Flux Health Forum

Meniscus Tear

WOndering any advice on using A9 for medial meniscus tears on both knees from tennis. Also wondering if there is an issue with my device as my rechargeable battery last almost 3 days non stop doing. The green lights light up when I test the coils but I heard you only get about 20 hours continuous run time
Thanks

I answered this in the other location you posted it (about battery life)

As for meniscal tears, it is quite complex: ICES PEMF will reduce swelling, which can enhance recovery rate and healing, but also reduces internal joint pressure (from reduced swelling), so the joint may become less mechanically stable. Since everyone responds differently and joint tissue recovers very slowly (if at all), it takes a lot of careful individual observation and patience to make progress with this.

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Thanks Bob. curious on what you. have found most effective protocol with A9 for medial meniscus tear. Since the tear is in area with very little blood flow. Have been doing continues session highest frequency over night and during the day. not sure if I have noticed any improvement

Just to start: I have never used ICES-PEMF for meniscus tear myself, because I have not had a torn meniscus (thankfully!). I do however talk to a lot of people who are using it for meniscus tears, some are clinicians who have tried many other things too.

With that in mind, my impression from everything I have heard is that the effectiveness of ICES-PEMF for meniscus tears is variable: some people get a lot of relief, but it does not seem to be permanent, others seem to get some permanent benefits, while others get no relief at all. My impression is that these three groups are divided roughly evenly, into thirds (about a third of people with meniscus tears fall into each group).

But there are also a small number of people who have told me that ICES-PEMF tends to cause them more discomfort for their meniscus tear, so generally they tend to discontinue use.

This high level of variability of individual responses is difficult for me to explain. There seems to be uniformly a reduction in joint capsule inflammation and distension (swelling), so that may give relief in some cases, while reducing joint stability and causing discomfort in other cases.

So, in summary, when used by itself, ICES-PEMF may be of limited and highly variable benefit for torn meniscus, and individual responses seem to vary widely.

One observation though is that ICES-PEMF does seem to be more consistently beneficial when used as an adjunct to other treatments, making them just appear to work better and result in better outcomes. But still, people overall seem to struggle with meniscus tears and I do not know of any satisfactory strategy that anyone has come up with yet.

As for pulse protocols, a few people have noted that higher frequency pulsing can be slightly irritating to the knee joint, so they tend to avoid pulse patterns with high-frequency modes (example: Omni8 and B5-C5), and prefer to use patterns with only lower frequency modes (below 40 pps, such as Schumann4, Schumann5, Alpha-wave, etc.)

I wish I could be more helpful, but individual outcomes when using ICES-PEMF for meniscus tears is highly variable.