I had to take a break because I think I over did it. I had placed the machine on my head for close to 4 hours and then my liver for 4 hours and then I was a mess for about 5 days. I’m just now starting to feel better.
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hmmm… i just started placing on my liver yesterday, but only for 1hr… how do you mean you were a mess? I have noticed a lot of gurgling during the time i was on pemf… i suspect it helps w/detox as it optimizes cells of the liver.
When placed on the gut for 1 hour each day for 2 days in a row, it also caused my family member to be a mess for 5 days. Believe it caused accelerated die off of bad bacteria in the gut leading to a herxheimer reaction.
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I was just about to reply “Herxheimer Reaction”. Several very experienced PEMF-clinicians have told me to expect just such a thing, and many other people have reported the same to me: Gets worse at first, clears up, gets much better after a few days. Some well-respected clinicians advise just toughing it out, I prefer to proceed more cautiously and ease into it if I have this type of difficulty.
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this is great news that pemf would induce a herxheimer reaction… to know that pemf will help the liver detox/heal was what i was hoping for by placing the coils over that area.
i think most would benefit from applying coils over liver as we rarely ever think of healing or detoxing our liver until we are dealing with some ailment and need to do so.
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I do not mean to suggest that I know this for a fact. I was simply stating that it makes sense to me, and many other people seem to agree.
the reaction described is consistent with what I’ve observed of others and my own experience in how herxheimer reaction plays out.
you do not know how exciting i find this… the role of pemf. i told my wife the other day, pemf for health may be as essential as nutrition, exercise, rest, and detox/waste management… would you say this category of health would be labeled as
“Biomagnetism?”
I find the entire topic extremely interesting too. But the world of PEMF has way too many “experts” with fantastic claims and proofs that usually fall flat like a house of cards if subjected to any serious scrutiny. I feel pretty strongly that the responsible and intelligent thing to do is to reserve my energy and enthusiasm for doing strong engineering and science, and represent it much more cautiously. No one needs to hear any more fraudulent or excessive claims about PEMF.
Regarding biomagnetism and magnetobiology… honestly, I think the fundamental mechanism of PEMF is much more related to electricity (micro-currents) and not to magnetism per se. The link is induction resulting from the change in a magnetic field, dB/dt, which is directly proportional to the induced electrical field E. This is why magnetic pulse waveform is far more important that “frequency”, and it also makes a lot more sense in terms of biological transduction. Living tissue is well known to respond to small electrical fields and micro currents. The direct link to magnetism is less clear. I write about this extensively elsewhere.
This is not to say magnetism does not have any effects on biology, that is certainly not the case. I think direct magnetic field effects are fundamentally different in nature than the direct fundamental mechanisms of PEMF. I could of course be wrong, but that is my interpretation of what I have read and seen myself first-hand in the laboratory.
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@Bob, I was trying to find some literature that gave me a framework to articulate why certain EMF are dangerous (one example is Dr. Pall’s work) but PEMF like ICES can be helpful. Do you have any pointers or can you share your own thoughts/explanation?
I try to explain it here:
I also discuss different ranges on the electromagnetic spectrum, and how the different ranges relate to different biological effects, positive and negative, and I use an EMI meter to show that ICES-PEMF does not emit EMI in the range that is generally regarded as harmful.
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I"ve been listening to Dr. Pawluk. Based on his experience and knowledge about PEMF, he seems to believe that intensity and frequency are key to pemf effectiveness on human health. this seems in conflict w/bob’s observation and experience/knowledge that shape of wave is the biggest factor determining pemf effectiveness. How can we reconcile these views? Just by conjecture, it would seem intensity and wave form are likely the two factors that influence effectiveness considering the length of treatment based on anecdotes of others in forum/in practice.
thoughts - anyone/everyone?
thanks!
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Bill Pawluk and I discuss this frequently. In general, I defer to Dr. Pawluk’s clinical observations when it comes to PEMF and health. He has a lot more experience than I do, and a lot more than anyone else I know.
However, he does not have a lot of technical training as a physicist or engineer. So, while he makes an observation such as “more power = better clinical effects”, the technical details of his observation are, in my opinion, not quite accurate. He does, in fact, have some incorrect opinions on the basic technical details relating to the physics of PEMF. To people like me these are important details, but they do not really undermine my confidence in his clinical skill or observations.
Let me give you an example:
Let’s say he uses more power and observes better clinical effects. Therefore he makes the reasonable conclusion that “more power = better clinical effects”
However, if I measure the same PEMF system (as I have done) and determine that the changes made when increasing power also include changes to the waveform shape (which is what I have observed), then if I design a PEMF system to eliminate the effects of higher Gauss while retaining the fundamental change that resulted in the more beneficial waveform shape (this is the exercise I did when evolving ICES gen 2.0 to 6.0), and I do the science, the engineering, remove all the extraneous energy from the signal, isolate its components, and identify the ones that have biological effects and those that do not, now I am in a position to say:
“What matters is the magnetic slew rate and the duration of that slew rate, not peak magnetic field.”
RECONCILIATION:
Dr Pawluk correctly observes an improved effect when increasing magnetic field amplitude using typical commercial-grade PEMF systems.
Bob does a lot of calculus and many experiments and determines that the peak magnetic field intensity is a secondary consequence of the more important parameters as I have described above and elsewhere in great detail, and many experiments bear this out.
Therefore, we are both correct, but Dr. Pawluk does not understand the technical details of how the magnetic field intensity relates to the more fundamental magnetic waveform parameters as described above and elsewhere. That’s fine, that is not his job. As a clinician, he is more or less constrained to use the tools he has available, which, in the case of commercial PEMF systems, are typically highly inefficient and poorly characterized by their manufacturers. In general, PEMF systems do not allow fine control of the fundamental waveform parameters. The only knobs are “Intensity” and “Frequency”, so it is easy to make the mistake that these are the key parameters, and that the PEMF system controls them precisely and in isolation from all other parameters. But this is not the case.
The same argument is fundamentally the case for our apparent disagreement on the matter of '“frequency”, which, in my opinion, is not a critical parameter, but at a clinical level it will appear to be.
These are not disagreements. They are differences in technical perspective.
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That was so useful. Thank you for sharing.
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talks about frequency, slew, pulse, etc…
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Interesting, thanks. I am happy to be having at least a modest impact on the PEMF discussion.
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Hi Dr. @Bob Dennis:
Would your ICES devices be sufficient to cover the same type of PEMF effectiveness as using a high powered PEMF unit? For example, i think MagnaWave puts out high powered PEMF. Or would you say your ICES devices are more comparable in therapy/efficacy as low powered PEMF devices?
Just wondered if your devices covered BOTH categories or just low powered units for covering results.
Well, that is very hard to say actually. Some of the “high powered” devices are claimed by the manufacturer to be 10x to 100x higher power than they actually are… after all, who is going to check… when was the last time you actually measured a “Gauss”?
Then again, even if they deliver a huge amount of total power; is the waveform correct? Is it efficient or just over-powered? In many experiments, I was able to show enhanced biological effects while reducing power. This got quite extreme, to the point where I am getting better and more reliable effects when only using 0.2% of the power originally used at NASA. So, that’s a 99.8% reduction of power with a noticeable improvement in biological effects.
So… is more power a good thing? not necessarily.
I have done my best to make the system as efficient and optimal as possible. but comparison with other commercial systems is really pretty much impossible, sorry. Their systems do work, apparently, most of the time. But ICES-PEMF is in some ways unlike these larger systems.
Interestingly, clinicians who use both tell me that most of the time (~67% of the time) they see positive synergistic effects when they use both: large PEMF at their clinic a few times per week + ICES-PEMF daily at home.
My opinion: I don’t think one replaces the other. I would try them in synergy and separately, see what works best for you as an individual, and go with that.
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This was really helpful to me as I was trying to reconcile these two views, too, so thank you!
Fair warning: The following doesn’t quite fit in the realm of “sharing about the use/impacts of PEMF” specifically (it’s more about the politics of scientific knowledge, I guess), so I hope it’s not inappropriate to add to this thread. I’m happy to delete it, if it is! 
I hesitate to ask this because I hope this doesn’t inadvertently hit at any sensitive interpersonal dynamics, but I’d be really curious to know if Dr. Pawluk was also amenable to this reconciliation–namely, that the defining variable appears (understandably) to be “intensity” but is actually a number of other variables (many of which are, like Bob noted, beyond clinicians’ control).
Personally, I’m generally more convinced when well-informed and experienced researchers (like Bob) are able to break down the “how” of a given process/treatment rather than just the “what,” as I tend to think this leaves less room for (un)intended distortion. I’m also compelled when they disclose their financial interests up front. This is why I find myself putting a lot of trust in Bob’s insights and opinions. My aim in asking about this isn’t to identify who is “right” (Bob or Pawluk), but just to better understand how many folks–even those who are clearly well-meaning and have both extensive experience and insight–might come to embrace (and later defend) less-than-empirically-verifiable arguments.
I know you’ve spoken to these dynamics before, Bob (I’ve really enjoyed listening to those talks, and they’ve been SO helpful–so thank you!), so I completely understand if you’ve already shared all you’d like to share about this point. I’d of course love to hear any updates to your thinking on these matters, and would also love to hear others’ opinions, too. As a user of these technologies, trying to sift through the sea of conveniently-distorted “facts” is quite time-consuming and confusing, but I find it really helpful when I can understand HOW/why folks might be making arguments that don’t align with the (verifiable/repeatable/transparent) scientific research.
I’m genuinely enthralled by PEMF/ICES technology itself but also find it to be such a fascinating (and important) case study of the politics of (scientific/medical) knowledge production. Granted, I’m superbly biased about that and know others might not in any way share that interest–so again, I’m happy to remove this post if it’s not a good fit for this forum:)
In my opinion, this kind of post is perfectly reasonable for this forum. Philosophically, it addresses the issue of how we know what we know and how people formulate their opinions about it. This relates directly to PEMF and many other issues of importance.
I’d like to start by saying that I’ve known Bill Pawluk for about a decade and have a lot of respect for him personally and professionally. Unfortunately, we live in a time where people think that intellectual disagreements are the basis for the justification for uncertainty, contempt and derision. It turns out however that all of the most enlightened periods of humanity, across all times and cultures, has been the result of a healthy attitude toward debate, disagreement, and the rational path toward consensus. I do not want to debate this, it is historical fact.
So, I am happy to cheerfully disagree with my friends and colleagues, and I am very happy to consider evidence in support of their opinions if they conflict with mine, and I will be happy to change my opinion when an error of fact or judgement is brought to my attention.
This being said, I have explained (with ever-increasing mountains of evidence) in public as well as privately to Bill and others, that the key parameters for PEMF are not “Gauss” and “frequency”. Those are secondary to the primary parameters. This is a nuanced argument. It is like asking which is more important: speed, distance, or time?
Well, they are all related by a single equation (d = r t), and which is more important depends on what you are talking about. Given any two, the third can be calculated. But which is more important?
If you are trying to make it home on a gallon of gas, then distance is most important
If you want to get somewhere quickly, then speed is most important
If you want to finish listing to a song, then time is most important
But all three parameters are inextricably connected.
Now consider PEMF. The relationships between variables are not just simple algebra. They involve complex calculus and differential equations. Also, we do not know the molecular mechanisms of what is happening with PEMF, so we do not know exactly what is doing what. And human sensitivity to PEMF varies. Importantly, people have different expectations and needs. Many people want to “feel something” from PEMF, and they want it once and done in 10-15 minutes. These people will generally gravitate to the “more power” explanations.
But the fact is that all of the variables and parameters are interwoven. Higher amplitude pulses generally (but not always) leads to higher dB/dt (the key PEMF parameter), so people will naturally assume that more power = better PEMF. But more is not always better, and this approach leads to horrible electro-magnetic inefficiency (like, on the order of 99.8% inefficiency).
So, why does Bill not see the strength of my arguments about PEMF parameters?
He may:
1- simply disagree (I am fine with that)
2- find them too complex (his background is not in the hard sciences)
3- find them inconvenient from a marketing perspective. People will pay a lot for power, but generally not for subtlety.
I like Bill, so I will give him the benefit of the doubt.
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I’m sorry for my awful delay, Bob. It seems that in addition to your PEMF-related wisdom, I might also benefit from your ways of juggling many things at once in “the academy” and elsewhere!
And thanks so much for this thoughtful reply. It was quite helpful–it seems to me like so many unnecessarily contentious debates come down to a (usually unspoken/unrecognized) difference in what one is truly trying to do (e.g., trying to make it home on a gallon of gas, to get somewhere quickly, etc.).
Understanding how these different perspectives arise is really helpful in getting the general “lay of the land” – so thank you again!