Neurofeedback helps regulate clusters of symptoms. From Healing Young Brains. Robert Hill, Ph.D., Eduardo castro, M.D.
“Early in the development f neurofeeback, several practitioners proposed the idea of global dysregulation. The idea behind his theory is that if brainwaves are dysregulated, there is a strong likelihood of a cluster of symptoms rather than just a single problem. This made sense because seldom will you find anyone with just one symptom related to any disorder. For example, a child with ADHD is likely to have sleep problems, low self-esteem, depression, and perhaps angry outbursts. Another child with the same diagnosis may show generalized irritability, defiance toward authority, and perhaps a tic disorder, and so there is usually a cluster of symptoms, not just a single problem. Practitioners observed that when they started to regulate the ADHD brain, other symptoms began to disappear. For example, not only did the child become more focused, but sleep also improved, tics disappeared, and the child became much easier to work with. In addition, therapists noticed that self-esteem improved, attitude brightened, and depression dissolved. We observed that symptoms in the cluster improved in practically every disorder we treated with neurofeedback. This reinforced the idea of global dysregulation and that various symptoms cluster with other problems; when you regulate one symptom, the others improve.
Allopathic medicine generally focuses on the primary complaint and tries to ameliorate the single problem with a treatment modality such as medication. Medications, however successful, generally carry unwanted side effects. Often a patient will have one drug to treat a single problem and two other drugs to treat the side effects of the first drug. Neurofeedback, on the other hand, seldom, if ever, has unwanted side effecs. In fact, the effects of neurofeedback are generally the amelioration of additional symptoms in the cluster. If the training session does cause an unwanted side effect such as a headache or a sleepless night, it can be remedied in a single neurofeedback session. Many physicians we work with complain that their patients come in with a laundry list of problems; how do you treat five or ten problems at once? In neurofeedback, we expect multiple symptoms with every problem and so this is not a concern. We target the primary problem while charting the other problems in the cluster, knowing that we are addressing more than a single symptom. We recognize that symptoms cluster rater than come in one nice little package with one single complaint.”