I was reading PEMF research tonight and saw one from 1991 with 139 nonunion fractures and it gave “success rates” based on hours PEMF was used and the difference was so striking that I thought I would post it.
People using PEMF for MORE than 3 hours per day had an 80% success rate.
People using PEMF for LESS than 3 hours per day had a 35.7% success rate.
That sounds like length of time matters a lot.
And this is precisely what I have been saying for many years now.
The use of PEMF in a clinic for one or two short sessions per week is totally inadequate. To be really effective, PEMF should be applied at low intensity and for at least 6 to 8 hours per day, every day, and continued for several weeks after symptoms (basically pain and inflammation) have subsided, to allow the tissue to finish its full recovery.
But a lot of people just want a quick fix, most PEMF companies pander to those people, and many clinicians do not see how to make money when properly using PEMF and therefore use treatment periods that are vastly too short to get the full therapeutic effect of PEMF, so we end up with a massive amount of mis-information and a lot of cases where PEMF apparently failed to work, but it was simply because it was not applied correctly.
Sure, a few short sessions of PEMF seems convenient, and it generates a lot of clinical revenue by pumping many people through the their PEMF facility every day, but that is simply not a very effective way to use PEMF.
When used improperly this way, PEMF does not pass rigorous testing, it does not get regulatory approval or respectable scientific publications, skeptics have one more reason to say PEMF is bunk, and hundreds of millions (actually billions) of people continue to suffer needlessly.
So, yes indeed, time matters.
I looked up a PEMF blood pressure study for someone on Nutritionfacts.org and found a study with a small positive effect.
What astounded me was that the study was only 2 ten to fifteen minute sessions of PEMF per week.
I am amazed that there would have been any improvement at all with that little time. I can only imagine how much of an improvement someone could have using it at a more optimal level.
I hate when studies barely do enough or don’t do enough at all. It happens so often.
Very brief treatments have inconsistent results. If the same researchers repeated the same study doing everything the same way, it is likely they would get a different result, and it may very well not be statistically significant.
Bottom line: Improper use of PEMF (and the improper use of anything else) gives unreliable results.
When you say low intensity.
Do you mean 5?
Could you please give a rough range?
It varies by species and individual, but roughly, based on what I have seen:
Low for most humans** would be ~ 4 to 7
Medium is ~ 8-9-10
High is ~ 11-12
Extremely high (X) would be 13-14-15
These are approximate, relative terms. For example, can you tell me the temperature range for “hot”… well, it depends.
** Just as a note: horses seem to be a lot more sensitive than humans, dogs, or cats, so their ranges of sensitivity would be correspondingly much lower. Dogs and cats seem to have a sensitivity somewhere between horses and humans. Elderly humans seem to be more sensitive than the young, but this varies greatly.