TENS therapy
Using weak electrical currents for pain-relief and healing.
TENS (Transcutaneous Electrical Nerve Stimulation) has been used in medical and allied health fields for almost 40 years, especially for pain relief. The small electrical currents directly interfere with the pain sensation by overriding the natural nerve electrical signals, which are weaker and of shorter duration.
The signals generated by the pain receptors cease being transmitted once the TENS currents override them. TENS pain therapy is now widely used for acute pain relief (eg post-operation, trauma, dental) and for chronic pain relief (eg various forms of arthritis and old injuries).
Many years of experience with TENS therapy has shown that not only is this method effective against pain relief, but regular use actually helps in the healing of the damaged tissues and joints. For example, bone fractures heal faster with TENS.
A TENS equipment typically consists of a small battery-operated unit with two adhesive electrodes applied to the area that requires pain relief or treatment. The current is adjustable in amplitude (strength) and frequency (duration between electrical pulses) and patients can self-regulate for ideal results.
The therapy is safe and simple. Affordable portable units are easily available in many health shops.
Since micro-currents (very low intensity) are also known to improve skin health, this therapy is also used in beauty salons as a rejuvenation method. It is not only used for the face, but also for breast and body firming. There are also personal gadgets for these purposes.
Facial ageing is a result of three factors. The first is real ageing due to the ageing of your skin cells as a result of cumulative damage to the DNA and other cellular components, mainly by free radicals (from the sun, toxins, smoking, and by-products of normal metabolism). This is made worse by poor diet and lifestyle.
As you age, your skin will become thinner, drier, and less elastic. The face is wrinkled, with age spots, pigmentation, skin tags, and moles. There is loss of collagen, fat, elastin, hyaluronic acid, and water.
The skin surface loses its shine and becomes wrinkled. All these denote that your skin is not healthy. Since the skin is the largest organ, skin health is also a reflection of your overall health.
The second is facial sagging due to gravity. This does not make you less healthy, but makes you look older. However, healthier skin, which is thicker, firmer, better hydrated, and more elastic, can withstand the effects of gravity better, and will therefore sag less. Wrinkle folds between the nose and mouth (nasio-labial folds) and on the neck are due to sagging, made worse by real skin ageing.
The third is dynamic wrinkles, ie wrinkles formed by facial expressions. These typically form on the forehead, between the eyebrows (frown lines), lateral to the eyes (crows feet), at the top of the nose (bunny lines), and other parts of the face, depending on which muscles work during your habitual expressions.
They form over time as the muscles repeatedly pull the skin to form wrinkles after thousands of contractions over time. These will become more pronounced as the facial expressions continue, and as the skin ages and becomes less firm and elastic.
Finally, the wrinkles will become permanent (static wrinkles), since they remain even without any muscle movement. Like sagging, the dynamic wrinkles do not make you less healthy, but they make you look older.
Ageing skin will cause dynamic lines to form faster and become permanent earlier. These lines are more obvious in those who are more emotionally expressive, and in those with unhealthy skin.
For the face, micro-currents will improve skin health, giving it firmness and a healthy glow after long-term use (best if combined with anti-ageing hormones and adequate nutrition). The improved skin health can help reverse the sagging and dynamic lines as well.
The second way is by using a higher intensity current (TENS) to cause specific facial muscles to contract. Repeated contractions (passive exercise) of the mid-facial muscles can help regain the firmness that is lost through ageing.
Although there are effective facial exercise programmes being taught, to do such exercises is very difficult. It is much easier to use a TENS machine to do the exercise for you!
There are TENS gadgets available which are specific not only for facial exercises, but also for abdominal slimming and firming the thighs and buttocks.
TENS electro-acupuncture and herbal therapy
Scientific studies have shown these points to be windows of electrical permeability into the bodys electrical system, so there is a convergence between traditional Eastern wisdom and Western scientific knowledge. A combination of TENS and electro-acupuncture is an obvious development in the field of healing.
What surprised me is that there is even a gadget that includes a third component traditional Chinese herbs as part of the healing strategy. The herbs are infused in the adhesive pads to which the electrodes are attached. It is claimed that the electrical current improves the absorption of the ingredients into the skin, so you will benefit from all three components: the TENS effect, electro-acupuncture effect, and the herbs.
You need not memorise the acupuncture points to use the gadget as it comes with guidelines on where to attach the pads for most of the common problems. It is very convenient for relieving pain and stiffness anywhere in the body. Regular use may even cure some types of chronic pain.
SCENAR (Self Controlled Energo Neuro Adaptive Regulator) is a remarkable system that combines bio-feedback and therapy. It uses the bodys neural feedback mechanism to diagnose the nature and degree of electrical impediment that exists in the nerves supplying the affected body part, and then uses the information to automatically programme a series of increasingly intense electrical currents to gradually reverse the functional neural damage.
It is an intelligent, computer-modulated electro-therapeutic TENS machine with real-time biofeedback that is very effective in relieving pain, muscle problems, and nerve problems including those caused by stroke.
Like many other energy/electrical diagnosis and therapy systems, the SCENAR method was also developed by the Russians and used in their space programme as a simple and effective pain-relief and therapeutic method for their cosmonauts.
The therapist first assesses neural function over the entire body by detecting the neuro-electrical signals and electrical impedance over the corresponding neuro-dermal zones. Even if you think you are healthy, the SCENAR machine may indicate that your nerves may not be transmitting healthy neural signals.
Then, all the regions with high impedance (ie. poorer nerve signal transmission) are treated with the SCENAR until there is sufficient improvement in the neural signal transmission (proven afterward by improved impedance readings).
Since all the organs are served by nerves that connect to the respective neuro-dermal zones, the SCENAR diagnosis gives some indication of the wellbeing of your internal organs. High impedance in the absence of symptoms may mean that you are on the way to developing the symptoms, and correction of the problem with SCENAR may prevent symptoms from appearing.
When I tested the gadget, I was more anxious to see its effects on an old injury on some muscles of my right shoulder, which had become painful again whenever I execute certain movements. (I sprained the muscles while swimming sometime ago, and the pain recurred after some weight-training.)
Sure enough, the SCENAR detected very high impedance in the nerves supplying that area, and the therapy took sometime; the current intensity went up until my muscles contracted and caused discomfort. Even though there was some relief, it was obvious that I needed repeated sessions.
In such situations, the impedance readings do improve after each session, but is expected to rise again until repeated therapy sessions show longer-lasting relief.
When the impedance reading remains normal, then complete and lasting healing can be expected.
Some weeks ago, I over-exerted myself on the cross-trainer in the gym, and must have breached my cardiac energy reserve (more about this later) as I never quite recovered from that episode despite adequate rest.
Being someone who practices qigong, who tries to exercise regularly, and observes a healthy diet and supplementation regime, I dont usually get tired fast, but I noticed a difference after that over-exhaustion episode. In the evenings, I would get very tired and needed to rest.
Other than in my right shoulder, the SCENAR machine also detected several other areas of increased impedance, and the hour-long therapy session aimed to correct each and every one of these aberrations. I just slept through the therapy session and didnt think much about my heart as I was anxious to see its effect on my right shoulder.
It was only the next day that I realised that the SCENAR therapy session must have improved my heart condition, as I dont feel the evening fatigue anymore, and the uneasy feeling in the heart has disappeared for good.
While intense qigong practice or qigong therapy over many hours could have improved my condition, the SCENAR therapy did it in just one hour.
The SCENAR is a hand-held gadget that is placed over the area to be assessed or treated, even though this may be away from the actual damaged or painful body part. The areas assessed are over the entire spinal column, and on either side of the spine as well. The SCENAR then automatically gives the therapeutic programme (including duration of treatment), even though the experienced therapist may decide to do it manually.
This method is very versatile, but the therapist must be well-trained to give the ideal results. The method is used in many medical clinics and therapy centres worldwide, and the units for professional use are classified as medical equipment, requiring certified training before being granted to use for therapy. Fortunately, there are also simpler versions for home use, with instructions that are simple to follow.
Although its main use is in pain-relief and neuro-muscle problems, physicians and therapists have extended its use for headaches, exhaustion, depression, inflammation, and even impotence!
For anyone trying to recover from stroke, I recommend this method.
More source:
Transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation - Wikipedia, the free ...TENS and IDET Therapy for Back Pain Treatment
What is TENS Therapy?
TENS therapy: An option for fibromyalgia treatment? - MayoClinic.com
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Submited at Sunday, April 24th, 2011 at 1:00 am on Uncategorized by robert
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