Flux Health Forum

How to use PEMF for intense Neuropatic Pain?

Pain and Inflammation
#1

Hello all,

My goal with this post is to request help on how to use PEMF to deal with neuropathic pain.

My wife has been diagnosed with complex regional pain syndrome (CRPS).

It’s hard to convey in words the meaning of this diagnosis.

If you look it up, you’ll see that CRPS is also known as “the suicide disease” and as the most painful disease – causing pain that’s worse than cancer, childbirth or even a cold blooded finger amputation.

Can it really be that bad?

Here’s less than 2 minutes of video that really put things in perspective:

In certain cases, amputation of the affected limbs is even considered.

Yes, it’s that bad.

Worse yet, contrary to other painful diseases, strong opioids tend to make the pain worse.

Therefore, it’s easy to see from where CRPS gets its “suicide disease” nickname.

As you may imagine, all our family resources in terms of time, money and energy are being diverted to deal with this disease and prevent it from developing further.

Now, thankfully, my wife isn’t suffering from the maximum amount of pain that CRPS is able to generate.

However, her current pain level is high enough to keep her from moving around.

She gets up just to go to the bathroom and to go to the Doctor.

We’ve been using the M1 (Protocol: Omni8; Strength: 9) since 21-March-2019.

At first, we’ve put one coil over each foot: it didn’t work. There was no significant relief.

So, we’ve been using two coils side by side over a single foot for a few hours. Then, she’ll switch to the other foot.

This seems to work better, however it’s still hard to understand if the fluctuations in pain that we see are actually being caused by the M1 or by the other things that she’s doing.

Still, her improvements have been marginal at best. She’s still unable to walk more than a few meters.

Has anyone successfully been using PEMF to deal with intense neuropathic pain?

If so, I’d like to know about:

  • Coil placement
  • Protocol used
  • Strength used
  • How long it took until you felt relieved
  • Any other supplements/drugs you were taking at that time

Thank you

Nervous system reset
#2

I can say that I have not heard many reports on the use of PEMF for CRPS (which as you point out is very serious indeed). The reports are mixed, some positive, some negative. I had to deal with pelvic CRPS, which, to say the very least, was intensely horrible and absolutely untreatable. I did not find relief with PEMF, but after a recent stroke (not a treatment, just another injury) the CRPS mostly abated and I now only have to treat arthritic pain. For me this was a blessing, because I know first-hand how horrible CRPS is.
So, in my case, and I suspect in many cases, the cause of CRPS was not located near the pain, but seems to have been centrally-mediated, that is, something wrong with the somatosensory wiring of my brain. That mis-wiring was destroyed by my recent stroke. Very fortunate for me indeed. By all accounts I remain a medical mystery.
So, it may be that CRPS needs to be treated at the brain, not the location of pain. At least in some cases this may be the case, I do not know.
But it would be very helpful for anyone with experience with CRPS to share their experiences.

1 Like
#3

It seems the area responsible for sensory processing related to the feet is located at the top of the brain, maybe it’s worth trying a coil placement there…

#4

I was just reading about it and the anti-inflammatory aspect makes me curious.

PEMF is anti-inflammatory.

Has she tried Whole Food Plant Based? I say it because a lot of people have extreme changes in pain with it. People go from wheel chair bound with pain to hiking mountains and walking 10 miles per day. That is in studies on it by people like Dr Ornish. Dr. Greger’s grandmother was one of the ones who went from wheel chair to walking 10 miles per day in 6 weeks. It also reverses Diabetic neuropathy in as few as 3 days. I reversed mine with it. I am not pushing dietary over ICES because both seem to have mechanisms. There are foods and spices which are highly anti-inflammatory. Dr. Greger has videos on things like which spices tested to be anti-inflammatory in studies and on how saturated fats cause nerves to be pressed on.

My uncle had trigeminal neuralgia and brain cancer and the trigeminal neuralgia was the same type of condition and they tried things like oxycontin and oxycodone and dilauded and morphine and so many other pain meds and none of them even touched it at all. Methadone finally took the edge off and only cost $7 per bottle for his co-pay. Lowering his saturated fat, plus methadone managed his pain and his doctors didn’t believe it. They said to me, “Boy, he must have been in that degree of pain for the rest of his life” but he wasn’t at all. Two days before he died, I asked him about the pain and he said, “Nope, I don’t have any pain at all.” A year and a half earlier, he was crying from the pain and he was a military, football, never shed a tear guy.

I say that because I want to say, “Don’t give up.” Go to a pain clinic and keep trying things.

1 Like
#5

That would be entirely experimental of course, but that makes perfect sense to me. That is something I would try.

1 Like
#6

Hi Tiago:

CRPS can often be a “mis-mapping” of the body area to the area of the brain representing it. My suggestion would be to try something like the ICES OMNI protocol with the doubled coils on the opposite side of her head from the location of the pain (e.g., left foot - right side of head).

During the stimulation, do some of the exercises described here: https://bodyinmind.org/the-brain-in-crps-more-barriers-or-new-opportunities/ so that her brain is being asked to to “re-map” while receiving the additional resources of the PEMF to help it do so more quickly.

Does that make sense?

#7

Wow, Dr. Karen, Thanks for posting links.

1 Like
#8

That makes a lot of sense to me, and it matches my own personal experience as well.

I think it is also technically correct. Cross-wiring between the somatosensory cortex and pain centers in and around the central sulcus of the brain has been known since at least World War I to sometimes cause sensations of severe regional chronic pain that we now would diagnose clinically as CRPS. What happens apparently is that normal sensations from a region are cross-wired from their normal sensory regions to areas where the same normal sensations can be mis-interpreted as pain. Thus normal sensations cause pain. Until about 1960 they actually did surgeries to cause lesions in the brain to break up this mis-wiring, and apparently it worked. But facilitating natural re-wiring as Dr. Karen suggests is much better than having someone poke holes in your brain…

The central sulcus is here:

and a somatotopic mapping of the somatosensory cortex (the sensory homunculus):

should give you a good clue to exactly where the cross-wiring may be

Good advice, thanks Dr Karen. I hope I did not butcher your advice too much…

1 Like
#9

Bob:

Not at all :slight_smile:

The cross-mapping can also happen between body parts – like losing the sensitivity of a finger that gets mapped to the finger beside it.

Targeting the motor and sensory strips in the right area for the body part (as per your homunculus diagram) AND doing the exercises should do the trick. I hope!

The important thing is not to skip the exercises the article describes. :weight_lifting_man:

#10

Have you tried this?