Minimum threshold for effectiveness

[bettereveryday]

Thank you for just answering plainly.

I have decided to do learning science as part of my brain plasticity. Though I still am at science music video and kid’s videos level.

I was listening to Dean and Ayesha Sherzia MD who did the brain studies with Loma Linda The Adventists and who also work with a clinic in a city outside of Loma Linda, so they see the best of the best and the worst of the worst patients daily.

They said that “choosing a complex career” is probably the most protective from Alzheimer’s and that people who have the genetic disposition and even not great lifestyle are often protected from developing symptoms of Alzheimer’s because of how complex their neuronal pathways are from their complicated careers.

I though of your recovery from your stroke and you went into science would be part of it. They were saying that as far as neuronal connections go, people can have a few connections or they can have 30,000 connections and obviously having more connections from using the brain more increases protection and plasticity.

When my step-mother had a stroke, I was looking at plasticity and didn’t see advice to engage the whole brain by having all of the senses used, maybe essential oils and temperature changes and visual stimulation and visualization and even something to taste - all to engage more pathways at the same time. I still haven’t read your book, but I did talk to my father and step-mother about it. I am still so engrossed in PEMF studies that it is taking up my time, but I will get there.

Anyway, science is going to be part of my brain plasticity, along with nutrition, which I have spent the past year meditating on.

You are such a good sport and I appreciate that you are being so nice to us.

Some of us who are baby level of science and who have brain problems and who already talked too much before the brain problems are soooo grateful that you have been such a nice person.

[prometheus]

thanks. In some pemf devices, a lower pps means higher intensity/depth of penetration. Does pps have any effect on depth of penetration with ices M1?

[Bob]

Definitely not for my technology (Micro-Pulse ICES).

Properly designed PEMF should not have that problem.

This issue probably arises from pirated/unlicensed PEMF products that are poorly designed without control over the key parameters of waveform shape. Most PEMF products only control frequency and (barely) intensity, so as you crank up the frequency or power the waveform shape may change without knowing it, thus changing the biological activity.

[Bob]

I think that is an excellent plan: learn science (or anything new) to promote neuroplasticity. That is a lifestyle I have fully adopted and I think it really helps.

I am happy to comment on real science, and happy to help clarify some of the pseudo-science that bangs around the Internet, especially on topics like PEMF. But we are all adults here, so I feel I need to be firm about one thing: The more wildly speculative and overtly mystical people get on the topic of PEMF, the more it undermines real knowledge and the more it pushes PEMF onto the fringe, the less credible it becomes, and the more people will be hurt by that retrograde movement of the entire field.

Here are the plain facts: PEMF really seems to be beneficial, a huge scientific literature supports that simple observation. BUT, equally true, we do not know how it works at a fundamental level, and it IS NOT NECESSARY to make up fables to pretend as if we understand something that we do not. FACT: we have no Idea what consciousness really is, but we all use it every day. FACT: we have no Idea where memory resides in the brain, or many other things about the brain, but we use our brains every day anyway. FACT: we do not really understand why anesthesia alters our consciousness or memory of pain, but we use anesthesia about 100 million times per year, and it has become an essential pillar of modern medicine even though it is not really well understood. MY OPINION, the public conversation on PEMF is dominated by marketers and profiteers, not scientists. They use pseudo-science and mystical explanations to sell PEMF. This behavior is both unnecessary and destructive.

The more that people can use their brains, think fairly but critically, and reject obvious fabrications and marketing gibberish, the sooner we can all get comfortable with the fact that we do not understand most things about biology, but many things are helpful, and that describes our state of knowledge about PEMF pretty well.

@ bettereveryday, I think you recently have done this very well (so I did not comment on you recent posts) but here is my suggestion for everyone about exercising complex mental skills to enhance neuroplasticity. I even wrote a section about this exercise in my book on stroke recovery. Here is the exercise:

Use your brain to unravel the huge amount of mis-information and dis-information that we get bombarded with every day. Think critically and even-handedly. Without getting upset about it, without applying a bias, try to separate solid scientific hypotheses from wild speculation, and reasonable statements from obvious fabrications.

Knowing the limits of your knowledge, admitting what you do not know, is knowledge.

[bettereveryday]

Here is the exercise:

Use your brain to unravel the huge amount of mis-information and dis-information that we get bombarded with every day. Think critically and even-handedly. Without getting upset about it, without applying a bias, try to separate solid scientific hypotheses from wild speculation, and reasonable statements from obvious fabrications.

That is a fabulous exercise!

That is one I really am working at and I do already think it has helped quite a bit.

You are so perceptive and wise to add the concept of “without applying a bias” as a way to rise above the upset and confusion of the debates and “theories” within each topic. When I first started learning nutrition a year ago, I got tossed to and fro with every topic because all of it is polarized and so highly debated and so many of the studies are biased.

I find that listening to enough intelligent people until I have heard things from multiple perspectives and not forming opinions until later is helpful.

I also find that, giving myself permission to be confused by how confusing it all genuinely is helps lower the “getting upset” part and makes the process less stressful.

Thank you for your wisdom. I highly respect and value it.

Also, thank you, thank you, thank you. I ordered my C-5 yesterday and saw that it has already shipped. I was expecting it to take a week and I am so happy with the fast service.

[bettereveryday]

Also, I applaud that you are not using marketing techniques and totally agree about the pseudo-scientific explanations and marketing to be genuinely harmful to the process of getting people to take PEMF seriously at all.

Honestly, if you weren’t in the PEMF universe, I wouldn’t have bought one.

I looked at the petri dishes and bones and immediately started searching PubMed and became seriously interested, but I can’t get most people to even try it and it is because of the con artists out there.

I have a cousin who has started writing his own obituary and planning his funeral out of his pain and disability since he started on dialysis and he would start planning to die and wouldn’t try this.

That is where I go back to “not applying a bias” because I am not selling your products. I would drive over there and plug it in and he can’t mentally handle the “con” and that is the same thing other people have had, but his is the most extreme because I did drive the M-1 over to his place and he didn’t try it for the 4 months it was there. My friend is now desperate enough to try it but I had offered it to her to try a year ago, too, and she felt the same way. So did my father.

They have a bias, which has closed their minds and that is the other direction, which I am trying to avoid.

Honestly, I would not have bought one if I didn’t see someone objective and sincere and not a marketing person in the process.

[Bob]

Yes, unfortunately, the more that people fabricate rubbish information for marketing, the more damage they do to humanity.

[Bob]

Here is another thought, a quote on “speculation” by a Sci-Fi author:

“Speculation is perfectly all right, but if you stay there you’ve only founded a superstition. If you test it, you’ve started a science.”

-Hal Clement, science fiction author (1922-2003)

This is precisely how I feel about it.

[bettereveryday]

Great quote!

In the mean time, there is the gap and the gap, plus time = opportunistic opportunity.

Science costs money and marketing makes money becomes the snake charmer’s tune.

[OptimalHealth]

how much do clothes affect magnetic field penetration. if I’m placing the coils over a shirt or pants (and underwear), what would you generally recommend to compensate for the material between the coil and body? would i stack the coil, put to high power (a9 unit), put coils on opposite sides? assume the material is a cotton/polyester blend if that is relevant to the question…

thanks!

[Bob]

Thin clothing and bandages do not have much effect so far as I can tell, so you do not need to compensate. Just place the coils as well as you can to hold them in place.