If you can provide a schema of the basic electrical circuitry used in spark vs. solid state PEMFs that would be greatly appreciated. I took a couple EE courses in college and never encountered a “spark gap” voltage generator.
The reason you never heard about spark gap technology in any of your electrical engineering courses is the same reason that you will not learn how to make fire by rubbing sticks together in a modern cooking course. For many reasons, we have moved far beyond those levels of technology.
I am not saying that there is anything inherently wrong with rubbing sticks together to make a fire. Unlike spark gap technology, rubbing sticks together generates no harmful RFI, for example. I myself learned how to make fire by friction using dry sticks about 30 years ago. Its kind of fun, if you have an afternoon to screw around. But I do assert that it would be marketing fraud to try to sell people a fire starting system for $5,000 just because it uses ‘new’ Tribo-Twig Technology!! (“tribo-” means ‘friction’).
Providing a schema of spark gap: Well, it is something you can easily look up on an Internet search. But studying the basic schematic alone will not tell you the practical aspects/limitations of spark gap technology, nor will it offer any secrets about how it may or may not interact with a biological system. And I have other plans for the day, aside from looking backward more than a century to explain a technology that for many reasons has been largely abandoned by generations past. But you can find a lot of information about spark gaps if you want to sift through websites on that sort of thing. Just try searching terms like “spark gap generator circuit”, or “spark gap oscillator circuit”.
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Hi Bob, my friends use PEMF in their clinic and I was wondering on your thoughts on the high powered units. I use the A9, M1 personally and the Matrix Pulse in my clinic and have Electrical Hypersensitivity (EHS) myself and the only thing that keeps me out of pain and other major symptoms are your products. And with Matrix Repatterning treatment we use the power level that causes the most softening/relaxation of the tissues. I think using high powered can be detrimental depending on the individual? This is the product they use:
“We upgraded from the PMT 120 to the Pulse Pro device from Pulse Centers. It has the benefit of separate individual controls for pulses per second and intensity. The gauss level is higher, as is the cost. We really like it and are seeing some impressive results with a wide variety of issues. If you are considering using or purchasing either one, the PMT is still a great machine, but the Pulse Center models are definitely the BEST available.”
I would love your thoughts on this model. I have used it and turning up the intensity causes the entire limb to contract, probably not good for my EHS but that was before I realized I was affected.
On another note, I have all the EMF protection devices from https://www.airestech.com/store/ but I believe they say not to use them together with PEMF devices. I almost always have my A9 or M1 on myself, does this cancel out the effectiveness of your products?
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Well, honestly it is very difficult to make specific statements about any commercial PEMF devices, because the numbers they state in their sales documents are generally off by a factor of 10x to 100x. Also, these devices tend to have very poor quality control and are usually not calibrated to any standard, so it would be necessary to check and measure a sample device from each and every production batch to be able to say anything specific or accurate about most PEMF devices, at least from a technical perspective.
That being said, about the only thing to go on is the comments from people you trust, who have extensive experience with any particular PEMF device, and what their experiences were with it.
From what I hear from clinicians who I think are reliable and thoughtful, the PMT-120 was a pretty good device in its time. And the Pulse Centers is, by most accounts, somewhat better. Most people may feel this way because they can “feel it more” when they use a device from Pulse Centers. Several of my closest friends think the Pulse Centers devices are excellent, and they assure me that they get very good results.
So, based entirely upon unsolicited comments from trusted friends and colleagues, I would guess that Pulse Centers makes a pretty good device. It may be over-powered from what I hear, but this is one of their most effective selling points.
But one thing is for sure: they are not better because you are paying more. You are paying more because Pulse Centers is highly focused on marketing and sales. The majority of what you are paying for is marketing, not science or engineering.
But that does not mean that it is a bad product. It seems to help a lot of people. And I think the biological mechanisms of action of high-power PEMF are different from low-power PEMF, and people are definitely willing to pay more to feel more.
When I surveyed about 140 clinicians about 2 years ago, about 2/3 of them said that they observed that a combined treatment gave the best long-term health outcome. From my survey, and many side discussions, I would summarize the best way to get a very good clinical outcome from PEMF is something like this:
High-power PEMF:
Two or three 15 to 20 minute treatments each week for several weeks.
Low-power PEMF: Treat every day for 30 minutes to 4 hours or more if possible. Plan to do this during the initial period of high-power PEMF treatment, then carry on with low-power PEMF treatment for an additional 3 to 6 weeks or more, for best long-term results.
EMF (RFI) Protection Devices:
The first issue to consider is whether or not any particular device actually works. Faraday-shielding type devices, if properly designed and used, can shield against a lot of RFI. But many products are sold with false claims, notably any of the products that claim to send out “cancelling waves”, or anything that claims to emit an invisible shield against RFI. In my opinion, such devices are not technically possible. And based on my direct tests, they not only DO NOT shield against RFI, but they add significant RFI noise. To save their market, they claim that it is a proven technology… anyone can see for themselves by just using noise-canceling headphones, for example.
But there are many technical reasons why noise-canceling headphones can work (though many do not), while these RFI shielding emitters simply can not work, because they do not have the same physical conditions and requirements of noise-cancelling headphones. One way to see this for yourself: No one sells a product where you just sit in a chair, flip a switch, and cancel all the sound noise in a room. That is not possible, you can’t even fake it, so no one sells a product that claims to do this. Noise cancellation (more correctly, destructive wave summation) only works in very limited volumes of space where you have full phase and propagation vector information for the noise. This works reasonably well for volumes of space about the size of an eardrum, where all the sound is directed into one spot from essentially the same direction. But for a whole body, in open space, with broad spectrum RFI from all directions… not a chance.
So, whether these devices work, or not, depends on a lot of factors, including whether they are even theoretically possible (most are not), and then whether or not they are well designed and properly used.
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Thanks Bob for all your expertise. The neighbours units were $20,000 and upgraded to new unit was $40,000. Like you say, people think more expensive is always better. I’m skeptical that high power is better as well.
Most of what you pay for with these things is multiple layers of marketers. These types of devices could be built and sold at a profit for less than 1/10th of what they charge the consumer. But typically everyone in the marketing and sales loop gets a $500-$1000 cut for each sale. They don’t spend any of that on real science or advanced engineering. I have been asked to consult for several of these companies: not one of them has a scientist or engineer on staff. Out of sheer frustration, I asked an overseas company to tell me who on their staff had any knowledge of their technology for a similar product. After some research, they told me their entire staff was comprised of:
managers: 3 people
sales and marketing: 22 people
… and only one junior level, part-time technician to fix broken stuff.
And in my opinion, this was one of the better companies.
That is what you are paying for when you spend that much.
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would it be feasible to build a higher quality, high powered pemf device to complement your low powered devices? it’d be great to just purchase from one trusted source for high powered pemf as well as what we are already getting from you for low powered.
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This is a very reasonable question, and I do get this request a lot, so let me share my thoughts on this.
Up until now, I have not really worked on high powered PEMF for several reasons:
1- Based on my testing and experience over the past ~ 20 years, I think that low-powered PEMF is what works best for most people. By this I mean that it has the best long-term clinical outcomes. About 95% of people really benefit most from low-power PEMF from what I can tell. There are people who need more, but I think my efforts best serve the largest majority of people by focusing on low-power, safe, efficient, portable PEMF.
2- High-power comes with greater inherent danger. In the vast majority of cases, it is my scientific opinion that the added risk does not come with sufficient benefit.
3- I have already had an impact on both the cost and quality of a large segment of the high-power PEMF market by simply telling the truth and also making available low-power, much lower cost PEMF. This has really cut into their bloated profits, and some of their most outrageous medical claims. Several marketers of high-cost PEMF products have accosted me at scientific meetings to tell me that I have “destroyed their market”. Plus, most PEMF marketers have been forced to tell a bit more of the truth, for example, you do not see nearly as many false claims about NASA “proving” PEMF, and that only their products were based on this NASA research (this was on every PEMF marketing page up until about 10 years ago when I reported this fraud and started exposing their misinformation). And the price of many of the intermediate-level PEMF systems has dropped sharply over the past decade, largely due (I think) to the competition from my reasonably-priced, truth-based systems. So I think in this way I have helped clean up the high-powered PEMF market without needing to manufacture one myself.
4- Unlike other high-power PEMF manufacturers who almost uniformly buy or pirate systems designed in Eastern Europe in the 1970-1980’s, I would need to research, scientifically test, and basically figure out the science of high-powered PEMF from the ground up. This would cost me 2 or 3 million dollars and would dominate my time for about a decade. I would not be able to spend my time on the many important things I am doing now, to chase after something that would cost me a fortune, that I would never be able to justify financially.
5- Entering the high-power PEMF market would place me in direct competition on their well-established markets, trying to sell truth-based projects in a market filled with lies, misinformation, and fraud. Any examination of current politics or social media will make it blazingly clear to you that fraud and lies and misinformation have a huge advantage these days. It only takes a low-integrity marketer about 30 seconds and costs them nothing to make a false claim about some miraculous cure, whereas it would cost me a fortune (about the cost of an average house) and years (or decades) to simply demonstrate the truth of the matter. I might even consider trying this crusade for Truth, if only the general public actually had a strong majority of people who valued complex truth over simple lies. But that is not the world we live in. So I can not destroy my current progress, and scorch my future, to tilt at windmills and fight a fight for people who will not believe the truth when laid bare before them, at great effort and personal expense.
My opinion on this matter might change, but it would depend on some fundamental changes to our current reality, or at least my understanding of it.
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point #5 is so true… i have seen people who aren’t familiar with you or your work scoff at your tech and explanations on some of your posts bc they’re so invested in their 10s of thousands of $ pemf systems…
ok, thanks for sharing. i better understand where you’re coming from.
Bob, when I randomly found you a few years ago, you were promoting the M1. What came across was your honesty, no frills, legitimate knowledge of your product and good intentions. I’m glad I purchased the M1 back then and have purchased more products I enjoy.
I’m not tech savvy and don’t know what “high-power PEMF” are. What is an example of this high power vs your unit? Thank you for sharing.
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There are many, and they come and go, some quickly, some linger in the market for years, so I will not make specific comparisons using brand names, but rather I will offer general guidelines that can be applied to these devices as they come and go, and as they morph into other guises in an attempt to appear "new’ or cutting edge.
“High-Power PEMF” is basically any PEMF system that must be plugged into a wall outlet to line voltage (~ 115 VAC) to operate. These systems tend to be physically large and typically cost from $5,000 to $50,000. They use a lot of voltage (115 Volts or more) and electrical power (typically > 100 Watts).
ICES-PEMF is powered at 5 Volts or less, and generally emits half a Watt, but usually much less. So, compared to “High-Power PEMF” systems, ICES-PEMF is much gentler and has benefits that are similar or better, but only using about 1/200th the power.
Again, I am not saying that “high-power PEMF” systems do not confer clinical benefits. I am saying that they are vastly over-priced and highly inefficient (typically 99.8% inefficient), and therefore radiate a lot of electromagnetic energy (much of it in the “dirty” RFI spectrum) that has no detectable biological benefit and might actually be dangerous. And the marketers of these systems tend to make a lot of fraudulent claims. They will literally claim anything in order to win a sale.
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Dr Pawluk mentions intensity as being an important factor for reaching deeper into the body. Yet from what I understand some of the less powerful matts are using a carrier wave to permeate deeper then the magnetic wave form can based on gauss on its own. Have you heard of this as a delivery system for pemf and can you comment on it?
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Well, it gets pretty complicated mathematically because there is some calculus involved, but generally the steady, unchanging component of the magnetism does not seem to have reliable biological effects (some people disagree, but they have failed to produce a convincing argument or data)
It is the changing part of the magnetic field that matters when it comes to eliciting biological responses. And what really matters is how fast it changes (dB/dt).
But the intensity of the magnetic field is the mathematical product of how fast it is changing, and how long it is changing:
I = dB/dt * t
This is the same as saying that the distance a car travels depends on its speed and how long it drives:
distance = rate multiplied by time (d = r * t)
Keeping in mind that magnetic fields drop off very quickly (~ 1/r^3)
To get the rate of change you need (dB/dt) for a biological effect, you need to quickly achieve a very high magnetic field intensity. As you get farther from the magnetic coils, this gets harder and harder to do.
Therefore, to produce a magnetic pulse with sufficient rate of change (dB/dt) to induce a biological effect, for deeper tissues (farther away from the coils) it is necessary to have very high peak magnetic intensity.
So, it is not that you need high magnetic intensity per se, rather you need to achieve sufficient magnetic field change rate for sufficient time, and the mathematical byproduct of that is the need for a high peak magnetic intensity to reach larger distances from the magnetic coils.
But the use of “carrier waves” to get magnetic fields to penetrate to deeper tissues makes the assumption that it is the peak magnetic field that matters, which is in my opinion incorrect. It is my scientific opinion that this technique is used (or it is just claimed to be used, after all, how would you really know for sure) as a way to attempt to give technical credibility to a PEMF system that has demonstrated that it actually does not work well for deep tissues.
I have done some experiments with this, and with fixed magnets (very powerful ones), and in no case did I see any enhancement of effects by adding either steady or carrier magnetic waves.
I have also never seen any reliable scientific report of the use of carrier waves to enhance the effectiveness of PEMF in any experimental system.
So, I could be wrong, but I think the use (or the claim) of carrier waves is just wishful thinking or deceptive marketing on the part of some PEMF manufacturers.
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Thank you for the reply. I found it interesting since I had seen carrier waves referred to on a couple PEMF devices as well as Rife and Nano VI device. Did not really understand how they could be using a carrier wave to implement effect. Nano VI seems to be using light frequency to effect I am guessing water into the “4th Stage” to be inhaled, but they mention a carrier wave in the range that is an ol CB bandwidth. It is interesting to hear the different marketing of products and theories.
Thank you for your input and advice.
Hello! I bought a ICES M1 and these days I’m reading a book called “Power Tools for Health” to understand more about the underlying mechanism and how PEMF therapy works. Reading the book it seems two things are very important: a trapezoidal wave and dB/dT. I’d like to know if the ICES M1 has the trapezoidal wave and what is the dB/dT and how it compares with other manufacturers! Thanks a lot!
It is really the core ICES-PEMF technology that forms the basis for that understanding described in the book and in many recent PEMF products. So, it is the book that reflects recent PEMF research and the technology in ICES-PEMF: the technology is built-in to our technology, and the book describes it.
The book was written by William Pawluk MD. Bill is a friend and colleague of mine, and he is the recognized global clinical expert on the medical uses of PEMF. But he is not a scientist. For about the past 12 years I have been sharing the results of my research with Bill. He had been mired in the confusing swamp of disinformation and false marketing claims about how PEMF works. There had also been some good scientific evidence in support of the Faraday Induction mechanism of PEMF (the theory that emphasizes dB/dt and trapezoidal waveforms) since 1968, but it had been lost in the noise surrounding PEMF technologies. Since then the electro-magnetic induction-based theory of PEMF was very strongly supported by my research for NASA-JSC and DARPA in the mid 1990’s and early 2000’s.
https://www.josam.org/josam/article/view/5
https://www.josam.org/josam/article/view/27
Briefly, I think it is fair to say that Bill Pawluk emphasized trapezoidal waveform shape and dB/dt in his book because of my explanation to him of the physics of that mechanism (Faraday Induction), and the fact that he pointed out many times that from his clinical perspective ICES-PEMF technology (which is based on that theory of operation) was vastly superior to other forms of PEMF that had been available since about 1975. (much more efficient and clinically effective).
So, it is fair to say that trapezoidal waveforms and dB/dt are in Bill Pawluk’s excellent book because of his understanding of the ICES-PEMF technology that I have been developing, and not the other way around. In recent years the other competing theories of PEMF have fallen to the wayside, since the science does not really support them as reliable and effective. As a result, many other manufacturers, including Bill’s PEMF company, have recently started using the inductive-based technology that I developed for ICES-PEMF since my work for NASA in 1996-1998.
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Thank you for the reply, it was very helpful! I have one last question: what’s your take on intensity? From what I could understand the magnetic field is less and less strong the more distance it has to travel from the point of contact…so for deep tissues it seems higher intensity is better. I use it primarily in my brain and gut…would the ICES be able to reach deep tissues (such as the hypothalamus) the same as a more powerful PEMF device?
Intensity of magnetic fields does drop off very rapidly; in general it will be 1/r^3 to 1/r^4.
To reach the deepest tissues, try using our Deep Field Coils if you have a model C5 or B5, or use stacked coils if you have an M1 or A9.
Optionally, with ICES-PEMF you can use coils on opposite sides (bumpy sides away from the skin) of the area to be stimulated, which also greatly increases the magnetic field penetration distance.
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Do you have a round about depth that the two coils when stacked will reach with the A9 vs the deepest coils you talk about using the c5? Curious the depth penetration vs the two and if I should invest in a c5
The driver circuit for the model M1 is identical to each channel (of four) on the model C5. And generally, when you double the number of coils that are synchronized and properly stacked, the depth for any given pulse intensity increases by about 60%. So, if you double stack the coils on a model C5 you will get two the depth as a pair of stacked coils on an M1. And if you properly stack all four pairs of coils on the C5 you will get about a 120% depth increase (a bit more than double) compared to a pair of coils stacked on the M1. This is based on direct measurements, not just theory or calculation.
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