I am joining the online health care conversation with my first altMD Blog article on my area of expertise - Nervous System Functioning.  I look forward to hearing from you with your comments and questions or ideas.  Enjoy!

• Our presence in the world begins and ends with our ability to move. Yet as fundamental as movement is to our ability to function, scant attention is paid to the overall well-being of the circuitry that enables this process: the nervous system. The operation of the nervous system  can be greatly impacted by stress, yet working to improve nervous system functioning is rarely addressed within the health care delivery system. I believe this oversight is one of the principle reasons why the cost of health care delivery continues to rise at astronomical rates, far exceeding the general rate of inflation. If health care delivery prioritized treating nervous system wellness, the $312 billion dollar annual cost of treating, for example,  high blood pressure could be greatly reduced.
• Nervous system functioning can be monitored and the integrity of it's various components adjusted using a process commonly known as biofeedback. Skillfully applied biofeedback training can be used as a means to correct various nervous system operations through conscious regulation of their functioning. The cost of this procedure is a fraction of the cost of long-term pharmaceutical use, with none of the potentially hazardous side effects.

• I am currently involved in a hospital-based pain management program that features the use of biofeedback as a principle means to help wean chronic pain sufferers away from the long term use of prescription pain killers. These individuals are referred to as "failed cases" because the long term use of narcotics has reduced their ability to function, and has often led to problems in their personal and professional lives. When these individuals learn to successfully apply nervous system regulation using biofeedback, their need for potent pain narcotics goes way down, and they regain their ability to function. This is frequently greeted as a godsend to their friends and family members, who have had to cope with the erosion of their loved one into a permanently medicated state.

• As an unintended side benefit of the biofeedback these individuals receive, their blood pressures can often become significantly decreased, reducing the need for blood pressure medications. Many symptoms associated with anxiousness and chronic tension are also drastically reduced and sometimes disappear altogether, including elevated heart rate and chronic headaches for example. It's difficult not to notice in today's health care marketplace that if this procedure was prioritized  earlier in the health care delivery pipeline that immense amounts of money could be saved, and people would improve their ability to function.

For more information on biofeedback or to schedule an appointment, please call or email me.  I look forward to hearing from you!

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