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Zeuzzz
10th December 2009, 06:40 PM
Whats peoples thoughts on Biofeefdback?

What are its limits and what biofeedback type techniques have good supporting evidence?

wiki http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biofeedback

http://www.7hz.com/articles/1overview.html
What Is Biofeedback?

Simply put, biofeedback is a means for gaining control of our body processes to increase relaxation, relieve pain, and develop healthier, more comfortable life patterns.

Biofeedback gives us information about ourselves by means of external instruments. Using a thermometer to take our temperature is a common kind of biofeedback. Clinical biofeedback follows the same principle, using specialized instruments to monitor various physiological processes as they occur. Moving graphs on a computer screen and audio tones that go up and down "reflect" changes as they occur in the body system being measured.

Biofeedback training familiarizes us with the activity in our various body systems so we may learn to control this activity to relieve stress and improve health. Trying to change physiological activity without biofeedback is like playing darts while blindfolded - we can't see whether we are hitting the mark or not. Biofeedback lets us know precisely when we are changing our physiologies in the desired direction.

Biofeedback is not a treatment. Rather, biofeedback training is an educational process for learning specialized mind/body skills. Learning to recognize physiological responses and alter them is not unlike learning how to play the piano or tennis - it requires practice. Through practice, we become familiar with our own unique psychophysiological patterns and responses to stress, and learn to control them rather than having them control us.


And I have read Bruce Liptons book and recently saw this review/overview of the material therein.

http://www.wholescience.net/?p=339
Epigenetics: the mind’s control above your genes

dnalinksWhat if your mind was the ‘master controller’ of your body? What if you were no longer a victim of your genetic makeup, but your environment had the ability to change your genetic DNA?

Bruce Lipton, author of the book ‘The Biology of Belief’, is uncovering a controversial new science of health termed ‘epigenetics’- which literally means ‘control above or over the genes’.

For years we have understood that our DNA is a fixed ‘code’ in a sense for who we are- the behaviours we are likely to adopt, and the health that we attract.

We often become a victim to our genes, believing that we have no influence to change a health condition or behaviour as ‘its in our genes’. Genes then became something we thought of as a ‘program’, fixed and deterministic in its shaping of our evolution.

In the last decade, Lipton notes that epigenetic research has discovered that DNA blueprints are not fixed at birth. Rather, it is our environment that controls the activity of the genes. This means our physical, emotional and mental health influences the genes, not the other way around!

This, of course, shifts control onto the individual- and provides opportunities to create your health the way you want it. In fact, Lipton goes on further to say that our genes can be profoundly influenced by our beliefs- the way that we respond to our environment.

Therefore, positive or negative responses to our environment not only has an effect on our body, but also at the level of our DNA. Lipton states:

“This breakthrough in biology is fundamental in all healing for it recognizes that when we change our perception or beliefs we send totally different messages to our cells and reprogram their expression. The new-biology reveals why people can have spontaneous remissions or recover from injuries deemed to be permanent disabilities.”

Our thoughts, it seems, are the ‘writer’, or ‘author’ of our DNA- of the blueprint that guides our lives.

If this is true, what DNA ’story’ would you like to create?

Zeuzzz
10th December 2009, 06:51 PM
No sorry it was dawson church's "the genie in your genes" not Bruce Lipton. Similar books though.

Gregoire
21st May 2010, 04:05 PM
Still no response?

Shadowdweller
21st May 2010, 05:41 PM
As defined above? Pure woo, based on misrepresentation of epigenetics.

Zeuzzz
26th May 2010, 05:07 PM
As defined above? Pure woo, based on misrepresentation of epigenetics.


:gnome:

Avoid the subject why dont you :rolleyes:

tensordyne
26th May 2010, 05:26 PM
Seriously, I have no idea where this thread is going. Zeuzzz, why the long two quotes at the beginning? Biofeedback as some control mechanism for yourself, maybe a slight bit (such as the studies of monks meditating shows marked changes in brains under CT-scans and the like), but changing your own genes sounds pretty preposterous. Make it a $10 million dollar challenge for someone to just sit somewhere and change their own genes, no hidden radiation sources allowed.

Feedback mechanisms in biology though are of course very well-known to both biologists and chemists. In a way, evolution is just a massive biological feedback system. I don't know, the OP looks like this is going into crazy-land Zeuzzz.

You asked for my opinion and there it is.

Zeuzzz
26th May 2010, 05:41 PM
You asked for my opinion and there it is.


Respected.

Feedback mechanisms in biology though are of course very well-known to both biologists and chemists. In a way, evolution is just a massive biological feedback system.


Yes in a way it is.

I don't know, the OP looks like this is going into crazy-land Zeuzzz.


Crazy land? Na, been there, got out quickly. People need to understand that if I post something here it does not necisarily mean i agree with it, half the time I want to see it disproved.

Seriously, I have no idea where this thread is going. Zeuzzz, why the long two quotes at the beginning? Biofeedback as some control mechanism for yourself, maybe a slight bit (such as the studies of monks meditating shows marked changes in brains under CT-scans and the like), but changing your own genes sounds pretty preposterous.


It seems that you change your gene structure very commonly via epigenetics that works due to the biological mechanisms dictated, not solely to but a large extent, by your state of mind and thoughts.

Randy Jirtle has discovered that he could make Agouti mice produce normal healthy young, by changing the expression of thier genes, and without making any chages to the mouses DNA, by feeding them methyl groups. These molecule clusters are able to inhibit the expression of genes, and sure enough, the methyl groups eventually worked their way through the mothers metabolism to attatch to the Agouti genes of the developing embryos.

DNA Is Not Destiny - Discover magazine article http://discovermagazine.com/2006/nov/cover

The new science of epigenetics rewrites the rules of disease, heredity, and identity. [.....]

"It was a little eerie and a little scary to see how something as subtle as a nutritional change in the pregnant mother rat could have such a dramatic impact on the gene expression of the baby," Jirtle says. "The results showed how important epigenetic changes could be."


My post from another thread, that was misguided, may still very well apply to this one: http://forums.randi.org/showpost.php?p=4036670&postcount=16