Headaches

It is mystifying why the efficacy of biofeedback for headaches is not widely recognized, because this has been the case for a very long time. The answer may simply be that over time headaches have become more and more a medical issue, and medical docs tend to resort to their own methods, which in this case is medication. But if the medications worked well, why would we then still have some 30 million migraine sufferers in this country? The medical remedy is clearly not adequate.

So let us spread the good news: Biofeedback and Neurofeedback are excellent remedies for both what are called "tension" headaches and for migraines. In fact, treating migraines is not substantially more difficult, and it is not significantly less effective, than treating ordinary tension headaches. What this is really saying, of course, is that nearly every person is already carrying the remedy for their own headaches with them. Their nervous systems simply need to be trained toward better self-regulation.

We can go further. Clinical success in dealing with migraines is greater for Neurofeedback than for almost all other conditions in our own experience. And we can go further still. Most people who seek out Neurofeedback for migraine are not those who have an occasional migraine. These people tend to make do with whatever medical remedies are available. We tend to see clinically those who have had a debilitating migraine history for many years, and they finally found their way to our office. And yet the Neurofeedback training is efficacious for such people.

Again it needs to be emphasized that anyone who has suffered such a debilitating illness for so many years is no longer just dealing with migraines. Neurofeedback can also be helpful with any trauma aspect of their life histories. Surprisingly, many migraineurs are not laid low even by the long-term siege of migraines. Get rid of their migraines, and they are back into their lives. Such resilience is remarkable. It goes together with an incredible capacity for forgetting one's migraines. No sooner is the migraine gone than it is forgotten.

In the event that there should be a breakthrough migraine now and then even after the Neurofeedback training series is completed, the client may choose to have a booster session along the way, or else avail themselves of Neurofeedback home remedies.

One of the newer approaches just involves the training of cortex to a higher level of activation. This tends to abort an incipient migraine. One is reminded of research with cluster headaches showing that breathing pure oxygen can abort the headache. Training the cortex to higher operating temperature may be accomplishing the same thing: making more oxygen available to the pre-frontal circuitry, sufficient to abort the migraine mechanism.

Our objective, of course, is not merely to abort migraines as they are coming on, but to get rid of them entirely. With modest attention to lifestyle issues and risk factors, this should be achievable with Neurofeedback for the vast majority of migraine sufferers. - Siegfried Othmer, PhD