Flux Health Forum

Improve vision with ICES

Eye Conditions
#48

Thanks @OptimalHealth for prompting me to respond.
Many people settle on the Omni-8 protocol. Why?

One simple reason might be that I suppose some use it because it is the default program on most of our systems, so they don’t bother changing it.

I also usually suggest trying it when I am asked, but almost always along with a few other suggestions because people’s responses will vary.

But I know many people, including myself, who have tried other protocols and they very often tend to gravitate toward Omni-8 because they get the best overall results.

This is not an accident. The Omni-8 protocol is the result of extensive beta-testing that I did with ICES-PEMF “power users” back during system development for the B5-C5-M1 series of devices. The beta testing was actually using the newly-designed model A9, but reprogrammed for beta testing of pulse pattern protocols for the next generation of more advanced ICES-PEMF systems.

Yes, there were other competing pulse patterns, numbered Omni-1 through Omni-9.
Several of these were based on the earlier legacy pulse patterns, such as the “A9” and “P2”. But all had additional pulse pattern features, and I was attempting to cast broad nets to capture the most effective sets of pulse patterns from a wide range of candidate patterns, thus the designation “Omni”.

Also, I was testing these patterns both containing, and against, patterns that had been popularized by PEMF marketers, such as “Schumann Frequencies”.

Long story short, what I found was:
1- All of the different pulse patterns work pretty well, because, as I always assert: the most important thing is pulse waveform shape, not the “frequency” of the pulses So, all of the patterns worked pretty well.
2- The “frequencies” that everyone insists upon, such as Schumann resonances, work fine, but absolutely no better than any other similar frequency.
3- There was a small preference for frequency patterns that contain pulse patterns that I specifically developed to simulate the neuronal pulse patterns during fetal neuro-musculo-skeletal development in utero. These pulse patterns are known by developmental biologists to be essential for proper early development of muscle, bone, and nerve tissue. I hypothesized that these patterns would be ingrained in the cellular response to similar signals, and would therefore result in a shift of cells toward a state of growth and development rather than one of decay and degeneration.

During beta testing, without knowing the details of the patterns, people expressed a preference for the pulse patterns that contained these hypothetical pro-growth, pro-development signals. Overall, the opinion was that this class of pulse pattern was about 15% to 20% better than the other patterns.

I crunched all the beta test data, and the winner was…

Omni-8

I don’t like to over-sell anything, so I just quietly included it in the list of about 30 pulse pattern protocols that are available on the C5 and M1, and by default now on the model A9.

I am delighted to see that many experienced users, without any heavily biased prompting from me, eventually gravitate toward the Omni-8 as their go-to protocol, which is what I would have expected from the results of the beta testing.

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#49

Thank you @Bob . My M1 has some patterns that aren’t on the C5. Some 5 minutes with rest patterns. Is this so?

#50

yes, that has to do with internal memory limitations:
C5 has more output ports to handle than the M1, therefore more program variables, therefore a bit less memory is available, and therefore fewer pre-set pulse patterns are possible because they will not fit into memory in the C5. So, I had to eliminate the least popular ones.

I think this was a good decision, because in the last 6 years, you are the first person who has asked me about it, so clearly those last pulse patterns are not super popular.

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#51

a good decision indeed. I don’t see any patterns that have a built in rest, on the C5, is this correct? Is this because it isn’t popular to have a rest? @bo

#52

No patterns on C5 with a built-in 5-minute rest
because
No memory remaining in the C5 micro-controller to fit them in
so
I decided not to include the least popular ones.

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#53

so if it’s mostly about the shape of the pulse waveform, then shouldn’t all the frequencies pretty much provide the same result the majority of the time? i guess frequency (or is it power) makes enough of a difference to get different results?

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#54

I think that turns quickly into a very technical conversation, which of course I am happy to have :smiley:

One way to think about this is by analogy to what we understand about transmission of information. I’m sure this analogy breaks down at a detailed level, but our understanding of exactly how PEMF works is incomplete, so analogies might be the best we have available, and we will not know for a while how accurate they are.

With that caveat in mind, I think PEMF mostly transfers energy, encoded at certain levels in different ways, sort of the way we might think about how information transmission works works for an FM radio.

At the most fundamental level, the information is carried by the right basic physical force. In this analogy, it is electro-magnetism for both (PEMF and FM radio)

The information is “carried” through time and space by a specific form of that energy.

  • For an FM radio, that would be the carrier frequency, that is, the place where you tune the dial to get the signal from one specific radio station.
  • For PEMF, that would be the pulse waveform shape. This is why I always say that PEMF waveform shape is most important. For both cases (FM radio and PEMF) the carrier energy must be tuned properly to be transmitted and received properly.

The carrier signal itself does not really have a lot of information. But it “carries” the information by being “modulated”. For an FM radio signal, this amounts to slight changes in the frequency of the carrier signal base frequency. For PEMF, this probably has something to do with the pulse pattern. This is why I always say the pulse waveform (carrier) is most important, but the pulse pattern, if expressed by waveforms of the correct shape, will also contribute information. But without that crucial initial step of encoding with the right waveform shape, the encoded information never gets properly transmitted or received.

The next step is the big one we do not understand about how PEMF has a biological effect. This is the way the recipient decodes the signal that it receives. For an FM radio signal, this is done by a “demodulator”, which transforms the FM signal from the modulated signal on a carrier wave into a signal much closer to what you could put through a speaker and understand as language. For PEMF, this would be the biophysical mechanism (whatever that is, we do not know). This is what PEMF marketers lie about a lot, claiming to have secret knowledge of this step, which in my scientific opinion is a load of BS.

Once you have the information encoded, transmitted, received, and decoded, then you are almost there. The final step is this: does the information make sense to the recipient?

Imagine an FM radio station that is transmitting in a strange foreign language. Everything about the signal itself is working fine, your hearing is working fine so you received the signal, but you simply do not understand it because you do not speak that language. For PEMF, I think the closest analogy would be that you would be sending a signal that the recipient cells/tissues need to be able to understand. This might mean that the PEMF needs to send a signal (pulse pattern) that makes sense to the cells or tissues of a certain species, or of a certain tissue, or in a certain state (developmental state, or state of injury, repair, growth). This is almost totally unknown scientific territory.

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Systemic inflammation leading to heart attack, blood pressure and disease
#55

has anyone been consistently using on eyes? I’m just starting up again and blurriness of my vision seems noticeably less… then again, i should do this for a month solid and report back. will have to get my eyes tested to compare to last year’s… that should be baseline “enough” since my eyes don’t typically get better as i age anyway :thinking:

#56

I have. Nothing yet. Using it about 20 minutes a day on low.

#57

not exaggerating, but i’ve been sleeping w/them on. but not like i’m getting as much sleep as i’d like (YET). I have been doing 4hours at a time (only 2x so far)… i stop at 4 bc of a slight headache that comes on… i’m at power level 8 for omni. just from 2 days alone, my left eye that’s usually blurry (has become more so in the last few years) has been surprisingly and noticeably clear. i don’t want to jump to any conclusions yet and will get a baseline measure of vision now using eye chart to gauge at home just to see if my vision has improved any from now and 30days later.

but for CERTAIN, i can tell my left eye is better in the morning and throughout the day even. again, too early to say and it is hard to not be hopeful/excited about it. just hate the part about if this is premature and subjective/placebo.

#58

How deep does the coil reach? For example, the back of the eye if placed on the eye.

How much deeper will waveform reach if stacking the coils on one eye?

Does increasing the intensity power over time cause greater results if not seeing beneficial results at mid power level? Or is the opposite true, a lower power level may produce better results?

#59

Fields easily reach to the back of the eye.
Depth depends on a lot of factors, highly technical, more important is your sensitivity to the fields. The only way to know is to try and keep track of effects. ICES-PEMF technology requires a bit of attention for optimal effects, just like anything else that is real.

PEMF marketers of other products will tell you anything you want to hear to make a sale, but the truth is: it depends on a lot, there is no way to calculate it for individual people and injuries. Generally though, the fields reach deep enough for most people for most types of injury.

General rule of thumb: MORE POWER IS NOT THE ANSWER for PEMF. A properly designed PEMF waveform can easily be more effective than a crude PEMF waveform at 500 times the power.

You should start at mid levels of intensity and increase in steps, but generally, with efficient PEMF waveforms, the dose response curve is not simple linear; more power does not equal more effect. It is more sigmoidal (“S” shaped), and once you are getting good biological effects it is generally best to stop increasing power. Beyond this, more power generally results in less effectiveness and more irritation due to the excess energy.

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#60

My own recent experience treating an eye problem with the Micro-pulse M1 and my review of other posts on eye conditions both suggest starting with the lowest intensity setting and keeping close track of both benefits and possible side effects (sometimes called healing crises, detox reactions, etc.). The problem I have been dealing with is floaters. Initially, I was getting headaches after applying the coils close to or directly on my eyes. @Bob has a theory that this may be related to pressure changes in anatomical cavities as inflammation decreases. That makes a lot of sense to me.

Interestingly, the headaches would not generally be in the same location where I applied the coils. In fact, they were often in the occipital region of the back of my skull, which is associated with vision in traditional Chinese medicine. I could reliably treat the headache by using the M1 directly on the acupuncture points in that area. It’s almost as if pressure was released from one area (in the eyes themselves) but stagnated in another section of the associated acupuncture channel, which then required direct treatment itself. Or, I should say the headache was resolved rapidly when direct treatment was applied to the local area. I suspect it would’ve resolved on its own anyway. I haven’t had any headaches since I switched to using the lowest intensity setting, although it may be a coincidence. It may be that the inflammation was largely resolved and the pressure in my skull largely equalized by the earlier treatments and so I was no longer experiencing the “side effects.” As things are going well for me right now, I’m not really willing to experiment with a higher intensity setting to test the hypotheses.

I’ve also had a couple experiences that lead me to believe that putting the coils directly on my eyes even at the lowest intensity setting may temporarily aggravate the floaters. My floaters are due to what is called posterior vitreous detachment. As I understand it, there are strands of the vitreous gel floating in my eyeball. It is generally thought that the symptoms of PVD will resolve spontaneously over a few months as the strands of gel settle in the lower portion of the eye and no longer pass through the field of vision. However, as they are still currently “floating,” it makes sense to me that applying a stimulus directly on the eye might be analogous to lightly jostling a bowl of still water with a little bit of sediment in it. Further confirmation that this may be what is happening is that when the acute exacerbation of the symptom occurs, it typically resolves within about 15 minutes. Just as a jostled bowl of water would eventually settle down if no further stimulus was applied to it.

#61

@Anomaloid, This is really helpful input, thanks for chiming in. :slight_smile:

#63

@Leo_Yang

This is very cool. It partially solves one of the problems I have when putting the coils directly on my eyes, which is I have been covering them with some type of bandage or band that I cannot see through. However, it only partially solves my problem, because there’s a limit to what I can do without actual lenses in my glasses. At least with your solution, I can still move around the house, eat, drink tea, wash dishes, and do minor things on my phone like select a podcast or audiobook for listening. However, what also might be cool is to create the equivalent of clip-on sunglasses using PEMF coils instead of the plastic polarized lenses. Then, you could apply the magnetic fields close to your eyes while still being able to do all of the things that require sharp vision.

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#64

What settings and intensity levels were you using?

#65

How would one know whether the effect is positive or less positive and what would they look for to determine? For example, intensity may feel good or not so good depending on the individual. Same with pressure, there is positive pressure and negative pressure. Symptoms might be optimal or less than optimal. Weight training causes some pain and recovery but it is for benefit. But there is some pain that is not beneficial and may cause harm via an injury.

#66

I haven’t seen a change with floaters using M1 on Omni8. Running 1 cycle twice per day. Coils placed directly on eyes.

#67

This is not easy, so in order to undertake things like PEMF requires attention and intelligence. It is definitely not for everyone. Many things, important things, simply cannot be quantified. Let me give you an example:

Pain

There is no way to directly measure pain. No matter what anyone tells you, it can’t be done. Yet about 1 in three adults suffer from it. And we cannot measure it. Please do not send me endless links to fraudulent “pain-o-meters”, such things do not work.

Yet people know when they are in pain, when they are not, when it gets better, when it gets worse, when it changes in nature, and many other things. Some people are much more aware than others, some ignore it, some block it with medications, etc. etc. Then of course there is the major issue of placebo effects.

Some people can monitor pain more or less intelligently, some can not. if you are using something like PEMF on something like pain, you need to pay a lot of attention and try to make objective observations, probably keep a log or journal.

Other things can be directly quantified, like blood pressure. You can monitor this, or someone else can monitor it for you, track changes, and use specific, repeatable numbers to guide treatment.

Some things like exercise can start by making you feel worse, others have no change in sensation at all.

With all of this said, most things related to health are just hard to get a full grasp and a quantitative number for progress. This is why some people just need to place their health into the hands of someone else, such as a physician.

Efficient PEMF will often not have a direct sensation. Effective PEMF may take hours or days or weeks. Tissue just must be allowed time to heal and regenerate, and PEMF evidently accelerates this process, but it still takes time. Different injuries, in different tissues, for different people, at different ages, under different conditions, will have different time courses of healing and recovery. The effects can be profound or subtle.

With our present state of knowledge, putting a number on these things is essentially impossible. So, people have to use PEMF thoughtfully and intelligently, or they will not get as much out of it, nor will they appreciate what they do get out of it.

So, if you are using a PEMF system, then for your individual injury or need you need to find a way to track your progress and determine whether or not you are getting a benefit. This takes a fair amount of work and attention. Fortunately, PEMF is so beneficial for so many conditions that it is sufficient to get PEMF in a clinic two or three times per week, for 15 to 30 minutes, even if it is a crude waveform.

But if you are willing to develop the skill of using PEMF and assessing and tracking your progress, then you can get even better outcomes using much lower power, highly efficient systems on a daily basis.

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#68

Apologies for being unable to finish my response, things got busy…

So, as a practical matter, how do you know if PEMF is working? This is a very reasonable question, and everyone who uses PEMF would want to know this. But all of the stuff I said in the first half of my response is true, which means it’s very hard to give a general answer.

So, the best answer I can give is to give advice for specific cases and injuries, taking as many key individual factors as possible into account, such as age, duration of injury, and other conditions. This basically means that the use of PEMF is highly individualized. I think that is true for many types of injury, but we also have pretty effective advice for other types of injury. Having tried to solve this for years to give the best possible information, I think the best way to address this type of complexity is this Forum.

It seems to be most effective when a person asks a specific question about a specific condition, then many people can chime in and offer their experience and insight, and I can give specific information related to the specific question. There is no answer to broad non-specific questions such as “How does one know if it is working?” But in most cases we can collectively say a lot more about questions with a lot more detail for a specific condition or injury. Examples would be things like:

Back pain: Usually shows significant reduction in hours or a few days.

Migraine: Over time, a reduction in frequency, intensity, or both, or a change in how sensitive a person is to triggering events.

BPH: reduction confirmed by clinical examination

Sleep: Personal observations of sleep quality, unless you subject yourself to a sleep clinic or study.

Peripheral Neuropathy: return of function, sensation, reduction of pain, change in the type or quality of pain.

Diabetic Ulcer: Diameter of ulcer over time before versus during PEMF use: is the ulcer continuing to grow, slowing, staying the same size, reducing in size?

It basically goes on and on like this. And its the same for the general question “How do you use PEMF?” As a broad general question, it is essentially unanswerable. It becomes more tractable when your question becomes more specific and your observations become more detailed.