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Interferential current therapy via electroacupuncture: significant benefits / recovery from ME/CFS

CFS_for_19_years

Hoarder of biscuits
Messages
2,396
Location
USA
Acupuncture Heals Chronic Fatigue Syndrome...
Lol.......

this is equivalent to saying, warts die off

if you rub a raw partially skinned potato on them

then bury it in your backyard

Well then maybe their peer-reviewed journals have different standards for what they report.

How long should I rub with the potato?:)
 

Tired of being sick

Senior Member
Messages
565
Location
Western PA USA
How is acupuncture going to help

Orthostatic Intolerance?
Motor Disturbances?
Overload phenomena?
ADD?
Post-Exertional Malaise and Fatigue?
autonomic manifestations?:
Immune dysfunction?
Non slow wave or refreshing sleep?
Severe sleep apnea?
RLS?
Neuroendocrine Manifestations?
GHD?
VERY Low T?
hypersensitivities to light, sound motion, odors?
Informational overload with inability to multi-task?
Motor overload, with staggering and weakness?
breathing dysregulation?
●shortness of breath?
●intestinal irregularities?
●irritable bowel syndrome?
●diarrhea?
●constipation?
●alternating diarrhea and constipation?
●abdominal cramps?
●bloating?
●nausea?
●pain in lower abdomen?
POTS?

All of which are common CFS disorders
 

CFS_for_19_years

Hoarder of biscuits
Messages
2,396
Location
USA
How is acupuncture going to help

Orthostatic Intolerance?
Motor Disturbances?
Overload phenomena?
ADD?
Post-Exertional Malaise and Fatigue?
autonomic manifestations?:
Immune dysfunction?
Non slow wave or refreshing sleep?
Severe sleep apnea?
RLS?
Neuroendocrine Manifestations?
GHD?
VERY Low T?
hypersensitivities to light, sound motion, odors?
Informational overload with inability to multi-task?
Motor overload, with staggering and weakness?
breathing dysregulation
●shortness of breath?
●intestinal irregularities?
●irritable bowel syndrome?
●diarrhea?
●constipation?
●alternating diarrhea and constipation?
●abdominal cramps?
●bloating?
●nausea?
●pain in lower abdomen

All of which are common CFS disorders

You would need to attend a school of acupuncture to understand how it all works. Training and education for becoming a licensed acupuncturist is rigorous and intense. Can't be done through Google University. It's equivalent to becoming a medical doctor.
 

MeSci

ME/CFS since 1995; activity level 6?
Messages
8,231
Location
Cornwall, UK
The equipment produces two alternating currents of slightly differing medium frequency and is used widely to induce analgesia, elicit muscle contraction, modify the activity of the autonomic system, promote healing, and reduce oedema.

I don't want to elicit muscle contraction. They do that too much already!
 

MeSci

ME/CFS since 1995; activity level 6?
Messages
8,231
Location
Cornwall, UK
You would need to attend a school of acupuncture to understand how it all works. Training and education for becoming a licensed acupuncturist is rigorous and intense. Can't be done through Google University. It's equivalent to becoming a medical doctor.

But the processes (can't think of the word I'm looking for!) and effects of medical treatment can be explained. You don't need medical training to understand that. A bit of science background helps, but most things can be explained in lay terms.
 

Tired of being sick

Senior Member
Messages
565
Location
Western PA USA
You would need to attend a school of acupuncture to understand how it all works. Training and education for becoming a licensed acupuncturist is rigorous and intense. Can't be done through Google University. It's equivalent to becoming a medical doctor.
Cancer is easier to cure/treat than CFS ME,

for the fact there is no cure for CFS ME

with 95+% of the medical industry ignoring/ridiculing CFS ME

and your telling me that acupuncture can cure CFS ME

in which an acupuncturist knows absolutely nothing about

Do acupuncturists specialize in snake charming as well?
 

CFS_for_19_years

Hoarder of biscuits
Messages
2,396
Location
USA
But the processes (can't think of the word I'm looking for!) and effects of medical treatment can be explained. You don't need medical training to understand that. A bit of science background helps, but most things can be explained in lay terms.

Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) uses terms that would be unfamiliar to Westerners:
http://www.acupuncture.com/education/diagnosis/diagmethods.htm

I remember when a disability insurance provider requested my records from the clinic where I was receiving acupuncture. The receptionist and I laughed and laughed. For one things the records were in Chinese, and if they could get a translator I doubt they would know how to comprehend such things as: "Indicates xu and cold syndromes or symptoms due to yang qi deficiency and insufficiency of qi and blood."
 

CFS_for_19_years

Hoarder of biscuits
Messages
2,396
Location
USA
Cancer is easier to cure/treat than CFS ME,

for the fact there is no cure for CFS ME

with 95+% of the medical industry ignoring/ridiculing CFS ME

and your telling me that acupuncture can cure CFS ME

in which an acupuncturist knows absolutely nothing about

Do acupuncturists specialize in snake charming as well?

Veterinarians with training in acupuncture treat animals with acupuncture. Only a licensed veterinarian can apply the acupuncture; a licensed acupuncturist with no veterinary license cannot.
 

PennyIA

Senior Member
Messages
728
Location
Iowa
Because many (most?) of us were extremely active, running circles around "normal" people prior to illness, I have to wonder if the same genes that render us susceptible to ME/CFS also make us somewhat immune to normal fatigue prior to our illness? Perhaps our systems were never "normal"?

I never really got tired prior to being struck ill. I never sat down to "rest". I worked like a farmhand, limited only by time and not by energy. Thoughts???.

I did experience fatigue... pre-illness. Obviously, nothing like I do today. But I wonder if you aren't right to a point?

1. I was a single mom
2. I worked two jobs
3. I was under a ton of stress
4. My house was never spot-less, but it was clean and lived in and well-cared for.
5. I slept well
6. I routinely exercised
7. I ate 'ok' - some veggies (not enough) and probably a bit too much junk
8. Ambitious and always willing to take on the next challenge at home or work - be it solving complex problems in the office to doing electrical wiring or plumbing by myself

I was tired every day. But not so tired that it ever limited the things I would want to go do.

And I would wake up totally refreshed and able to take on the next challenge.

So, I think I experienced normal fatigue prior to getting ill... but maybe it was because of all the stress I was under? I do know that some of my closest friends were always amazed at all the things I would do and would comment on it.
 

CFS_for_19_years

Hoarder of biscuits
Messages
2,396
Location
USA
Here's another study with positive results that included a control group:
Acupuncture for chronic fatigue syndrome: a randomized, sham-controlled trial with single-blinded design.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23981369

Altern Ther Health Med. 2013 Jul-Aug;19(4):21-6
Abstract
CONTEXT:
Given that the etiology of chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) is believed to be multidimensional, interventions generally have been nonspecific and typically produce only mild to moderate effects. In medical practice, treatment for CFS remains largely symptomatic. Preliminary evidence of the efficacy of acupuncture for CFS is available, but the field has lacked high-quality trials.

OBJECTIVE:
The research team conducted the study to determine the efficacy of acupuncture for CFS.

DESIGN:
A two-arm, randomized, controlled, singleblinded design was adopted.

SETTING:
The study took place in a teaching laboratory at the School of Chinese Medicine at the University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China.

PARTICIPANTS:
Recruited through press publicity in Hong Kong, 127 individuals--40 men and 87 women--participated in the study. Intervention Through careful implementation of sham acupuncture in the control group (CG), the study blinded all participants with regard to their experimental or control status. The treatment regime was 2 sessions/wk for 4 consecutive wk.

OUTCOME MEASURES:
Measures of fatigue (Chalder's Fatigue Scale), health-related quality of life (SF-12), and general mental health (GH Q-12) were taken at baseline and upon completion of treatment.

RESULTS:
Ninety-nine participants completed the interventions, with 50 and 49 participants in the experimental group (EG) and CG respectively. Repeated measures ANOVA revealed a significant decrease in physical (F(1,93) = 4.327; P = .040) and mental fatigue (F(1,96) = 10.451; P = .002) and improvement in the physical component score of SF-12 (F(1,93) = 4.774; P = .031). Considerable effects with Cohen's d were observed in the sham-control group: 0.92, 0.78, and 0.38 for the three scores, respectively. These positive effects could have included some therapeutic effects due to pressure on the acupuncture points from the sham needles in addition to normal placebo effects. The EG showed moderate net effect sizes with Cohen's d: 0.52, 0.63, and 0.54 for the three outcome measures, respectively.

CONCLUSION:
Despite considerable positive effects for the CG, the EG demonstrated significant net-effect sizes at a moderate magnitude in physical and mental fatigue and in the physical component of health-related quality of life. The impacts on general mental health outcomes appeared to be smaller.
 

Hip

Senior Member
Messages
17,820
Note that the 2014 study discussed in this thread is not really about the benefits of electro-acupuncture for ME/CFS, because even in the control group of this study, electro-acupunture was given.

Rather, this 2014 study is about the benefits of using interferential current therapy (ICT), applied via the acupuncture needles, over and above the benefits of straight electro-acupuncture. The study shows that twice as many ME/CFS patients recovered (by their definition/measurement of recovery) from ME/CFS using ICT, compared to the number that recovered using just straight electro-acupuncture. So it shows that ICT-type electro-acupuncture is twice as effective as normal electro-acupuncture.

However, the fact that the study claimed a 20% recovery rate even from electro-acupuncture alone does seem rather odd and exaggerated. If any therapy could really achieve a 20% recovery rate for ME/CFS, people would be singing about it from the rooftops. Nevertheless, although we may need to tone down the hype of this study, ICT may still be a useful ME/CFS treatment, which might provide some welcome reductions in ME/CFS symptoms.



One point though: I wonder whether the good results found in this 2014 study might be due to an intensive use of electro-acupuncture / ICT, because in the study the treatment was given every day. And in another 2011 Chinese study on acupuncture which also found benefit for ME/CFS, the patients were given acupuncture once daily for 4 weeks, except on weekends. And this 2013 acupuncture study gave acupuncture two or three times per week, for 4 weeks. So they do seem to use acupuncture quite intensively when they give it in China.

I imagine if any of us here have tried acupuncture, we probably only went for one session per week (no doubt in part due to the costs). Anyone done acupuncture here? How many times a week did you go?
 
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SOC

Senior Member
Messages
7,849
Moderator note:
The thread 'Acupuncture Heals Chronic Fatigue Syndrome...' has been merged into this thread
 

cigana

Senior Member
Messages
1,095
Location
UK
Anyone done acupuncture here? How many times a week did you go?
Yeah once a week due to the cost.
I personally got no benefit, but of course there could be many reasons for that (wrong practitioner, not frequent enough, wrong points punctured etc.).
 

ukxmrv

Senior Member
Messages
4,413
Location
London
I had accupunture 3 times during the course of ME. The last being for pain after an accident. The first being for hayfever, the second for ME.

It did help with the pain but took a long time to take effect. The previous 2 attempts (weekly for 4 months plus) had no effect on my ME or hayfever symptoms.

The ME acupuncture was electro-acupunture but it was so long ago that I couldn't describe it very well.
 

Hip

Senior Member
Messages
17,820
I personally got no benefit, but of course there could be many reasons for that (wrong practitioner, not frequent enough, wrong points punctured etc.)

The 2014 ICT study discussed in this thread used the acupunture points located around the spine in the middle part of the back: the two electrodes of the first ICT channel were connected between the Xinshu (BL 15) area and and the Shenshu (BL 23) area, so that the electric current runs vertically alone the spine between these two areas. (The two electrodes of the second ICT channel were connected between the two trapezius muscles on either side of the upper back, so that the electric current runs horizontally across the back between these two muscles.)

And the 2011 study mentioned above used a similar area of the back: the back-shu acupunture points: Xinshu (BL 15), Pishu (BL 20), etc.

So it would seem that acupuncture on the mid back region, around the spine, is a good for ME/CFS.


Names of Acupuncture Points on the Back
986017EB52F042DABC904F7DEDF1B5C1.jpg

 
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zzz

Senior Member
Messages
675
Location
Oregon
A few points about the equipment used: If you look at the original article, you will see that the electro-acupuncture and the interferential current therapy are delivered by two different machines, used at different times. The G6805 is not an interferential current therapy machine - it's just a standard electro-acupuncture machine. According to the article,
A stereo dynamic interferential electrotherapy device, model LDG-2 (Japan), was used for the ICT.
This model is no longer available, but when it was, it was $920.

There are different versions of the G6805 made by a wide variety of Chinese companies (or a wide variety of Chinese shell companies with one parent company), and they all look basically the same. They all have the K808-I model number on them, which seems to indicate that they're really the same machine. This is the machine used in the trial. I decided to buy mine from Amazon (yes, I'm doing this), as these units have been known to break, and the specific one I selected at Amazon has an unusually long 3-year warranty. (Amazon also sells various other clones of this machine.) Amazon is also very good about dealing with defective products.

As for the ICT, you can spend anywhere from about $80 to thousands of dollars on one. The best value, and the one with the most users and positive reviews that I found, is the InTENSity Select Combo at TensPros.com. It sells for $99.95; that's close to the price of the cheapest unit, but this one has a lot more features, which may be needed for the treatment. It comes with 1" pads, but all the reviews I read that mentioned these pads said that they were too small, and that you should get the 2" pads instead. You can do this on the product page by selecting the drop-down "Electrodes" box; I chose the ten-pack of the Premium Pads for an additional $19.50.

You can also get 5% off your order by using the "5off" code, which is the best available right now.

And of course anyone who is going to do this is going to need acupuncture needles. I've been using the Cloud & Dragon brand for years and have always been happy with them. Now the study used 30G needles (..30 mm) that were 40 mm (1.5") long; the standard needles I use are 32G (.25 mm) and 1" long. I find that the slightly narrower needles go in a little easier, and I've always found them to work fine. The 1" size needle is easier to work with than the 1.5" needle, and I don't see any indication in the study that you'd need more than one inch. You can get a box of 500 of these needles here (you pick the size on the page). The needles also come in boxes of 100, but if you're really doing this, you'll want the larger size. And 500 needles are only $16.

Finally, you'll need to know where to stick the needles. There are of course many guides on the Internet; I find the PDF booklet Atlas of Acupuncture Points quite helpful.

More will be coming soon, where I'll describe my personal experience with this and why I think it may help a lot of people, but it's almost 7 a.m. here, so I really should get to bed. Ah, the wonders of sleep reversal.
 

Hip

Senior Member
Messages
17,820
A few points about the equipment used: If you look at the original article, you will see that the electro-acupuncture and the interferential current therapy are delivered by two different machines, used at different times. The G6805 is not an interferential current therapy machine - it's just a standard electro-acupuncture machine.

Thanks for pointing that out, @zzz. I must have misread the study when I erroneously stated that G6805 was the interferential current therapy machine. But as you point out, the G6805 was only used for the standard electro-acupuncture in the study.


Make You Own Interferential Current Therapy Machine for Free

By the way, anyone who wants to try this interferential current therapy (ICT) for free, it would be very quick and easy to make your own interferential current therapy machine using just a computer and a HiFi amplifier.

You'd need to download some free tone generating software (such as Audio ToolBox for the Mac) so that your computer can generate the two frequencies used in ICT machines. I believe in the study, they set the first ICT frequency to 4800 Hz, and the second frequency to 5200 Hz. So to create your two ICT frequencies, all you have to do is set the left stereo channel of the tone generator software to 4800 Hz, and the right stereo channel to 5200 Hz.

Then you'd need to run an audio lead from your computer's headphone socket to one of the HiFi amplifier's input sockets at the back (eg: the CD input socket), so that your HiFi amp can amplify the signal coming from your computer. With this setup, once you turn on your amplifier, the left speaker output terminals will be producing the 4800 Hz frequency, and these terminals are your first ICT channel; likewise, the right speaker output terminals will be producing the 5200 Hz frequency, and these terminals are your second ICT channel.

The output voltage of the speaker terminals of a HiFi amplifier is typically around 0 to 20 volts (depending on where you set the volume knob), which is a similar voltage to TENS machines and ICT machines. Of course, don't create a short circuit across your speaker output terminals, or else you may blow the transistors in your HiFi.

I am going to use my HiFi amp to create an ICT machine in this manner.


More will be coming soon, where I'll describe my personal experience with this and why I think it may help a lot of people, but it's almost 7 a.m. here, so I really should get to bed. Ah, the wonders of sleep reversal.

Looking forward to hearing your results, zzz.
 
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