Can Doctor’s Treatment Options Doom You to Ongoing Headaches?

I received a phone call this morning from a biofeedback therapist who is considering purchasing biofeedback devices to send home with her patients for in-home training. This is not a bad idea but as we talked further we began a more general discussion of the field of biofeedback as it relates to headaches and TMJ and clenching behavior. She told me she began doing biofeedback in the early 1980s and saw it’s incredible potential. She said that she initially felt “that biofeedback would take the medical world by storm” because it was so powerful and so helpful in accelerating treatment. Now, almost 30 years later she sees that this did not happen and that very few patients who could use biofeedback ever get the chance to receive it. She went on to say that she has worked in various medical settings and that is seems to her that several trends have kept biofeedback from being a more used medical treatment.

In her experience biofeedback is extensively used in rehabilitation treatment settings but not in acute treatment settings. She said that in a rehab situation, doctors can’t use as much medicine and all the staff know that good progress can be made when you invest in changing behavior. It does take time and effort whereas in acute treatment settings (emergency rooms, doctors offices, etc.) the staff are looking for quick fixes and don’t really think of treatment options that may take a little time and effort. They rely on drugs.

She went on to say that when she worked in acute settings, she saw a paradox where staff focuses on easy treatments like meds that don’t demand much effort from the patients and avoid treatments like biofeedback that could effectively solve problems over time. The concern is not losing patients but ensuring that they continue to be seen for treatment over many sessions.

Now, I am not easily shocked but this actually shocked me. Here is a medical professional that has worked with doctors and physical therapists in acute hospital settings and doctors offices essentially saying that she has observed other health professionals more interested in repeat business than curing patients. This, of course, was one of the central debating points for the national health legislation that is winding it’s way through the US Congress; the perception that the fee for service pricing structure drives up costs.

How widespread these practices are I don’t know, but if even a small percentage of health care professionals are thinking about repeat business rather than curing patients it is pretty scary. Particularly if that patient is you! What happens when you, with your terribly painful and upsetting headaches, end up with a doctor who likes repeated drug trials instead of more effective behavioral or biofeedback therapy?

This is one of the best arguments I know for taking charge of your own health and recovery. While it may be more time consuming to take charge of your health and learn alternative ways  to get rid of your headaches, you are responsible for yourself rather than having somebody else’s secondary gain determine your treatment options.

Don’t be afraid to ask your doctor for treatment options. Don’t be afraid to do research. If you have chronic headaches, do ask about biofeedback therapy for your headaches and look for information on how to treat your headaches by changing your behavior; you just might save yourself a lot of time, angst and money. And unfortunately trained biofeedback therapists are not available in every community in the US which is why we created our online Headache Free Blueprint training.