Soul Medicine by Dawson Church

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Soul Medicine

by Dawson Church

 

 

The following is chapter 14 from Dawson Church's brand new book called

" Soul Medicine " which he co-authored with Norman Shealy, M.D., Ph.D.

 

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