YUP . . . . thats what we are working on …
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have you used the ices devices?
how would you compare efficacy of ices pemf and photobiomodulation?
I find this discussion to be very interesting. I do not have much to contribute since this is outside my area of expertise, but I can say that several dozen clinicians have reported to me that the synergistic effects between ICES-PEMF and photobiomodulation therapy are quite impressive. And I do not see any theoretical reason why they would interfere in a negative way.
I am experimenting with these types of combined therapies on myself.
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Well . . . @prometheus give me a couple months. I will tell you my experience. I have a Masters in Clinical Research, so its not just playing around. @Bob Putting me in contact with those practitioners will be very helpful to inform the type of questions we want to answer. Since I have designed the LIGHT HELMET and manufacture it, there are not many in circulation to date. I wanted more data before they are sold, released or distributed. I also use intranasal pbmt. I have a bunch of videos up on my FACEBOOK and Instagram account. @my_brain_matters
I guess I was not clear, sorry, when I say I am experimenting with it, I mean that I am building prototypes and testing them on myself. I am not working with any clinicians yet, and I am not planning on a formal study or product development in this area at this time. I have done a fair amount of work with IR electro-optics, and have contributed to several medical device designs using IR, so I can use this experience to combine NIR with ICES-PEMF directly. There are reportedly synergistic effects; clinicians note that their observed outcomes are considerably better when they combine ICES-PEMF and NIR/LLLT, and my questions, in addition to the basic feasibility and effectiveness of this combined approach, also include pulse synchronization effects and efficiencies that can be gained by applying the diode light in different ways. I do have some experience with this type of design work, for example, I was able to increase the IR illumination of one of the pill-cam devices by a factor of 7x, which enabled a new class of NIR spectroscopy pill-cams to be developed about 8 or 9 years ago. I suspect that the mechanisms of action of NIR may allow significant improvements in system efficiency and effectiveness for these therapeutic applications. But I would be designing outside the traditionally-held understanding of the NIR mechanisms of action. I could be wrong, but I will experiment with it to see what I can find. It is probably pretty apparent by now that my type of research is more along the lines of electrical engineering and biophysics rather than clinical testing. A lot of people do not seem to realize that: I am not a clinical scientist, I design and optimize the tools, but I do not practice clinical medicine. I just work with many people who do.
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Super Awesome… I’m not a medical physicist, but my team member is… Look up Farzad Salehpour on researchgate. He is an expert in transcranial PBMT. @Bob I am going to NYC this month to visit https://soterixmedical.com/research/nirsit
Is this the style of technology you are familiar with??? This cost @$44K. Drake University has a Biopac NIRS for @$12K. I’m planning to look at changes in prefrontal cortex oxygen changes and mitochondrial function using NIRS + tPBMT. I could do PEMF also, both separate and combined. Plus BrainGauge changes. Your thoughts please?
I have been thinking about this technology (NIR) separately from the groups who have been developing it. I am not doing any spectral work with NIR right now, just light sources for tissue stimulation. The technology I have worked with in the past is used in an ingestible “pill” that uses low-angle IR diffraction to determine cell nuclear diameter, which correlates with mitotic states and allows the estimation of the distribution of cells with unusually high or otherwise atypical division, suggesting a pathology. This is not my current interest. I am trying to identify synergies between IR and PEMF for tissue stimulation.
@Bob @Mark @DrJOE and others…
I wonder if you could give more comprehensive feedback and thoughts on the use of pemf and/or pbmt transcranially for body pain. I recall that you did some transcranial pemf after your last stroke, but the results were indeterminate. But didn’t your hip pain vanish as a result of your last stroke, which supports the notion that the cause of body pain is often in the brain and may be treatable there? Also there’s common feedback from people with missing limbs that they still feel phantom pain there.
My hip pain did vanish after my second stroke, though it has been creeping back over the months. This indicates to me that it is clearly involving some mis-wiring in the brain. This phenomenon was described about a century ago, following WWI, when they discovered quite by accident that focal lesions to the brain in the region of the central sulcus could eliminate certain types of pain resulting from traumatic battle wounds. For several decades, until about the 1960’s, a clinical approach for chronic pain included surgical lesioning of the brain. This was more or less effective, but was discredited in the 1960’s, on a questionable scientific basis, because the technique did work in many cases if properly performed. Mark Tommerdahl knows a lot more about this than I do. I have done only limited experiments using PEMF on my own brain, but clearly in my case, some of my brain is from some sort of mis-wiring in my brain, and is resistant to treatment when done only at the location of the pain. I am still actively working on this.
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I am now convinced my issue is brain related like lesions etc which seems to be the cause of many conditions otherwise labeled as MS, tbi, or ptsd. The first 4 months I used M1 on my body esp solar plexus or sitting on coils due to fact that head use seemed to be too much even at low settings as it caused head pressure and trigger point pain. I definitely felt a full body tremoring stimulation from body use and also some benefits, but progress was very slow or even stalled out on core symptoms of paresthesia, stiffness, fatigue, brain fog, etc, so I switched to head use for last 2-3 weeks. I started out using similar protocol to the tbi study with front/back of head coil config, theta protocol setting, and intensity 3. After a few days, I felt things were progressing…less head pressure, some nascent symptom relief, some trauma discharging, etc. So I raised intensity to 5 and now trying 7 after feeling more encouraged. I notice I am able to speak and communicate more easily and effectively, a definite functional brain improvement although I don’t have access to a measuring device like the brain guage. It’s interesting that the brain has no specific pain receptors so we can only feel it indirectly like foggy sensation. A headache is not a brain ache but rather a relayed sensation of pain.
Any thoughts or feedback are welcome…
How many hours a day did you use it on head? Did you use it at night?
I’ve been reluctant to place it on my head, but thinking it might be worth a try. I’ve got symptoms of brain fog (a recent change, sometimes clearly related to foods I’ve eaten) as well as more longstanding confusion, which I would love to address if I can do so safely. I know this is all experimental.
I’ve used it during the day with no problems, and at night with mixed results. (some sleep disturbance, strange dreams, but also a few nights where I just slept very well).
I’ve been using it on lower back, but also on my shoulder, and it’s possible that when I sleep some effect has reached the brain due to my posture of having my head near my scrunched shoulder.
Hours per day varies as well as nighttime use based simply on what my system tells me is working so I experiment and adjust. The main thing I keep in mind is overcharging or oversaturation which makes me feel jittery or unstable. So then I back off completely until recovering homeostasis, and then hook up again… IT’s really just common sense. We are inducing biologically effective current into tissues, which I would call healing power, and naturally only so much can be assimilated at a time and excess becomes counterproductive. I can assimilate more now then when started, so it’s a growth process. I’m not afraid to use on my head anymore so that is also a learning process. The TBI study which can be searched on this site gives me peace of mind.
One other thing I would say is that so called negative reactions, other than oversaturation, are not necessarily negative as I wrote in a topic on this site. Inflammation is totally natural and necessary phenomena in healing as the body is marshalling its resources at the site of injury. I have had many such disturbing symptoms over the past couple weeks as you relate. I labeled that as trauma discharge in my post. It could also be called healing crisis as the body works its magic. A fever for example is a perfect example of the body working it’s magic to heal itself. With conservative use of duration and intensity plus low frequency like theta, we can easily modulate the healing at a tolerable rate.
We are so fortunate to have such a device that gives us the opportunity to take responsibility for our own health and become independent of the medical mafia.
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I am very glad to hear you are getting good results by using it so intelligently and thoughtfully. I find, especially on my head, it can be very helpful, but it is a powerful tool, so caution is well advised. But I have similar experiences and our clinical study also reported the same: some initial negative reactions to the use on the head, but with careful application, these seem to give way after some time (a few days or a week or so) to more beneficial reactions.
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My brain is improving greatly. There are things which amaze me. I still don’t have much social anxiety, which I had all my life. I also still like fruits and vegetables and spices, which I never really liked, so the food preference changes stuck. I am not sure how much is the ICES and how much is that I have been working on brain plasticity. For my understanding of brain plasticity, I think it is both. I know that I have watched TEDTalks where they used TMS to help stroke patients recover and they showed the new neuronal pathways growing.
It has been exciting. I am learning science and nutrition and I find that I am starting to have concepts connect. I have been learning from the Whole Food Plant-Based and Keto and Paleo directions already, but I added in science teachings and it has transformed my mind. I did not have a science background. I was telling someone that with my brain problems, I can’t even remember having ever taken biology. I don’t have any recollection of a teacher or a classroom, but as I keep learning the topics, I now have a sense of de ja vu and I think I will eventually remember taking it. I can’t even explain it. I ended up learning all kinds of ways to avoid glutamate storms, for instance and it is as if it is all starting to click.
I will confess that I haven’t tested it out with the Brain Gage again yet. I took time away from that because I had a performance anxiety and I didn’t want to get discouraged. I had expected some of the scores to pop up like they did in the study, but it didn’t happen that way. But my brain is so much stronger and I am understanding things, which I never understood in my whole life. Again, that could be the brain plasticity or the ICES or both working together or that I am actively pursuing hard topics, like science, nutrition and cooking, so I am working my brain out more.
No matter what, it is all getting better, not worse.
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I have taken some time also away from the ICES. I ended up going back to it the other day when I tweaked my knee and was afraid I might have trouble walking, but the pain didn’t last at all.
I also ended up at the Corticalmetrics blog through Lysine. I was watching an Amoeba Sisters animated video on Protein Folding and I wanted to know if Homocysteine was involved in the denaturing of proteins (Yes, I am almost reaching the point that I can use words like denaturing and prions, etc.) I went to a PubMed article and there was one sentence about Homocysteine and Lysine and I Googled it and got to a blog entry talking about Lysine and Arginine and how HSV-1 needs an Arginine-rich environment and it was about the theory that HSV-1 might be involved in Alzheimer’s because so many of the elderly people have HSV-1. It was interesting to read about it. I know that a lot of you science people may know all of it, but I am a non-science person who has started knowing so much more of the language. I can type all of this without re-looking it up after only reading it once and I do know that the more I learn, the easier it is to learn. It is easier for me to remember things like that Homocysteine increases Glutamate, for instance, even though I was reading about that months ago.
I may not pass the Brain Gauge tests but my brain is getting so much stronger and I am happy with that.
@bettereveryday, interesting you mention this. I just had three weeks ago a HSV-1 resurgence the morning after eating a half pound of pecans. I could barely swallow, it was hard to talk, and my gum was extremely swollen. I spoke with the nurse of my naturopathic doctor and she knew immediately it was HSV-1 after eating the nuts causing large increase of l-argnine. She recommended I take l-lysine as well as a couple other items. HSV-1 symptoms went away quickly. BTW, I have been tracking your posts since around the start of the forum and have felt like I can see your brain getting sharper in your posts. Thanks for sharing your journey. It is inspiring.