Fibromyalgia Studied With PEMF Pulsed ElectroMagnetic Fields Therapy
Fibromyalgia is a chronic brain problem. It’s more than that clearly, but it’s a chronic pain brain problem. What initiates it? It’s very hard to know. We know that there’s a lot of association between fibromyalgia and viruses and other toxic molecules that have gotten into the nervous system of the body. Genetics probably plays a big part in it. Down the road, as the problem continues, you end up with a chronic pain brain. I should mention that one of the discussions that we had in the summit was about something called the brain gauge.
Dr. Mark Tommerdahl and I are going to be collaborating on using the brain gauge to help people with their chronic pain. Using the brain gauge, you’ll be able to monitor the impact of the treatment that you have on your chronic pain and how it has affected your brain. You’ll be able to see the amount of effect that you’re having in your brain as a baseline, and then monitor the effectiveness over time. On drpawluk.com – we don’t have this yet, so you’ll have to keep an eye on our website – we will be offering the brain gauge to people who are purchasing some PEMF systems for the chronic pain to be able to have you monitor the effectiveness of your treatments to your brain.
Certainly, one of the recommendations that we’ll be making is that you do treat your brain. So even though your pain is in your elbow, or your shoulder, if it’s been there for a long time it’s affecting your brain. We want to be able to quiet the brain down, so the signals from your shoulder, for example, going into your brain will be lessened in terms of the way the brain perceives it.
If you do a search on brain gauge or listen to the summit presentation with Dr. Mark Tommerdahl, you’ll be able to get more information about the brain gauge. We’ll be getting that program going for you in the next two to three months, probably.
Fibromyalgia is one of those conditions that the brain gauge would be very, very useful for. You can purchase it or you can rent it. You could even do it today. You don’t even need to wait till we have our own program. It’s up to you.
So, again, I would treat fibromyalgia in the brain. I treat it in the upper body. Fibromyalgia is also a condition that you probably need to have a stronger PEMF device. All of the systems that are under five gauss are probably not strong enough. They could fool your brain. It’s important to fool your brain. It’s important to lessen the pain, no doubt about it. But you don’t get a long term benefit from doing that, just like you don’t get a long term benefit from using painkillers.
Painkillers are good in the short term, but not in the long term. But we know by the opioid crisis where we become dependent on them and then we try to withdraw from it, it makes everything worse, including the pain that you had before. So our goal is to try to heal the part of the body that’s causing the problem, and to heal the brain, the inflammatory components, that are making the physical changes in the brain over time. We want to be able to deal with all of that. So we want to treat the shoulder to get rid of the original source of the problem, and we also want to be able to treat the brain to decrease inflammation and quiet the brain down. Combining the treatments becomes important and having the right intensity of the magnetic field becomes important.
So, you really can’t go cheap on this. You really have to think of this as an investment that you’re going to be able to use for a long time. Going to somebody for treatment is going to give you benefits, but how long does it last? Rarely does it last more than a few hours. If it does, maybe it might last for a day or two, then it’s going to be back. How much money do you want to keep pouring down that funnel to keep going to somebody to get treatment? What you really need is to be owning your own system.
I think getting treatment with doctors or chiropractors or other people who own PEMF systems is important. I have a lot of people coming to me who have realized they get benefit from these systems. But they say I know I’m going to have to lay out $70, $100, $150 every time I have a treatment session. Eventually, it’s going to add up, right? And you’ve made an investment in those treatments, but you have nothing to show for it, and the problem is still there.
So basically what I’m exhorting you to do is to think about getting your own system. As a family physician and a holistic physician, I’ve always wanted people to take care of themselves. I tell my patients routinely, I am not your doctor, you are your doctor, I’m your consultant. You have to take care of yourself. You have to make wise decisions about your own health. You can’t rely on somebody else to fix you. And I’m sure because you’re listening to this webinar, you’re not one of those people who’s relying on somebody to fix them. It’d be nice if you could, right? If you have a needle in your hand or a nail in your hand, obviously you fix yourself, you remove it. But not all chronic pain problems are that easy to fix. So again, take care of yourself, be your own best doctor, and consider getting yourself your own system and investing in the summit, the VIP series.
So, fibromyalgia, it’s long term. You have to think of this as a long, long, long, long term process. I wish I could say that you can get a benefit like that overnight. Well, that rarely happens, because you have to heal the tissues. Healing takes time. If you break a bone, it takes time to heal that bone, to make new bone, to repair the bone completely. You can use it fairly quickly, but it takes a long time to repair it completely. And the same thing applies to the brain and fibromyalgia.
Studies:
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Sutbeyaz, S. T., Sezer, N., Koseoglu, F., & Kibar, S. (2009) In this randomized, double-blind, sham-controlled clinical trial, the authors investigated the effects of PEMF on pain, functional status, and quality of life in patients with fibromyalgia. They found that patients who received PEMF therapy experienced significant improvements in pain relief, physical function, and overall quality of life compared to the sham group. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19920724/
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Lappin, M. S., Lawrie, F. W., Richards, T. L., & Kramer, E. D. (2003) This pilot study examined the effects of PEMF therapy on pain and sleep in patients with fibromyalgia. The authors reported that patients who received PEMF therapy experienced a reduction in pain intensity and an improvement in sleep quality.
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Pomytkin, I. A., Zhivolupov, S. A., & Razvodovsky, Y. E. (2009) In this study, the authors investigated the effects of PEMF therapy on the severity of fibromyalgia symptoms and the functional state of the central nervous system in a group of patients with fibromyalgia. They found that PEMF treatment led to improvements in the patients' overall clinical condition and functional state.