Oh boy, Rife machines.
First of all, my apologies to
CFS_for_19_years, who tried to get this thread back on track.
(Note: thread is now split--the original discussion is here.) I just thought that the earlier discussion of Rife machines would be incomplete without a little more information from someone who has used one of these machines extensively.
I will report only on what I know; this includes very little of the political history, as I didn't find it very relevant to me.
First of all, there is no single "Rife Machine" today. The machine that Royal Rife built was eventually banned (I believe by the FDA), and even today it and all related machines are considered "illegal medical devices". By the time of Rife's death, his machine had fallen into disrepair, and only a few parts remained. So none of the Rife machines available today work exactly like Royal Rife's machine, as the operating principles of that machine have been lost. (Note: I just discovered
this site, which claims to have used existing parts and schematics to rebuild the original Rife machine. I haven't had time to read much here, but I haven't found anything outrageous so far.)
I came across Rife machines in the Yahoo groups when I was trying to figure out whether I had Lyme disease or ME. While reading the posts there, it was clear that whatever I did have, these machines were working very well for people, and should be useful for either disease. In general, throughout my illness, I have not waited for peer-reviewed studies to be published, as the information about the treatments in these studies is usually available years before these studies happen, if they happen at all. This is why, in 2001, before Valcyte was available, I took a seven-week course of IV ganciclovir (the active metabolite of Valcyte). Ganciclovir had been used a lot with AIDS patients, but there were some nasty side effects, such as people sometimes losing their kidneys.
I managed to talk to Nancy Klimas directly to get her views on this treatment. She strongly recommended against it, citing the known side effects she had seen in her AIDS patients, and recommended that I wait for the results of clinical trials. However, clinical trials weren't even planned at that point, and the first one by Dr. Montoya didn't take place until five years later. Meanwhile, I was going downhill really fast. The anecdotal reports I had seen ranged from mildly positive to essentially curative. I talked to one of the two doctors in the U.S. who was doing these treatments, and he said that he had never seen kidney or liver damage in any of his patients. He thought that this was because the individual organs tended to be healthier in ME patients than in very sick AIDS patients. He did occasionally see neutropenia, but he said that this was easily reversed with a brief respite from the treatment.
So yes, I realized there was some risk of losing my kidneys (although kidney function tests were performed daily during the treatment), but at the rate I was failing, it soon wouldn't matter whether my kidneys survived or not. So I took the seven-week course, and almost got to the point where I could go back to work. My health has never declined to the point it was before that treatment.
Similarly, when I saw all the reports of people being helped by Rife machines on the Lyme boards (and I believe that there were at least hundreds of these reports), and no permanent ill effects, I decided to try Rife. I was having severe problems with my gut for the first time in my illness, and antibiotics, probiotics, and supplements just weren't cutting it.
Now there are all sorts of products that call themselves Rife machines. As for the quote:
Following convictions of Rife machine marketers for health fraud in Australia, a number of interested parties analyzed the devices’ components. The typical Rife machine appears to consist of a nine-volt battery with simple wiring, a switch, timer, and two short pieces of copper tubing.
Well, I can't say what's going on in Australia, but that's certainly not a "typical" Rife machine in the U.S. Such a machine could not conform to any of the general principles used in Rife machines. I have never seen this type of "Rife" machine.
If you want to learn about the different types of Rife machines that have actually helped people,
Lyme Disease and Rife Machines is the standard text. The author's grasp of physics is somewhat imperfect, but not too bad. Fortunately, he's not the one building the machines or using them.
A number of the books on Rife are complete nonsense, unfortunately. There are also a huge number of machines calling themselves "Rife" machines that are of questionable value. It's hard to do research in the field when use of these machines for treatment is banned.
As for whether these machines emit radio waves, well, some do and some don't. It depends on the type of machine. Some effective machines certainly do use waves in the radio frequency range, including the original Rife machine.
One of the two Rife machines I have is an advanced
Doug Coil Machine, named after the eponymous Doug, who cured himself of Lyme disease using a machine built along these principles. I don't know how much you can tell from the pictures on the site, but these machines are very high quality; they are built by a former NASA engineer who used one to cure himself of Lyme disease. Now he makes a living selling these machines. And whereas a typical microwave oven uses 1100 watts, this machine uses 1500 watts, so it is certainly not underpowered. I calculated that the strength of the magnetic field delivered to the target area of the body by the electromagnets is about 2% of that of an MRI machine. Consider that MRI machines require a liquid helium coolant (and often liquid nitrogen as well), this machine is extraordinarily efficient; the magnets are cooled sufficiently by a couple of small fans.
Although the magnets aren't strong enough to snap metal out of your hands, the dozen times or so that I've forgotten to take off my watch before using the machine, the watch always stopped. (I was always able to revive it.) Recently, I was doing a treatment around my belly when I felt my belly getting very warm. Investigating, I found that my metal belt buckle wasn't centered, and was actually within a couple of inches of one of the magnets. When I touched it, I almost burned my finger. After the treatment, I examined my belt, and found that the part under the buckle had been completely burned. I had to throw the belt away.
OK, so these are powerful magnets. But what about the results?
The whole machine was a big gamble, but fortunately it worked out very well. It takes a while to build up to the therapeutic treatment length; if you go too fast, you can make yourself quite ill for a while. So I took it slowly, and my gut started to quiet down, as long as I remained on the antibiotics, Within a year, I was able to eliminate one antibiotic, and then the other. Eventually, I was able to move the Rife treatment from once every four days to "as needed", which isn't very often.
Sometimes when I did the earlier treatments, my whole GI tract would be making rumbling and splashing and gurgling and various other noises. When I turned the magnets toward my stomach, these sounds would stop within seconds. This happened many times. I no longer get those sounds.
One of the times I was talking with Alex (the builder of my Rife machine), he mentioned that there was some evidence that this type of Rife machine also worked as an immune system booster. He said that once Doug had cured himself of Lyme disease (remember Doug?), he would use the machine about once every six months, and he never came down with any colds or other infections.
Well, my immune system could certainly use a boost. It had crashed completely in 2001, and although I was able to jump start it with pulsed Valcyte, it clearly still had a lot of problems. For example, over the next eight years, I came down with pneumonia five times.
But by the fifth time, I was well into my Rife treatment, and that last case of pneumonia was rather mild. It was also the last case I had, and that's now five years ago. In the intervening five years, I've had no colds, no cases of the flu, no other new infections. But the old ones are still there - they make themselves evident from time to time. It would seem that the Th1 side of my immune system is still problematic.
Starting shortly after the beginning of my illness, like many men with ME, I started developing prostate problems, which gradually got worse until they were like those of an 80-year-old-man. (I'll spare you the details.) By the middle of my Rife treatment, all these problems had almost completely disappeared, and my prostate was actually doing a lot better than average for a man of my age. This was completely unexpected. Now, if my prostate starts to act up at all, I just use one Rife treatment, and it's immediately back to normal.
That was an unexpected bonus. I had never heard of people using Rife machines to treat chronic prostatitis.
Finally, rather recently, I discovered that I had taken Ritchie Shoemaker's
Visual Contrast Sensitivity test twice back in 2005. The two numbers were almost identical - 52% and 54%, respectively. That's a strong positive for neurotoxins. I noticed I still had one test left, so I took it. This time I scored 91% - a clear negative. Was this due to the Rife machine? I have no idea. But apparently I've been doing something right.
What about using the Rife machine for all my other ME symptoms? I've certainly tried, but so far I've not had success. The whole key to proper Rife treatment is knowing which frequency or frequencies to use. (Interestingly, Royal Rife's frequencies are used these days in a number of laser therapy protocols.)
The standard book for Rife frequencies, which includes much more than Rife's original frequencies, is
The Handbook of Rife Frequency Healing. It's got frequencies for every illness known to man, which in itself is rather suspicious, especially since there's no documentation as to where these frequencies came from, how they were determined and tested, etc. (In contrast, Rife himself has a modest list of frequencies.) I've tried various frequencies from this book (including the ones for "CFS"), but they seem ineffective. Additionally, the textual part of this book is utter nonsense; it ignores all medicine developed in the last two hundred years, distorts the scientific method completely, etc. So overall, I think the book is worthless, despite its 4.7 out of 5 stars at Amazon. (I just noticed that a new copy of the paperback edition of this book is selling for $486.80. That's more than ten times what I paid for it! Her other books on Rife are "only" $134 dollars each.)
As for where I got the frequencies that work so well for me, these came from Doug, who determined them experimentally; they're in the
Lyme Disease and Rife Machines book.
So where does that leave me? I haven't given up on getting further relief from ME, but there are about 2000 frequencies available on my machine, and some may need to be used in combination. So I don't have any firm leads in that area right now.
What about cancer treatments? I have no idea. Theoretically, there's no reason why that would be impossible, as cancer cells are different from normal cells, and certain frequencies might be able to exploit this difference. The ability of the Rife machine to boost the immune system could also be helpful here. I just don't know enough personally to say one way or the other. These machines have benefited enough people, though, that I think serious research (at least on the best of them) is warranted.
What about the theory behind these machines? Unlike many forms of alternative medicine, these machines are based on standard, known physics. Pulsing electromagnetic fields affect living cells; this is how MRI machines work. After all, they're
Magnetic
Resonance Imaging machines. Just like Rife machines, they make the cells of the body vibrate. The difference is that a Rife machine makes certain cells vibrate by using a resonance that's fatal to them. As for being able to destroy certain cells,
this post by
Hip gives one example, and once the principle is demonstrated, it would seem unlikely that that would be the only example. Doug also determined his frequencies by seeing which ones killed bacteria
in vitro. So these machines don't come into conflict with known science, or require any new forces; they are simply based on a phenomenon that has already been scientifically demonstrated under various circumstances. What their potential is has yet to be fully demonstrated, but further research should clarify this. In the mean time, I am quite happy with my Rife machine, as it has benefited me greatly in many ways.
