The clinical utility of tracking hand skin temperature before and after daily relaxation practice in individuals with Chronic Sympathetic Activation

Dysfunction in the autonomic nervous system (ANS) has been long considered as a significant factor in the development of many disorders that involve the end-organs of the autonomic nervous system. For example, in 1927, Wolf and Thomas wrote a paper entitled “Gastroduodenal ulcers and autonomic balance” in the Archives of Neurology and Psychiatry. To this day, research continues in the relationship between autonomic function and irritable bowel syndrome (Orr et al., 2000) and abdominal pain Sowder (2007). Work on the relationship between the ANS, psychological profile and other diseases and disorders continues (Panzer & Viljoen, 2003, Thayer & Brosschot, 2005). A relationship between autonomic dysfunction and disorders ranging from panic disorder (Friedman & Thayer, 1998) to cardiovascular disease (Recordati, 2003) has been shown. An excellent review of the relationship between autonomic dysfunction and a variety of clinical disorders, including chronic orthostatic intolerance, essential hypertension, panic disorder, congestive heart failure, and chronic fatigue syndrome is provided in a published NIH symposium entitled “Dysautonomias: Clinical Disorders of the Autonomic Nervous System”. Further, an interesting evolutionary displacement model that purports to explain why many diseases reflect dysfunctions of autonomic balance, was published by Yun et. al. (2004) in Medical Hypotheses.