Biofeedback devices- anyone have any experience of these / can recommend any products?

Question

Biofeedback devices- anyone have any experience of these / can recommend any products?

Answer 1

I guess it really boils down to how much you want to spend (ie. decent set ups for some of the moderately priced items run in the thousands).  However, there are 2 cheap ones which definitely are worth using since they have direct health applications.

The first are temperature biofeedback systems.  You basically can just buy a thermometer to get a system set up.  The theory is that if your body/sympathetic nervous system is relaxed (the goal of biofeedback), it causes your arterioles to dilate, which makes more blood come to the skin.  As more blood comes to the skin, skin temp raises, hence a thermometer guides you in improving your health.

The second is to buy a hand held SC/GSR/Skin conductance/Galvanic Skin response machine.  The ones I had/used are about 10 years old so they're no longer commercially available, but if you google it plenty of other ones exist too.  These also measure excess sympathetic nervous system activity/stress but it's more fun to get them to shift to the ideal signal than with temperature biofeedback, since it requires you to do a lot of stuff in your mind as well.

Hope that helps!