PEMF hinders adaptation?!

[galactikeptic]

Essentially, it seems that all known recovery and healing aids beyond sleep and food actually inhibit adaptation to certain extent. This includes interventions like cold showers/cryotherapy, NSAIDs, and antioxidant supplements (though some debate exists regarding the last).

My main concern is whether PEMF, especially for athletes and generally healthy individuals, requires caution. My research suggests a lack of substantial studies on this topic—perhaps someone like @Bob or another expert could provide insights from published papers.

Historically, we’ve viewed inflammation as detrimental, but recent findings suggest a more complex scenario. The balance between too much and too little inflammation is not well understood and is under-researched. By the way, I will say that It’s certainly clear to me that PEMF seems to be doing something, I think its very hard to argue with that. But, if and to what extent that something is a good thing is what I find hard to understand. e.g NSAIDS reduce pain, which on the surface is a good thing, but its also been shown that they inhibit good adapation quite strongly.

There’s a hypothesis that PEMF might inhibit adaptation by reducing beneficial inflammation, which seems to align with anecdotes from this forum. For example, Robert shared that if he pauses PEMF therapy for more than 4-5 days, his pain intensifies, suggesting that if PEMF was truly healing the tissues through some unknown mechanism other than directly reducing inflammation, continual use wouldn’t be necessary.

• Edit: Grammer

[TajD]

Read my posts, which share my family and my experiences with ICES PEMF, and you will find that I have a very different experience than what you hypothesize here. ICES PEMF is truly remarkable in my opinion and has been a massive help for so many of our injuries and conditions.

[Bob]

Many surgeons that I know, and that in the past have worked in my laboratory, share the common belief in a beneficial inflammation which facilitates recovery from surgery and injury. But I have never found convincing evidence for this, and my surgical colleagues are unable to produce any, other than “well, everyone knows that!”

I think this belief (like so many before) is faulty, and is based on the correlative association that surgeons see before them with their own eyes:

First there is inflammation
Then there is (usually) healing

But, when tested at a number of places, including at a certified third-party GLP, FDA recognized laboratory using rats and rabbits, quite a different relationship is repeatably demonstrable, namely:

ICES-PEMF sharply reduces inflammation while also accelerating healing.

So, I think the simple relationships between inflammation and healing don’t quite stand up to scrutiny.

The entire body of medical literature on this topic (PEMF and mechanisms of wound healing) is of quite poor quality. I had spent more than a decade studying it in great detail, and sadly, those are years of my life I can never have back.

So, based on my observations it is my opinion that:
ICES-PEMF reduces inflammation
ICES-PEMF accelerates the rate of healing
Some injuries/people require only one-time use until full recovery (~80%), others require continued use (~20%), and it is not clear why this is so.
ICES-PEMF does not seem to have negative side effects, prolong the process of healing, or anything like that.

That is just my opinion, and I could be wrong. But that’s what I see.

I’d love to be able to prove that and elucidate the biophysical mechanisms, but that is the kind of project that takes decades, whole careers, and I think the fruit of it will result in at least two Nobel Prizes.

So, I can offer you no proof, and unfortunately a detailed study of the entire sweep of medical literature in all languages is unlikely to shed more light on the matter.

[galactikeptic]

Frankly, the notion of “no beneficial inflammation” seems quite radical. What we think of inflammation is usually cytokines/chemokines signaling for immune cell mobilization. But without signaling, how can the cells know that they need to rebuild tissue?

[hcf]

@galactikeptic

Historically, we’ve viewed inflammation as detrimental, but recent findings suggest a more complex scenario. The balance between too much and too little inflammation is not well understood and is under-researched.

You mean the concept of “reductive stress”. Yes there is such a thing, but for most accounts oxidative or nitrosative stress will be the problem, not the other way around.

I’ve heard that in regard of Vitamin C and other things. Such discussions, especially absent concrete data, are only confusing the people and are not helpful - because as said, oxidative or nitrosative stress will be the common problem.

PEMF, for example, you use when the is oxidative or nitrosative stress for sure, because something HURTS. Or hurts BAD. Insofar the potential issue of “harmful” reductive stress is somewhat esoteric for people using PEMF when it HURTS or something is bad and shall be improved.

Inflammation markers you only need when there is inflammation. It is a emergency system. If ICES PEMF can solve the inflammation issue, reducing the “emergency” then why should that be bad?

[Bob]

signal? probably, I would say almost certainly IMO.

inflammatory signal? maybe, maybe not, but probably not as simple as generally expressed, IMO.

[galactikeptic]

could you expand on this a little bit?

[Bob]

There is almost certainly a signal of some type to trigger a change in cell state to initiate healing after injury. It seems to be correlated with inflammation, but so are a lot of other things. It may or may not be directly inflammatory. The problem is that people talk about it as if they know about it, when this topic really has not been researched thoroughly.

So, in my opinion, a lot of people make a lot of assertions without really knowing anything for sure.

[galactikeptic]

To be honest there is so much we don’t understand tall about physics, biology and the universe (entanglement, consciousness, cosmological constant problem, neutrino masses, dark matter composition, vacuum catastrophe etc) and yet we need a framework to talk about these things, and that’s really hard to do without making any assertions at all. Or maybe your point is to just not be as confident as some people are when making them?

[Bob]

My opinion: Sure, voice any (reasonable and helpful for this forum) opinion that you want. If asked directly, I will reply with my opinion. I could be right, or maybe wrong, but I have about 40 years experience as an active researcher with many peer-reviewed publications. That has advantages and disadvantages. Recently, those seem to me to be about equal.

But I know some things with pretty high confidence, and among those is that academic biomedical research is of much lower quality than is generally appreciated by the average taxpayer, who of course is footing the bill.

I have the same concerns with highly-specialized clinicians. The problem seems to be that to be effective at caring for their patients, they are taught that they need to project a high level of confidence in their knowledge, especially when they are not sure about what they are saying.

I try not to be too cynical, but the honest fact is that we know much less than we think we do. Whenever an academic researcher or clinician makes an assertion, as the old proverb goes: “Trust, but verify.”

Then there is the whole problem of the general public who do their research on FB, X, and ChatGPT if they are really enthusiastic. Don’t get me wrong, checking on things for yourself is a good Idea, but really doing serious research is a very high-level skill that most people have not mastered.

So, I default to the opinion that “I don’t know” unless I have really looked into it or have a lot of experience in the specific area in question, and thus have well-formulated opinions.

Another point: many people make the general mistake that modern medicine is based on a mechanistic understanding of the underlying biophysical mechanisms of action. When you cherry-pick your references, as most academics do, you can usually find a paper or two to support your statements. But based on my decades of deep diving into several areas, I feel this general belief is misplaced.

And finally, it is difficult to summarize decades of observations, experiments, accumulation of knowledge, in a few lines of text. My inability to convey complex concepts simply and in few words probably indicates that I have not really mastered the material.

And this is precisely my point.

[galactikeptic]

@Bob

marize decades of observations, experiments, accumulation of knowledge, in a few lines of text. My inability to convey complex concepts simply and in few words p

Bob, I can not put into words how true I felt your response was. Every. Single. Word. Thank you for doing this.

[Relgie]

Regarding inflammation, there might be a difference in our mutual understanding of the terms we are using. “Inflammatory response” is well established as essential to healing and many other things such as recognition/elimination of cancer cells and other invasive microbes such as viruses and bacteria but also allergens.

I have always considered “inflammation” to be an array of side effects to inflammatory response such as swelling, fever, pain etcetera. There are many medical ways to downregulate inflammation by blocking some or all aspects of inflammatory response. Perhaps the most extreme example would be steroids which can be taken to completely block inflammatory response if need be (ie in the case of organ transplants). My friend who has a transplanted kidney has to take a lot of steroids to block rejection of the kidney and as a consequence her body cannot prevent cancer very well and every year she has many malignant polyps to be removed from her skin and colon…

So there is a delicate balance between the need to downregulate “inflammation” and upregulate “inflammatory response.” My opinion is that PEMF serves quite well to downregulate inflammatory response to reduce inflammation in a way that can be rather precisely moderated but that it should be used judiciously to avoid too much downregulation.

[galactikeptic]

I think this is a good high level answer but really when you look at the inner workings down to the sub-cell level, the term “inflammation” seems to remain elusive.

[sbrink]

Your comments are interesting. Is inflammation indicative of currently healthy tissue? I think it is not… it was and it could be…?

[Bob]

I am only saying that a simple assertion, very commonly made, that inflammation is necessary for healing to begin, is probably too simplistic, and based on evidence I have seen in my own experiments, does not appear to be true.