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CONTACT:Gary Ames, Neurofeedback PractitionerAlert Focus.comPhone: 610.668.3223Phone: 610.864.8036Email: [email protected] Site: www.AlertFocus.com

Can You Learn Away Migraine Headaches? America’s 17 million migraine sufferers are women by 3 to 1. And suffer they do. Migraine headaches often strike during the teenage years and continue late into the 40s. There are usually regular episodes of nauseating headaches. Excruciating headaches that tend to throb on one part of the head for hours or days. This is often accompanied with sensitivity to light or sound. Migraine headaches often reach the maximum on a 10-point pain scale, where 10 is the most pain you can imagine. Super bowl fans may recall that in 1998, Terrell Davis of the Denver Broncos retreated to the locker room in the 2nd quarter of Super bowl XXXII due to a migraine headache. Thanks to medication, he returned after half-time to win MVP. Now there is growing clinical evidence that a new form of biofeedback can simply make all the symptoms of migraines go away for good. This is not the hand temperature biofeedback, where long hours of focusing on raising the mercury has a 50% success rate. The new biofeedback method works on the central nervous system. And it works for 94% of those who try it. An upcoming article in the Journal of Neurotherapy will be entitled “My Last 100 Migraine Patients,” by Jeffery Carmen a psychologist in upstate New York. In the article Dr. Carmen documents that 94 of his last 100 migraine patients achieved significant relief from their migraine symptoms. Gary Ames, is a psychologist near Philadelphia and neurofeedback practioner, he describes the success threshold as at least halving the volume of pain which is a “combination of intensity, frequency, and duration”. Most often all migraine symptoms just go away completely. Mr. Ames explains, “This cannot be called a cure because there is a genetic component to the disorder. However, complete symptom relief is the most likely outcome.” In the form of biofeedback featured in the article, all training consists of watching a movie. Any movie. “It is best for it to be emotionally engaging. You want to draw the person in and focus their attention,” says Dr. Carmen. The biofeedback comes from wearing a special sensor that reads a kind of forehead temperature. A device displays the reading and is also connected to a DVD player. While the temperature goes up, forehead blood perfusion to the prefrontal cortex is high and the movie stays on. When the temperature goes down, the movie stops. Then the trainee watches the temperature until the target is reached and the movie starts up again. Keeping the temperature up is a bit exhausting. It feels like work to keep the blood flowing to your frontal cortex. “It is like strength training for the brain,” says Gary Ames, a Bala Cynwyd trainer specializing in those with migraine headaches. “With greater strength in the frontal cortex, you become able to push through the cause of the headache, the so-called brain stem-trigeminal nerve migraine generator. Plus, there are plenty of side benefits like better sleep, less mental chatter, and greater powers of concentration.” This method doesn’t just work on easy cases. Dr. Dale Patterson of Williamstown, NJ recalled one patient who called to cancel her regular appointment because her migraines were too severe. She could not drive. “And I didn’t want her driving with a migraine at a maximum severity.” But she got a friend to drive her and she kept her appointment. Within 20 minutes the level 10 headache was zero. This had never happened to her before. After more training sessions, she no longer got migraine headaches. There is no experience of training regrets from biofeedback as there are regrets with drugs or surgery. “Nobody wants to go back to the way they were before,” says Dr. Carmen. “And best of all, when it works, it seems to work for good.” Gary Ames uses a combination of modern biofeedback and neurofeedback techniques to end migraine pain for good.You may reach him at 610.668.3223 or read more at www.AlertFocus.com. ###

[Train Away Migraines.]