Anti-Aging Information

Type A behavior, with its screw-your-competitor, sell-your-own-mother mentality, may have been the preferred emotional behavior of the eighties, but as the millennium approaches, society is hopefully getting away from this self-destructive, self-indulgent, stress-creating behavior. Or at least some of us are trying. Can you change type A behavior? Studies have shown that people who participate in a regular exercise program can reduce their type A tendencies.

Many of the techniques employed with cardiac rehabilitation patients are applicable for specific stress management. One method is biofeed-back-assisted relaxation training. Contrary to what too many people believe, you can control many of your so-called autonomic (or automatic) physiological responses to outside stimuli. In other words, you have the power to control not only voluntary behavior but also what has been considered to be involuntary behavior. Some of these involuntary behaviors include blood pressure, heartbeat, and galvanic skin response (GSR). Heightened levels of one or more of these can indicate stress. The theory isand it appears to bear outthat if you can control these, you are in fact reducing the effects, such as heart disease, that a stressful life could be wreaking upon your body.

The problem is that many cardiac patients don't recognize when they're stressed out. For them, their stress baseline is much higher than that of othersthat is, to them a high level of stress is normal. They may think relaxation, but their bodies are reacting otherwise.

Sound familiar?

Biofeedback employs modern learning techniques to teach the brain how to recognize and control even tiny amounts of change in heart rate, blood pressure, skin temperature, and GSR. The way biofeedback works is fairly simple. The body undergoes certain physiological changes in the body owing to stress. Two good examples are rising blood pressure and sweaty palms. Biofeedback trains you to recognize these responses as an indication of an increase in stress (or tension) and to use one of many relaxation techniques to reduce it.