Treating Eating Disorders With Biofeedback And Neurofeedback: What Does The Science Say?

Eating disorders are among the most difficult brain disorders to treat. Except for dementia, they have the highest mortality rates. Eating disorders are biologically based conditions that are aggravated by unfortunate personal experiences. No single kind of treatment, whether conventional or alternative, medical or psychotherapeutic, is guaranteed to cure an eating disorder. It takes the full arsenal of treatments and a lot of diligence and support to achieve remission. Biofeedback and neurofeedback are two more tools for reaching recovery.

What is biofeedback and how does it work?

Not everyone responds well to being urged to be calm, of course.

There are other biofeedback systems that measure electrical potential of the skin, muscle tension, and breathing rates. When these systems are put through clinical testing, they are usually found helpful in managing certain aspects of eating disorders:

• One system helped users regulate pressure in their stomach and esophagus to avoid rumination and regurgitation.
• Another system helped users avoid being “stressed out” by their conditions.
• A biofeedback method helped its user control food cravings.

It’s usually necessary to try several biofeedback systems to find one that works. They are not prohibitively expensive. Most biofeedback kits for home use cost a few hundred dollars. They do not cause any serious side effects. People who have eating disorders can use them to overcome specific unhealthy habits. They can reduce food cravings. They can blunt uncontrolled urges to eat. Biofeedback can ease anxiety. But it’s not particularly helpful for issues with body image or in relieving depression.

What is neurofeedback and how does it work?

Neurofeedback is a method of retraining the brain to make it easier to make healthy decisions. Unlike biofeedback, it is based on measuring activity in the brain not the rest of the body. Neurofeedback is based on the recognition that many people who have eating disorders have awareness of their condition They want to make the right choices. They lack the energy to overcome their urges and knowingly harm themselves. They suffer loss of self-esteem by failing to reach their own goals and fall into anxiety and depression.

Promoters of neurofeedback like to point out that the brain consists of about 100 billion neurons with intricate physical, electrical, and chemical connections. These connections can become disordered so that the brain is stimulated when it should be calm and calm when it should be stimulated. In a neurofeedback session, the eating disorders patient is hooked up to an EEG machine and given earbuds to listen to music. Occasionally the music will stop or skip, depending on a computer’s response to changes in the EEG.

That’s the experience for the eatin disorders patient. Go to a calm, quiet place and listen to music for half an hour. Then be better. Can this possibly make a difference in eating disorders?

EEG is a less precise tool. Neurofeedback has not been developed to the extent that it helps people feel better about their bodies. It doesn’t usually help with body image. It does help in developing in a more functional process of cognitive reappraisal that helps people with eating disorders control their behaviors regarding food and purging.

The bottom line

Biofeedback and neurofeedback aren’t as precise as some other methods of brain-based behavior modification, such as those involving transcutaneous electroneural stimulation (pulsating magnet therapy) and MRI-guided training. But they are beneficial, non-invasive, far less expensive than other brain-based treatments, and free of side effects.