Question:
CES for anxiety, depression, stress management insomnia, and addiction?
Answer:
The following article gives information on the use of
cranial electrotherapy stimulation, which can be applied
through the Alpha Stim 100 device, for treatment of anxiety,
depression, insomnia, and drug addiction: (I have no financial interest in the Alpha Stim 100.)
Cranial Electrotherapy, a Profound Alternative Therapy
ANXIETY & Cranial Electrotherapy
Cranial Electrotherapy Stimulation (CES) has been used as a
treatment for anxiety in several parts of the world for over
a quarter of a century. American medicine has only recently
begun to realize its use as a safe and effective treatment.
Studies show that Cranial Electrotherapy treatment yields
highly significant reductions in anxiety, whether the
patients were in a psychiatric setting, a scholastic
setting, an outpatient setting, or an in-patient general
hospital setting. Further, while many different kinds of
anxiety have been studied, as measured by the six different
psychological measuring instruments found in these studies,
they all responded significantly to CES treatment.
Less intense or less permanent forms of anxiety - the
so-called 'situational anxiety' in which a person habitually
responds to personally threatening events in his environment
with an anxiety reaction - respond to Cranial Electrotherapy
treatments within a week or less. The more permanent forms
of anxiety - the so-called trait anxiety, or that underlying
level of anxiety that a person typically carries with him at
all times - require a longer period of Cranial
Electrotherapy treatment. This kind of anxiety typically is
not reduced significantly in fewer than 2 or 3 weeks of
daily treatments.
DEPRESSION
Studies show that reactive depression (that which results
from acute changes in the patients life situation such as a
job change or divorce) is decreased after 6 days of Cranial
Electrotherapy treatment. More deep seated depression
(endogenous) in some cases required 3 or more weeks of daily
treatment. For this reason, many physicians routinely
prescribe a minimum of 2 weeks to a month of daily Cranial
Electrotherapy treatments in depressed patients, since it is
frequently difficult to gauge the type or depth of
depression with great accuracy.
Since many patients have a 'depression habit' physicians
should include a home CES unit in their treatment plan so
that the patient can meet any new sign of impending
depression with effective treatment and thereby break the
behavioral reinforcement chain that has both led to and
maintained the habit. In this way, a maladaptive habit can
be effectively controlled or broken without the use of
frequent medications and/or repeated visits to the
physician. Other research has shown that Cranial
Electrotherapy, when used this way is neither habit forming
nor addictive. Such patients use it only when they
experience an impending medical necessity.
INSOMNIA
Because Cranial Electrotherapy was originally called
'Electrosleep' in European countries, many earlier American
studies were designed to learn whether or not such small
amounts of electric currents would actually put people to
sleep. That is, just as 50ma of current - called
'electro-anaesthesia' - put an individual into anesthesia so
that surgical procedures could be performed, 1ma of Cranial
Electrotherapy current was assumed to put them into a normal
state of sleep if 'Electrosleep' worked.
Such studies discovered that while Cranial Electrotherapy
does not necessarily "put a person to sleep", it does
accomplish some very therapeutic changes in the sleep
patterns of people who complain of insomnia. The studies
below show that whether measured by the patient's own
ratings, psychiatrists ratings or by electroencephalograph
or polygraph recordings before and after Cranial
Electrotherapy treatments, the following effects of CES in
insomnia can be expected:
1. Sleep onset latency is reduced. That is, once a person
has retired for the evening, the amount of time it takes him
to actually fall asleep is reduced from one to two hours or
more to the more normal twenty minutes or less.
2. The number of awakenings during the night are reduced.
That is, while most insomniacs awaken three or more times
during the night and have difficulty falling asleep again,
those treated with Cranial Electrotherapy typically awaken
no more than once or twice following therapy, with most
reporting no awakenings. Furthermore, after awakening, they
return to sleep much more promptly than before.
3. Cranial Electrotherapy treated patients spend more time
in stage four sleep following CES treatments. That is,
patients spend more time in the deepest, most restful stage
of sleep than they did prior to Cranial Electrotherapy
treatment. It should be noted that some patients who have
deprived themselves of REM sleep - the stage during which
dreaming occurs - by taking drugs or alcohol as a sleeping
aid, sometimes spend the first two or three nights in
unusually vivid dream states when first starting CES
treatments. This is considered another indication of the
therapeutic effectiveness of Cranial Electrotherapy in that
persons are known to become increasingly disorganized
mentally, some even to the point of psychotic-like symptoms,
when they do not engage in the normal amount of dreaming.
4. Finally, it was discovered that many patients receiving
Cranial Electrotherapy treatments report feeling more rested
when they awaken in the morning following Cranial
Electrotherapy treatments.
Treatment parameters: While some patients begin to respond
after the second or third day of treatment, others do not
have their best response with fewer than 24 days of
treatments lasting from 15 minutes to 1 hour. The beneficial
effects have been measured in some experimental groups for
as long as two years. Some people with insomnia have a
habitual pattern of responding to situational stress with an
interruption in their sleep patterns. The best results are
obtained when Cranial Electrotherapy is used each time
unusual stressors occur in their life situations that would
ordinarily cause poor sleep. The Cranial Electrotherapy
device user is thereby trained over time to expect a good
night's sleep no matter what stressful interruptions
occurred in the normal flow of daily life.
ADDICTIONS
Foremost among the treatment problems among chemically
dependent persons is the need to help them through the
psychologically and physically demanding period of
withdrawal. The body reacts to the depressed physical state
engendered by alcohol and other drugs with a rebound stress
reaction. This reaction commonly includes states of extreme
anxiety, depression, and insomnia, for which Cranial
Electrotherapy treatment is known to be effective.
Underlying the addictive state is an insidious and
progressive destruction of normal brain functioning
including an often incapacitating memory loss, inability to
process information involving abstract symbols, and other
dysfunctions associated with the organic brain syndrome, and
advanced condition which is known as Korsakoff psychosis.
Studies on the use of Cranial Electrotherapy in chemical
dependencies are among the best controlled and well designed
research in the U.S. They indicate that Cranial
Electrotherapy is a highly effective adjunct to methadone
withdrawal in heroin addicts, significantly shortening the
time to symptom - free withdrawal when compared with
methadone alone, and significantly lowering withdrawal
anxiety as measured by the Taylor Manifest Anxiety Scale.
Further, the anxiety and depression accompanying and
following withdrawal of both alcohol and other drugs in
polydrug abusers is significantly reduced when patients
receive Cranial Electrotherapy as a post withdrawal
treatment.
Most importantly, perhaps, is the finding that Cranial
Electrotherapy treatment halts and significantly reverses
brain dysfunction in these patients as measured on seven
different psychological scales of cognitive function,
bringing many such functions back to the level of the
pre-addiction state in the majority of patients studied.
Another problem in the treatment of chemically dependent
persons is frequently recurring 'dry withdrawal' in which
the individual suffers withdrawal symptoms within several
weeks, then again in several months. The phrases used to
describe these phenomena are a 'dry drunk' followed by the
'dry withdrawal'. These psychological states lead to high
recidivism rates among these individuals as they return to
treatment after "falling off the wagon".
Cranial Electrotherapy is now thought of as one of the most
effective, non-drug treatments for these periods of
withdrawal, and a patient who has a personal Cranial
Electrotherapy unit available should be able to use it to
prevent a full-blown withdrawal reaction at such times. By
doing so he can reduce the need for additional medical
treatment in a clinic or hospital setting, and will be less
likely to resort to alcohol because of the discomfort
accompanying these withdrawal states.
Is it me, or is the only time 'Dan Clore' appears on thiswebsites he is
*not* selling the same stuff? Is Dan Clore an auto-spammer? Now if we could convert him to an auto-baconandeggsontoast-er I would
be interested!
I'm not selling anything, idiot. I'm trying to get some
information to people who should know it. Scuze me if you're an old hand on thiswebsites. I've only been on it a
short while, but you must admit that lines like the above do look very
much like spam!
Also, given how many newbies will be joining/lurking thiswebsites, there
will be a constant vigilance regarding spam. The annoyance of spam is
often ofset with humour, just in case the sender is just a clumsy
poster and not a genuine spammer.
If I have trodden on the toes of an old hand, please accept my
apologies, with reservation for your snappy reply.
If, however, you are seeking to draw some kind of interest in
something other than the wellbeing of the readers of thiswebsites you only
have yourself to blame if nobody takes you seriously.
You will be the one to decide which of the above is relevant.
I will assume you do suffer with FMS and maybe I just hit a sore nerve
with my humour in this post. If you do not suffer with FMS, may I
suggest you ask a few people on thiswebsites for a few hints regarding
introducing your ideas without appearing to be a spammer?
I shall now go and take my hourly dose of anti-idiot juice! Sorry if I over-reacted. I do indeed have FMS (also CFS,
TMJ, etc), and I've gotten a great deal of relief from using
the Alpha Stim 100. Thing is, I only discovered the device
by chance, and yet this treatment has the scientific studies
to back up its effectiveness, has no side effects, and can
be used along with any other treatment. It's the sort of
thing I would expect anyone with a problem like FMS or CFS
to be interested in. So far, though, I've mostly gotten
hostility in return for pointing it out.
