Shifting the Pain Paradigm

Electrotherapy has intrigued naturalist physicians for almost 2,000 years. In 46 A.D., Scribonius Largus described how an electric ray was used to treat both headaches and painful gout. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, electrotherapy peaked in popularity. It was claimed to cure virtually every conceivable symptom or illness. The Bakken Library in Minneapolis has a magnificent collection of devices, some as large as a room, all claiming in their day to cure virtually everything.

The Electreat

Ultimately, only one of the popular devices survived the witch hunt of the Flexner Report:, the Electreat, patented in 1919 by C. W. Kent, a naturopath from Peoria, Illinois. The device remained on the market through the 1940s, despite intense attack by the FDA and rejection by the medical profession.

In 1951, my father suffered from a painful facial paralysis called Bell’s palsy. Unsuccessfully treated by several physicians, he consulted a chiropractor who prescribed an Electreat. The device provided him with relief from the pain, and full recovery. In 1960, when I had neck and arm pain from a ruptured cervical disc, my father gave me his Electreat. Because of its somewhat clumsy design and my lack of insight into its potential, I barely used it. However, I was impressed by the many claims of its curative power and the machine’s peculiar ability to pass an electrical current from one person to another.

Then, a seemingly inconsequential event in 1963 brought the Electreat back into my awareness. Dr. William Collins, a neurosurgeon, left Western Reserve University, where both of us were on the faculty, and moved to Virginia. He had begun studying pain physiology before I arrived at the university. As a joke, I presented him with the Electreat at his going-away party. Together, we laughed at the snake-oil design of its internal electrode and electric comb. In 1965, Pat Wall of MIT introduced his concept of the spinal gate as the physiological mechanism for pain. He demonstrated that the smallest “C” nerve fibers enter the spinal cord with pain information and may there be blocked by input over the largest Beta fibers, which modulate or regulate pain input. This “gate” also can be closed by descending nerve fibers from the brain. I wondered if the Electreat was having its effects by closing that gate. I talked to Dr. Collins, but he had discarded my gift. Yet I discovered that the Electreat was still being produced in Peoria, and I acquired one.

The Dorsal Column Stimulator

In 1965, I introduced the concept of dorsal column stimulation, proving the value of electrical stimulation of the spinal cord’s dorsal columns to suppress pain. In April 1967, modern electrotherapy became a reality. I surgically implanted a battery-powered Dorsal Column Stimulator (DCS) into a man who was terminally ill with widespread cancer; and his pain was totally controlled.

Dorsal column stimulation worked well over the next eight years in 75 percent of my patients with chronic pain. Alas, there are risks involved, and the long-term benefits are not significant enough

Shifting the Pain Paradigm

for me to recommend it to most patients with non-cancer pain. Meanwhile, however, nonsurgical tools had been developed that are equally effective in masking chronic pain in at least 85 percent of patients.

The First Modern TENS

I continued to use the Electreat in my practice. At first, I used it to demonstrate the feeling of electrical stimulation to patients who were to receive a DCS. Later, it was used in treatment. From the outset of my electrotherapy study, I was convinced that external surface or skin stimulation would be applicable at least 1,000 times as often as dorsal column stimulation.

As early as 1967, I had encouraged Medtronic design engineers, who had manufactured my Dorsal Column Stimulator, to produce a modern solid-state Electreat. Medtronic refused because they focused on implanted devices; they were the originators of the cardiac pacemaker.

In the early 1970s, Norman Hagfors, a Medtronic design engineer who had worked on my invention, left Medtronic to establish a new company, Stim-Tech, Inc. Before long, he purchased the Electreat Company and moved it to Minnesota. The Electreat continued to be manufactured until 1993. Stim-Tech introduced the first solid-state modern skin stimulator, also called the Stim-Tech. The initial large box (approximately a foot square and four inches thick) emitted a pulsed, square wave. I believed this could not be as effective as the spike-type pulsed waves of the Electreat, and with my urging, Medtronic produced a much smaller device with a spiked wave.

In the three decades since the introduction of this early device, a plethora of TENS (Transcutaneous Electrical Nerve Stimulator) devices flooded the market. However, they never penetrated mass- market consciousness or received a single marketing “push” from a pharmaceutical company. Today, a company called Empi is the major producer of TENS units. Each year, an estimated 100,000 TENS units are sold, with an annual revenue of $100 million. TENS devices relieve approximately 50 percent of chronic pain adequately. Of the 50 million sufferers in the United States, probably only 2 percent have chosen this treatment—although it’s the safest pain reliever ever introduced.

I had always insisted that modern TENS machines could not measure up to the effectiveness of an Electreat. Though their pulsations were often somewhat more pleasant, the waves neither penetrated nor traveled nearly as extensively through the body. The whole picture became apparent only in 1994, after I discovered GigaTENS. Now, four decades after my first explorations, I have been able to redesign a device that puts out the frequencies of the old Electreat, but in a modern package, with modern electrodes and controls. The SheLi TENS is the first device I’ve allowed to use my name. I believe that the energy of the SheLi TENS comes as close as we can get to mobilizing the body’s chi with electrotherapy.

Cranial Electrical Stimulation

In 1975, before the FDA placed restrictions on medical devices, Dr. Saul Liss, a medical engineer, introduced his TENS device. Initially called the Pain Suppressor, it was later redesigned and renamed the Liss Body Stimulator and another model was called the Liss Cranial Electrical Stimulator. The machine did not impress me on first try because it emitted only 4 milliamps of current, which generally is lower than sensory perception. When Saul made me a 10 milliamp unit, though, I had to admit it was too strong.

By chance, I touched one of the electrodes to my forehead about 10:30 one night. It evoked a sensation of flickering lights. For the next hour, I experimented with the machine in various positions. No matter where on the cranial vault one or both of the electrodes were placed, I saw a visual flicker. The flicker was there even with one electrode on top of my head and the other on my foot.

I went to bed about 11:30 P.M. and awoke at 2:30 A.M., unable to sleep any longer because of marked increased energy and alertness.

A few months later my associate, Dr. James Kwako, and I both applied this device transcranially at 8:00 A.M. for forty-five minutes. Four hours later my blood serotonin level had increased to five times the upper limit of normal, and Dr. Kwako’s had doubled.

Dr. Kwako and I decided to try Saul’s device on patients with depression. The first patient, from Florida, had been depressed for sixteen years. Remarkably, an hour of transcranial stimulation completely relieved his depression in just one day. Unfortunately, he insisted on returning home to Florida with no more treatments; within one week, his depression returned.

These two findings—serotonin elevation and the relief of depression—motivated me to study the Liss Body Stimulator further. Serotonin is one of the body’s most important neurochemicals, involved in mood regulation, sleep and pain. Serotonin-modulating drugs have been extensively studied for the treatment of depression, as well as for migraine headaches.

I treated seventy-five patients with chronic pain with the Liss machine. Forty percent of them had a serotonin deficiency, while the other 40 percent had excessive serotonin. They received an hour a day of treatment with the Liss device for two weeks, after which their serotonin levels were tested again. Analysis revealed that, in 80 percent of the group, serotonin output was now normal. Their self- reported mood swings had also abated.

I determined that when the Liss unit was used transcranially, it relieved depression in 50 percent of chronically depressed patients who had failed to respond earlier to one or more antidepressant drugs. More recently, we have found that photostimulation, education and vibratory music also relieve depression in 58 percent of chronically depressed patients. But when we combine the two approaches, using a Liss device along with photostimulation, education and vibratory music, a striking 85 percent of patients come out of depression. With no further therapy, 70 percent remain free of depression three to six months later. At this point, we recommend continued use of the Liss Cranial Stimulator, Shealy Series (modified to allow one hour of therapy) once or twice a week after the initial daily treatment program.

The Liss device used transcranially is also remarkably helpful in treating insomnia and in overcoming jet lag. It has enhancing effects on beta endorphin, the natural “feel good” narcotic, as well as upon serotonin. DHEA production is enhanced when the Liss unit is applied to a specific pattern of acupuncture points. There may be a variety of other uses as well.

I believe that every household should have a TENS device. Unfortunately, purchase of a TENS requires a prescription. Most physicians know virtually nothing about the benefits this device can provide. Because no pharmaceutical company sponsors the TENS, it is likely to continue to be underused unless patients insist that their physicians prescribe it.

GigaTENS

In December 1992, Saul Liss and I were invited to visit Kiev, in the Ukraine, to study a device called the MRT (Microwave Resonance Therapy). According to the hosting quantum physicists, they had discovered this approach twelve years earlier. They said they had learned that

• Human DNA resonates at 54 to 78 billion cycles-per-second (gigahertz);
• Animal DNA resonates at 47 gigahertz;
• Plant DNA resonates at 42 gigahertz.

Furthermore, they reported curing 50 percent of narcotic addicts, 92 percent of alcoholics, and more than 80 percent of patients with rheumatoid arthritis when applying 54 to 78 gigahertz at one-billionth of a watt to selected acupuncture points. More than 200,000 patients had been treated with the MRT. Therapy usually lasted a total of thirty minutes per day, five days per week, for two weeks, with remission or a cure occurring for up to two years.

The physicians were treating virtually every illness with MRT, from angina pectoris to diabetes to osteomyelitis (chronic infections of bone). No complications from this therapy were reported.

Liss and I, working with two Ukrainian physicists, redesigned the device to use in clinical situations. We call the device the GigaTENS and have verified this technology’s benefits. Striking pain relief is realized in 70 percent of patients with rheumatoid arthritis for whom conventional drug therapy has failed. Pain relief and some neurological improvement are seen in 80 percent of patients with diabetic neuropathy. GigaTENS improves 50 percent of patients with chronic back pain or depression. GigaTENS therapy appears to be one of the most versatile, safe and effective therapies known to date.

Now that the equipment to test giga-frequencies was available, in the summer of 1994, I tested my old favorite, the Electreat. It became clear why I have always preferred the Electreat—it puts out a giga-frequency. Amazingly, C. W. Kent had marketed a prototype of GigaTENS in 1919. Considering the experience of the Ukrainian physicians, perhaps Dr. Kent was right in some of his elaborate claims.

Dr. William Tiller, a S