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This Week's Experiment - #235 Finger Feedback
I am still working on my phobia of needles and injections. I had a couple of
biofeedback sessions this week and it was both interesting and enjoyable. I
have been practicing relaxation techniques. The idea is to use biofeedback
to help me control the extreme fear symptoms that I experience before, during
and after an injection or other needle procedure. Biofeedback is a very
interesting technique. Sensors measure your muscle tension at several
points, hand temperature, and skin conductivity. I begin by relaxing to get
all of the levels nice and low. Then they give a stimulus, such as telling
me to imagine that I am in the doctor's office to get an injection. That
causes the levels to jump, which produces a tone. As I relax again, the tone
changes and finally disappears. During one session, I talked with Dr. Craggs
of Mayo Clinic about a biofeedback experiment that you could do at home.
This is one that he suggested. You will need:
a thermometer that you would use to take your temperature if you were sick.
This can be an oral thermometer or one of the strips that you put on your
forehead. You need one that you can hold in your fingers, so the kind that
you stick into your ear probably might not work.
Sit down in a quiet place and hold the bulb of the thermometer between your
finger and thumb. Wait a couple of minutes and check to see what the
temperature is. Write that down. Now hold the thermometer again, in the
same way. Close your eyes and begin to relax. Start with your hands and
focus on having them become limp, heavy and warm. When you feel that your
hands are relaxed, work on relaxing your forearms, then your upper arms and
then your neck and shoulders. As you relax more and more, your hands should
begin to feel very heavy and warm. When you reach this point, check the
thermometer again. It should be a little warmer. It may just be half a
degree, but it also may be two or three degrees warmer.
What is going on? There is not anything magical or mystical about this. As
you relax, more blood flows through the vessels near the skin and so your
hands get warmer. The more you practice, the easier it gets to relax and
raise the temperature of your hands. My goal is to reach the point where I
can relax when I go to the doctor's office, instead of tensing up in panic.
Along the way, I am enjoying learning more about how the human body works.
By the way, the biofeedback equipment is very similar to the devices used for
lie detectors. Just as the indicators jump when I even think about getting
an injection, they would also jump if I thought about telling a lie. This
also explains why lie detector results are not used in court. Just as I hope
to learn to control relaxation in medical situations, a person could learn to
control some of the response to questioning. For now, I just have to be sure
that my wife does not sneak into a session to ask me about who ate the last
of the ice cream.
From Robert Krampf's Science Education Company
PO Box 60982
Jacksonville, FL 32236-0982
904-388-6381
krampf@aol.com
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