How Biofeedback Helps You Have a Stress-Free Vacation

By: Gastro MD

Whether you’re traveling by land, sea, or air, travel can be stressful on the body and mind. Rather than returning from your vacation feeling happier, recharged, and refreshed, you end up feeling more mentally and physically exhausted than when you left. It’s even worse if your gastrointestinal health makes you a sensitive traveler and ruins your plans.

If you have GI issues that keep you from making the most of your vacations, the solution is not to stay home and give up traveling. The key to enjoying a stress-free holiday is to gain better control of your body and mind. In gastroenterology, biofeedback is used to help patients improve specific gastrointestinal issues by training how to guide their minds to a calmer state and control involuntary bodily functions.

How is Biofeedback Used for Gastrointestinal Issues?

We know that stress and anxiety can trigger digestive issues such as bloating, cramping, and inflammation. This is because stress causes physiological changes, affecting breathing, heart rate, blood pressure, and muscle tension. All these disruptions have an impact on the digestive system.

Biofeedback recognizes the powerful connection between the body and mind and how you can improve physical health by gaining better control of your mental state. That’s why the biofeedback approach typically combines monitoring equipment that measures the body’s functions and relaxation techniques that calm the mind and, consequently, the body.

The following are different biofeedback techniques being used in gastroenterology today:

● Electromyogram (EMG)

● Respiratory Biofeedback

● Galvanic Skin Response

● Thermal Biofeedback

● Blood Pressure Biofeedback

● Neurofeedback (Electroencephalography or EEG)

● Electromyography (EMG)

● Heart Rate Variability Biofeedback

Because biofeedback is a therapy that helps you learn to use your muscles and breathe correctly, relaxation techniques are also commonly used during biofeedback. This includes the following:

● Progressive Muscle Relaxation

● Guided Imagery

● Changing your breathing

● Repositioning your body

● Mindful Meditation

Through regular biofeedback sessions, you can learn to regulate functions such as muscle tension, blood pressure, heart rate, blood flow, and awareness of pain. All these bodily functions affect your digestive health. Therefore, biofeedback can address many gastrointestinal conditions, such as:

● Urinary Incontinence

○ Urge Incontinence (overactive bladder)

○ Stress Incontinence

○ Frequency Incontinence

● Fecal Incontinence (Bowel Incontinence)

○ Urge Incontinence

○ Passive Incontinence

○ Flatus Incontinence (gas)

● Chronic Constipation

○ Irritable Bowel Syndrome with Constipation

○ Dyssynergic Constipation (anismus)

○ Slow Transit Constipation

Don’t let digestive issues ruin your next vacation. A biofeedback therapist will help you gain greater self-awareness of your physiological functions, allowing you to manipulate and regulate your body. Each biofeedback session typically lasts 30 to 60 minutes. The number of sessions you need will depend on the severity of your conditions.

We can help treat your gastrointestinal issues, so you enjoy stress-free travel. At Gastro MD, Biofeedback is a significant part of our practice and one we recommend as a safe, effective, and painless treatment for your gastrointestinal issues.