Integrative Biofeedback as a concept in helping ADHD LD naturally

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Being in Control

The Role of Integrative Biofeedback in Controlling ADHD- a natural

choice.

by Jason Alster MSc

 

 

ProductWiki

" Being in Control: Natural Solutions for ADHD, Dyslexia, and Test

Anxiety " ( Video/book/biofeedback kit) by Jason Alster MSc ISBN

9659025130.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/9659025130/

and

" BEING IN CONTROL- Natural Techniques For Increasing Your Potential

And Creativity For Success In School " ( book as single item)

(ISBN-9659025114) " ( different ISBN)

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/9659025114/

 

 

Ritalin, the brand name for methylphenidate, is a central nervous

system stimulant that produces pharmacological effects similar to

those of cocaine and amphetamines. While many in the medical

establishment consider the drug an effective way to control ADHD,

others maintain that long-term medication is not the right approach

to treating the condition.

 

Jason Alster has been treating attention deficit disorder, with or

without hyperactivity with a drug-free method which he calls " Being

in Control. " He has written a book by the same name which gives you

natural techniques for increasing your child's potential and

creativity and for improving concentration and learning - all

without the use of drugs. Jason offers us an essay where he

describes how he came to develop this technique using his experience

as a biofeedback therapist.

 

I began treating children with ADHD quite unexpectedly since 1991. I

had been a biofeedback therapist as part of an anxiety clinic in a

mental day care setting in Tel Aviv, Israel. I had absolutely no

experience in treating children but was doing quite well with adults

suffering from stress disorders and teenagers who had test anxiety

and social phobias. The biofeedback clinic had just opened and each

type of patient was a new experience. With my medical-technological

training in neuro-electrodiagnostics and sleep/wake disorders I was

more into the neurological and psycho- physiological disorders while

a child psychologist working with me wanted to try biofeedback on

ADD. Then he had said that there was no treatment for this poorly

understood syndrome and the only remedy was Ritalin although reports

about EEG biofeedback and Joel Lubar's research with Neurofeedback

were just coming out.

 

After starting to treat a handful of children with biofeedback the

psychologist had to leave the unit and I had to take over his

patients. All I knew then about ADD was from a television program

showing a hyperactive child literally jump off the walls and I

worried about what this child would do to my biofeedback equipment.

I had absolutely no knowledge of learning disorders either. I

mention this lack of knowledge for a reason. I had to begin treating

ADD without a prior predisposition to what was written in the

literature. I had to see for myself what works, and fast.

 

So, on my very first ADD patient I preformed a regular biofeedback

stress baseline for anxiety. That is, I hooked the child up to

galvanic skin resistance sensors, muscle, and peripheral temperature

monitors, but not EEG. That is, I had to start to treat ADD with

what I knew and that is how to treat stress and anxiety. And I

lucked out. My very first patients' baseline EMG showed that the

more she sat quietly the EMG gained in amplitude. That is, sitting

quietly was stressful for her. Well, with relaxation training she

had improved her baseline in just 6 sessions and began to do better

at home and in school. This was not suppose to happen. Biofeedback

in ADD was suppose to be a stubborn neurological problem that takes

60 sessions to treat.

 

ADD is not supposed to be a stress disorder - but is it?

 

Well one of the problems with ADD is when was the diagnosis made.

Could the ADD be superimposed by anxiety, stress, and emotional

problems. How can one separate the ADD from an emotional picture. Am

I treating the anxiety in the child or the ADD. Well, I lucked out

again, one of my next patients was also a pretty 12 year old young

girl with ADD and a learning disorder as well as a behavioral

problem to boot. She was being expelled from school 20 days a month.

That is almost every day. Her mother approached me because she had

wanted a behavioral treatment before trying medication for the ADD.

I sat her down for a stress baseline too and this time she showed

that the GSR skin response increased in intensity the longer she sat

quietly. The same result in an ADD patient, with a different

physiological measure.

 

This was not suppose to happen, ADD is not supposed to be a stress

disorder. However, this patient had a diagnosis of ADD with

hypersensitivity, by a respected neurologist, since age 1. That is,

this was a true ADD patient. She also responded to relaxation

treatment in just 8 sessions. She was no longer being expelled from

school anymore. I was onto something here. I began to ask myself,

why am I successful in treating ADD so quickly and others are not.

Why is ADD supposed to be impossible to treat while there are

successes for other more serious chronic medical disorders like

cancer and hypertension.

 

I asked my patients, what about the biofeedback worked, and they

mentioned the relaxation effect. But ADD is an attention deficit

disorder not a stress disorder- or is it. A closer look then at the

histories of my patients began to show that up to 75% of the ADD

children had other medical problem accompanying the ADD. This could

be ear nose and throat problems, sleep problems, and respiratory

problems, skin problems, and digestive problems as well as school

anxiety issues. Could these associative medical problems exacerbate

the ADD. If so, then relaxation assisted biofeedback would be a

better treatment than medication. That is ADD rarely stands alone.

 

Like in the story of the Hobbit, the quest was on and my life's work

had been sealed in fate. But I felt that I had the magic bullet and

treasure map. What I had stumbled onto, without fully understanding

at the time, was an objective physiological measure of concentration

in ADD. The first ever. The other measure used in ADD to evaluate

Ritalin was the TOVA (test of variance) and this is not a

physiological measure and is open to subjective interpretation. Well

with this physiological objective measure, the GSR, I could also

determine what interventions work in ADD. I could search every

possible treatment used for relaxation and focusing and measure its

usefulness. The race was on.

 

When I began to take a look at the literature I found that very few

articles had been written at the time on the treatment of ADD with

Biofeedback. The few ones written mentioned that EMG biofeedback was

not successful in ADD and that just EEG biofeedback had shown some

results but the protocol had to be 60 biofeedback sessions. The work

suggested that ADD is a neurological disorder and therefore EEG

biofeedback would work by regulating EEG brain waves. With this

idea, sympathetic and peripheral biofeedback should be of no

significance in treating ADD children.

 

In my readings at the time a number of avenues were being pursued in

the treatment of ADD. Some of these were nutrition, and sensory

integration, guided imagery, art therapy, natural meditation, yoga,

Bach flower remedies, homeopathy, chiropractor, and aromatic oils.

In biofeedback, animated computer games were being introduced. I

could use each method and observe their effectiveness. I could

develop an integrated and holistic approach. I could match the

method to each child individually.

 

Well, one of the first things that I found that causes the GSR to

become stable in ADD children and adults is holding a soft or smooth

stone in your hand. Who would ever expect that this piece of nature

could compete with Ritalin. But it does. I got this idea from the

worry stones and beads of the Middle East.

 

Well in sensory Integration one is suppose to work on all the

senses - sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch. So, listening to the

sound of the waves of the seashell is relaxing for sense of sound,

and so is the sound of the metronome and so are the relaxing sounds

of nature. For touch, I use the soft stones especially egg shaped

ones or stones from a stream or the ocean. The best are the soap

stones and marble ones. A four-legged wooden mas-sager is also good.

For sight- staring at a fish tank, a scenic view, a water wheel. The

water wheels and colorful sand clocks are great because they can

time a relaxation period to two to three minutes. It turns out that

the secret to training in ADD is short relaxation exercises of about

two to four minutes each day for a period of about 2 months. For

smell and taste, the aromatic oils turned out to be great. I let the

child choose up to three oils that he can combine into one. The

combined oil has a better aroma to the client than the 3 oils

separately. Children like mainly citrus oils and these are relaxing,

uplifting, and also help concentration. It turns out that all the

relaxation and focusing exercises have the ability to cause the GSR

to be stable.

 

Body Armor

 

To work on the body armor and let the child relax his muscles even

in the classroom where he cannot do a relaxation exercise or

meditation, the seated yoga exercises work well. Some I picked and

choose from different sources like Tai chi, seated yoga, airline

stretching exercises, Jacobson progressive muscle relaxation, and

even Reiki. In the class, the child will often show the teacher the

book Being In Control and arrange that when needed the teacher will

help the child choose an exercise to do instead of just saying " be

quiet " which doesn't work with ADD children.

 

The relaxation and concentration exercises in children were really

helping and their physiological measures of concentration were

improved as well as their associated medical problems. These could

be a reduction in sleep problems, improved breathing, more strength

for sports and activities. The self, home, social, and behavioral

situation really improved.

 

Accelerated learning techniques

 

But - what about grades in school? Some children still did not

succeed after biofeedback. Well, what could be expected, if a child

had poor learning skills developed over the years due to the ADD. So

I concluded that if I was to help these children succeed I would

literally have to go back to school myself to find out how to teach

these children. What I discovered was that to empower children

behind in their learning I could teach them accelerated learning

techniques. These included associative memory techniques for

instance. Using associations between ideas and pictures to help

memory. I found that even people with poor memory could compensate.

If a child remembered only 6 out of 8 items he could increase this

to 15 out of 15 with associative memory. Then I used speed -reading

techniques. Children who read 60 words a minute and barely

remembered what they read the minute before could now read up to 250

words per minute and remember. To help children organize their

thoughts and copy the material during lectures I taught mind

mapping. To improve their cursive handwriting they were taught the

rules of handwriting. This was important to let the child's work

look more organized.

 

To pass exams they were told to keep them so that why they do not

pass can be evaluated. It turns out that many children do not keep

their exams and thus never know what the right answer is so that

they can make the same mistakes over again. The other main problem

that in many instances the child knew the answer but did directly

answer the question being asked, this especially when a question was

made up of a couple of parts. Children were told to circle the main

ideas of the question to help them better SEE the actual parts of

the question. What turned out was that each issue could be taught

during an hour session combined with a period of biofeedback

practice and relaxation mixed in. Problems that were there for years

were being given a solution within a short time. Parents were also

involved in each session to then also help at home if needed or at

least to recognize the problems and be supportive.

 

Visual learners

 

Well with all the talk about learning having to be fun and that many

children with ADD are visual learners, add to this the increased

role of graphics in our cyber world, I came to having each one of

the exercises shown in a graphic format. I had fun with this as I

like painting and photography myself and had an opportunity to add

all my resources into it. Furthermore, the graphic artists were

great, one had dyslexia herself, and really understood the idea. As

I had problems in cursive handwriting and math (I probably have some

math phobia myself) it was a real challenge to discover the roots of

correcting these two problems and condense these skills into one

graphic page one least common denominator.

 

Handwriting

 

For handwriting- it turns out that either you know the rules or you

don't. Follow the rules and the handwriting will improve. For

instance, keep all letters on the bottom line. Simple, but not

always done. In math, imagery skills, breaking problems down to

their smaller parts, attacking problems from different angles, and

estimation skills are needed to help succeed in all math.

 

Creativity

 

Finally, if I was asked my opinion about what is the major

difference between the new millennium and the previous one, I would

say it is a higher level of thinking. That is, increases in

creativity and thinking skills are here even for the youngsters.

Therefore, I added a page dedicated to creativity. The bottom line

there is don't be afraid to ask questions (be curious), be

spontaneous, appreciate diversity, let yourself be inspired, and

knowing that today- everyone has the ability to create. My book is a

step in the right direction. So to conclude, the best response I

have received about the book is from the children, they just love

it. It speaks to them. From the parents, it lets them be a part of

the picture too, and from the professionals – " these exercises are

what I have been practicing and preaching for years " .

 

Jason Alster, M.Sc. was born in Hartford, Connecticut and now

resides in Zichron Yacov, Israel with his family. There here set up

a biofeedback clinic and specializes in natural treatments for

learning and attention difficulties. In 1991, Jason received the

Carskadon Award for sleep research.

 

Jason's for natural solutions for ADHD

 

http://health.ADHD-Dyslexia-Israel/