Today I had my introduction to biofeedback class at Kaiser. I was diagnosed with migraines back in December/January and have struggled with my headaches. My prescription medicine works, but scares me since I sometimes get one of the side effects - jaw pain. Odd, I know. I checked and it's not anything serious, but it's not my favorite thing in the world. So I've still been doing a little relying on the Excedrin, which my liver will not thank me for in 30 years.
Kaiser offers this really cool program called biofeedback. Basically, they hook you up to all sorts of sensors that monitor your heart rate, your hand temperature, muscles in various parts of your body, etc. All of these measure different levels of stress, which can either be from the pain of your migraine or the cause of your migraine. You then learn to use your breathing and heart rate to bring some of those signs down... all while watching them on the screen. The general idea is that once you know how to bring yourself down, you'll be able to do it on the fly when you're anxious or stressed.
Today's session was just to teach us about what the class is and set up our first one on one with the nurse. I'm going next week and I can't wait!
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