Pilot study employing heart rate variability biofeedback training to decrease anxiety in patients with eating disorders


Author: Barbara Scolnick 1*, David I Mostofsky 1 and Robert J Keane 2

Affiliation: * Corresponding author:	 Barbara Scolnick scolnick@bu.edu  Author Affiliations 1 Department of Psychology, Boston University, 64 Cummington Street, Boston, MA 02215, USA  2 Clinical Operations, Walden Behavioral Care, 9 Hope Avenue, Waltham, MA 024533-2711, USA
Conference/Journal: Journal of Eating Disorders
Date published: 2014
Other:
 Volume ID: 2   ,  Pages: 17   ,  Special Notes: doi:10.1186/2050-2974-2-17   ,  Word Count: 70  
    Heart rate variability (HRV) biofeedback, a technique which encourages slow meditative breathing, was offered to 25 in-patients with various eating disorder diagnoses-anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa and binge eating disorder. We found that this modality had no serious side effects, and was subjectively useful to most participants. An enhanced ability to generate highly coherent HRV patterns in patients with recent onset anorexia nervosa was observed.



full article: http://www.jeatdisord.com/content/2/1/17