that
person's past experiences, psychological predisposition, and any associated
trauma. It is the emotional center
of the brain that assigns a severity level to the pain, so that negative
emotions like anxiety, depression, and stress response can exaggerate the pain
experience. These CAM therapies can include peripheral and EEG biofeedback,
acupuncture, chiropractic, hypnosis, aqua-therapy, and the more traditional
physical and occupational therapies. The Biofeedback modalities found to be
most efficacious for comprehensive pain management are HRV
and EEG Biofeedback.
Heart Rate Variability Biofeedback for Chronic Pain
EEG Biofeedback (Neurofeedback) for Chronic Pain
Coupling
traditional medical interventions with non-invasive,
non-pharmacological behavioral medicine as a means to correct
underlying dysfunctional psycho-physiological magnifiers of pain
results in a highly efficacious, multi-modal approach to complex
chronic pain syndromes.
|
|