Involvement of Cervical Muscle Lesions and Autonomic Nervous System in Myalgic Encephalomyelitis / Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (ME/CFS)

[pattismith]

@sb4
I do agree cervical instability and bad neck position play a role in my own disease.
I notice that if I stop my neck exercises for a while, I feel much worse.
The goal of it is mainly to stretch my cervical spine without any device, without tucking.

-by muscle contraction (yes you can activate some muscle in order to stretch your cervical spine and push the top of your head to the sky, while pushing your shoulders down). No tucking.
(it's not me in either pictures...I wish it would)

-

-by muscle relaxation and passive stretching with head weight

 

[Rufous McKinney]

(it's not me in either pictures...I wish it would)

may I comment that my neck is about 1/3 the length of that dancer person.

I don't even understand where this concept that the neck curves, even comes from?

 

[Learner1]

I don't even understand where this concept that the neck curves, even comes from?

 

[lenora]

View attachment 42377

It should be noted that any of these defects may be located higher or lower than what is shown. Thanks for the photos. Yours, Lenora.

 

[frozenborderline]

Wow, 56% ME/CFS recovery rate is a pretty spectacular result — if the study is to be believed. They had no control group, so very hard to interpret this recovery rate figure.



The paper is not very clear on how long the patients had ME/CFS. If they only had ME/CFS symptoms for a short time of a few months, they could be just post-viral fatigue patients, who tend to recover on their own anyway.


Some quotes from the study:



So it sounds like the ME/CFS patients were fairly severe, if they required hospitalization. Unless that is, they hospitalize anyone with refractory fatigue in Japan as a matter of course.





So they are suggesting that neck and shoulder muscle stiffness could be causing or contributing to ME/CFS. And thus this is why they are using electric current therapy devices and far infrared heat to relax these tense neck muscles.





Well my neck and shoulder muscles are certainly tense, so I might try this therapy on my muscles.



Here they detail the low-frequency electrical stimulation therapy in more detail:


The study says they employed a combination of two low-frequency electrical stimulation procedures: the Silver Spike Point from Nihon Medix, and the Pain Topra LCF-30 from Celcom (which looks similar to this product).

I cannot find much information about exactly what type of low-frequency electrical stimulation these two products deliver, but looking at their specifications, the current they deliver goes up to around 50 mA.



In terms of trying to replicate the electrical stimulation to relax neck and shoulder muscles, I believe TENS machines (transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation), microcurrent therapy and EMS machines (electrical muscle stimulation) can all help relax tense and stiff muscles.

Which one of these three machines is best, I am not sure at the moment.

A) seems like they knew about cci if they were suggesting cervical traction ,even to mention in a differential as something that they DIDN'T do. So is the cci /mechanical hypothesis known about in Japan ?


B) I'm currently using frequency specific microcurrent bc of Robert Beckers work but also more specifically the post by Mallory tomaros on how she cured her tethered cord AnD cci with a combo of fsm , enzymes for the tethered cord , and then peptides for the cci. It was one of those things that seemed kinda out there but I'd already read enough of Beckers work to know that microcurrent can achieve regenerative effects. But in his work the microcurrent were going to electrodes in the bone or cartilage inside people , not on the skin, and they were left in , flowing, for very long periods of time. Do we have much evidence that connects his work from limb regeneration and his book the body electric to how fsm is actually used in practice and what frequencies are good, etc etc etc. It would be interesting for someone to look into that, bc that was certainly groundbreaking work at the time. If a true panacea exists , electromedicine. Could be that, but there's so many quacks in the field that aren't going based on the science like that and just give u zappy machines and go wild , they don't know what the best frequencies are, they haven't looked at a single study.

With severe ME, it's hard to study this in detail.

 

[Bowser]

This study is pretty fascinating. I am doing targeted neck exercises for the scalenes, trapezius, and other muscles. They are extremely weak and stiff and if I overdo them I get significantly worse.

I have ordered an ICES-PEMF machine by Dr. Robert G Dennis to try out on my neck and thoracic outlet. This should mimic or be even better than the electrical stimulation used in this study while being far less invasive. I've been reading about this device since 2017 and I finally ordered it.

 

[Bowser]

I think the overemphasis on stiffness per se in this study is misguided. The muscles are probably weak, and the stiffness comes as a result of tremendous weakness. The muscles are likely so weak that they are fibrotic. So the electrical stimulation helps to treat the fibrosis and allow the muscles to regain a normal level of strength.

 

[Flnn]

This study is pretty fascinating. I am doing targeted neck exercises for the scalenes, trapezius, and other muscles. They are extremely weak and stiff and if I overdo them I get significantly worse.

I have ordered an ICES-PEMF machine by Dr. Robert G Dennis to try out on my neck and thoracic outlet. This should mimic or be even better than the electrical stimulation used in this study while being far less invasive. I've been reading about this device since 2017 and I finally ordered it.

I have tried ICES-PEMF many years ago but it did not helped me personally at all... maybe it will help you! Let us know how it goes...

 

[Bowser]

I have tried ICES-PEMF many years ago but it did not helped me personally at all... maybe it will help you! Let us know how it goes...

Oh. Did you try it on your neck? I will be sure to let you guys know how it works for me.

Most importantly, I don't expect the device to do wonders for me in isolation. But if I combine it with the neck strength exercises (which I'm struggling a lot with), it should help with reducing post-exercise inflammation and speed up recovery times, allowing me to do the exercises more frequently and easily. That's my theory, anyway.

 

[Hip]

I'm currently using frequency specific microcurrent bc of Robert Beckers

This guy on PR said he cured his moderate ME/CFS using a Bob Beck blood electrifier.

 

[lenora]

Gosh, years ago I bought some lights for therapy (yes, they were used even then). I finally decided that all they did was tighten the muscles and make them worse. For me, ice can work as a relaxing agent, although really relaxing is almost impossible for me, even with meditation and other types of exercise.

I'm all for people giving things a non-invasive try though....if every other avenue has been exhausted, then go for it.

I wish I could post the old MRI of my neck. Pretty impressive, sadly it's mine. (Medical personnel were clustered everywhere...not a good feeling). I can't even imagine the degree it is today...and why find out? I'd say those pictures (thanks for posting them, though) dont' even give an accurate portrayal of the degrees some of us are living with. I'm certainly not having rod surgery at this age, but younger ones may look into it....although doctors have to be aware of things like Syringomyelia, Arnold-Chiari Malformation and of course, CCI. You can't just go to your standard neurosurgeon. Please don't!!

But give other things a chance....so many changes are now out there. As always, some will be good while others not so. Just step back, think about it carefully and do what you think best. Best wishes....Yours, Lenora.

 

[lenora]

Oh. Did you try it on your neck? I will be sure to let you guys know how it works for me.

Most importantly, I don't expect the device to do wonders for me in isolation. But if I combine it with the neck strength exercises (which I'm struggling a lot with), it should help with reducing post-exercise inflammation and speed up recovery times, allowing me to do the exercises more frequently and easily. That's my theory, anyway.

Just be very careful that you don't add to the inflammation already present. Trying is good, but overdoing it is downright dangerous.

Try icing it afterwards to help ward off some of the inflammation. I would personally recommend the Ace ice packs as they're not hard as nails, will fit over the area you want and you can just put a tea cloth under them (as they're fabric covered). They may help. 15 min., probably less on the neck area. Yours, Lenora.

 

[Flnn]

Oh. Did you try it on your neck? I will be sure to let you guys know how it works for me.

I haven't tried it on my neck...

 

[Bowser]

I haven't tried it on my neck...

Oh I see. Perhaps you can try it again if you still have the device. I believe the site of application is pretty important.

 

[Bowser]

This guy on PR said he cured his moderate ME/CFS using a Bob Beck blood electrifier.

Since we are on the topic of microcurrents, here is an interesting community post from Dr. Robert G Dennis, inventor of ICES PEMF, comparing microcurrents to PEMF.

https://forum.fluxhealth.co/t/difference-between-micro-current-to-pemf/1352/2?u=bowser

I am quoting the entire post below:

The simplest and most practical answer is that magnetic pulses work much better (by a factor of 1,000 or more) than microcurrent when stimulating living tissues. Magnetic pulses deliver much more consistent stimulation to much larger areas of tissue much more consistently than microcurrent possibly can.

More technical details:

Electromagnetism is a single force in nature that combines electricity and magnetism, these two aspects interact and change from one to the other and back, and depending on exactly how it is expressed in nature, people can easily confuse the two. But this does not mean that at any moment, electricity is the same thing as magnetism. Really, to understand this, you need several years of intensive study. Unfortunately this is not one of those things you can pick up on a quick google search or wikipedia.

So, we would need to look at it in a very simplified way. Maybe this will clarify it for you:

Microcurrent is electricity. It needs to be conducted, along something like a wire, and it is blocked by insulators like glass, plastic, and dry skin. Electricity can conduct through wet living tissues, but it takes a complex path of least resistance.

Magnetism behaves quite differently: it can easily pass through most insulators like dry skin, but when passing through conductors, if the magnetism changes, the conductor will resist that change in magnetism by generating what is known as an eddy current. Here are some pictures that might help you visualize it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eddy_current

Microcurrent stimulators may or may not reach the tissues you want because they wander around based on the conductance of the tissues. Magnetic fields pretty much penetrate all of the tissues where they can reach, so when you change the magnetic field (a magnetic pulse is a changing magnetic field), it induces electric fields everywhere within the magnetic field, thus stimulating all of the tissues you are targeting.

So, if you calculate it, magnetic pulses are about 1,000 to 10,000 times more efficient at delivering microcurrents than the simple application of direct microcurrent.

 

[Hip]

post from Dr. Robert G Dennis, inventor of ICES PEMF, comparing microcurrents to PEMF

In the above quote, Dr Dennis is comparing microcurrent therapy to magnetic field pulse therapy.

A changing or pulsed magnetic field will cause an electric current to flow in a conducting material, like a piece of metal, or in this case the body tissues. That is called magnetic induction: the changing magnetic field induces an electric current to flow.

For example, if you have an induction hob for cooking food, it is a changing magnetic field under the saucepans which cause an electric current to flow in the metal of the saucepans, which in turn, heats up the saucepan.

 

[Flnn]

Oh I see. Perhaps you can try it again if you still have the device. I believe the site of application is pretty important.

Yes, the only problem is that I don't have the device anymore! I have sent it back a long time ago and received a refund! Maybe it will work for you...looking forward to hearing about your experience with it...