TENS anyone?

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Well, after asking a question about what type to buy, and getting 21 posts over 2 pages in reply, with only ONE name to check out #-o , I'm not sure if this was a success or not (hammer) (hammer)

But with only 1 against and many for, the vote is carried.
I found a good looking site on ebay so shall order one soon.
 
sunnybob":244zlmmh said:
Well, after asking a question about what type to buy, and getting 21 posts over 2 pages in reply, with only ONE name to check out #-o , I'm not sure if this was a success or not (hammer) (hammer)

But with only 1 against and many for, the vote is carried.
I found a good looking site on ebay so shall order one soon.
Hmm.....

Well as you found something Bob it clearly was productive. I gave the make and name of mine but I doubt that's important tbh as the technology is the same whatever you buy and it's a case of searching the web and looking for reviews and choosing a model with the features you fancy.

My advice if at all possible try to borrow one before buying in case the technology doesn't work for you. As I said earlier, not everyone is suitable.

cheers
Bob
 
Lons, yours WAS the only one with a name. Ta. =D>
I checked out that name on ebay, and theres a guy whose trading name is tens machines and has many thousands of sales with a 100% feedback. Good enough for me.
I have had the tens used on me a few times now. About three years ago for a frozen shoulder in outpatients physio. I was extremely sceptical as that was all she did. Connected me to a machine and walked away for a quarter hour, but after 3 visits it was better and after 6 it was cured.
The last three episodes with my neck have been so painful that I have been unable to move without crying in pain. Each time the physio uses a 4 pad tens as part of the treatment and each time the problem has been resolved.
I now have many exercises I have to do to keep my neck from freezing, but the tens will hopefully make the task easier.
 
Hope it works for you Bob

problem with getting old is that there seems to be more aches in more places and they take longer to go away. Depressing thought.
Still as long as I wake up every morning and can see, talk, listen and move it's good enough for me. :lol:
 
Only just seen this. Very interesting.

As someone who had a fall accident back in 1966 and hassuffered with back and related probs ever since, including ops on my back in 1969, 2002, and last - hopefully! - in 2014, you sunnybob, and all other similarly affected posters have my sincere sympathy. It ain't funny is it?

I first came across TENS during Rehab after my 2014 back op. The Physio in the clinic tried it (along with lots of other exercises & stuff) and TENS certainly helped me there. The Clinic machine was a pretty big trolley thing with lots of pads etc, but based on that, and the Physio's advice, I bought a little "tiny" box, battery powered, but with only 2 pads. (Sorry bob, I've never seen one with more than 2 pads, apart from the big trolley thing in the Clinic).

Mine is made by an apparently well-regarded company in the medical electronics field called Omron. They're Japanese, but have outfits all over the world, both manufacturing and distributing.

I bought mine from the local chemist and it cost the equivalent of about 65 quid (like just about everything else in Switzerland, that's expensive, and I'm sure it would be cheaper in UK - but not sure about Cyprus sunnybob).

As said, it has only 2 pads, and although these are replaceable, so far it's not been necessary - as per the hand book, when they start to loose their sticky you disconnect them from their leads (very good "press stud type" connectors), run the pads under a lukewarm tap for a few mo, then hang them up to dry - so far, they're always as good as new again half an hour later.

I was surprised at some of the posts about usage here, particularly the all-day treatment. The Omron book says you're only supposed to use my thing for 15 minutes at a time, max 2 or 3 times a day, min of 30 mins between each dose. In fact "the box" has a timer limit on it and after 15 mins it just stops and won't go any more for a while (presumably until 30 mins have elapsed). And that too is how the Clinic used their big trolley thing on me.

Mine is very easy to use, and has about a dozen or so different "programmes" with a little screen showing the area of the body to be treated - ranges from ankles, calves, thighs, backside, back, arms upper & lower, neck/shoulders, and hands (about 3 different hand areas).

Simple in use, there's a single "MODE" button and you just step through the modes until you see the picture on the screen of the body area you want to treat. The only other controls are an ON button (no OFF, as above it's auto shut off) and an intensity button, with settings ranging from 1 to 15. On me, I hardly feel a thing at setting 1 or 2, it normally starts to "tickle a bit" at 3 and I've never used it at above level 12 - beyond that it HURTS! Though I understand that depends on the intensity of the pain from the muscle spasms at the time.

As said, 15 minute time limit per treatment, and I use it "fairly often", sometimes twice a day, perhaps two or three times a month as a very rough average. So far it's never faltered and it's still on the supplied battery (dry cell, not rechargeable).

It helps me a lot, but as a previous poster has already said, in my case anyway, TENS alone will not do the job for me.

I take pills daily (prescription, regularly Dr. monitored), do daily exercises at home, and Physio-supervised exercises at the local hospital gym twice a week.

As someone who undoubtedly expended much more energy trying to avoid all sorts of "sports" while a schoolboy, and then during training in the RAF ("sports-mad buffoons"!) than I would have spent by just doing the "games" (yuck), I must say I'm now sold on the regular specific exercises at home and with the Physio - for me it's a simple decision really - do the exercising and I get less back pain, don't do them and the back ache increases in severity and regularity - despite the pills and TENS.

About the only advantage to the higher cost of buying my little box over the counter from a chemist in Switzerland (compared to on line was the fact that I bought it but was allowed a 100% money back guarantee if I was dissatisfied within 30 days. But I needed a Dr's "paper" to get that deal).

I should stress I'm in no way medically qualified and all the above is simply my own experience.

And Oh Yes sunnybob, you're dead right, just about all the Physios I've met are little tiny slips of girls who look like they'd blow away in the first strong wind, but blimey, they don't 'arf put you through it!

And yeah, in my case anyway, it doesn't pay to get too much "engaged" in anything - working in the shop, reading, on the PC or whatever - after about an hour, if you've been standing and/or bending, then change to sitting - or vice-versa of course. Bloody nuisance when you're in the middle of something, but it does help! :D

"Gute Besserung an Alle"!
 
I sat and watched this for 45 mins this morning and it's quite fascinating. I had never heard of 'fascia' before, but it's well worth a gander

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_cont ... WU_DnC9t4I

There's a bit of 'human dissection' in it, but if you don't like that sort of thing it's only a couple of minutes, BUT it could give you a new perception of how and where yer pain is coming from?

I have trouble turning my head but when I stretched my leg I found that I could turn it further and with less pain. I will be looking further into it!
 
If you do an ebay search for tens machines, youll find many multipaddle jobbies.
I'm looking at this one and will most likely order it this week
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/TENS-Machine ... 0936538619

My treatments have never been more than 15 minutes on the machines, and set to a level that just moves the muscles enough that she can see them twitching.

My neck problem only started this year, after a 7 hour flight on the worst cattle truck plane I have ever had the misfortune to be in. Thank you Quatar airlines, very much. Exercise is helping, but I will need a regular physio I think as well as the tens.
 
I hadn\t realised just how you got it SB, but something has come to mind. About 5 years back I had a big operation on my right hane. 4 hours worth of partial wrist fusion. After that I had horrible problems with my right shoulder. I had tried just about everything I could think of and the bloke who did the cutting aid that it would go away. It didn't.

Then SWMBO mentioned myofascial trigger points. These are they https://namtpt.wildapricot.org/MTPT_What_is_it/ . We have done this for ages for my back and neck but hadn't thought about it for my shoulder. So I got our trigger point book out and had a look where I should press. After about 2 weeks my shoulder was back to normal.

It ain't snake oil, it works and may help you too. Ask your physio about it and he/she will probably say they don't know about it, mine did. But then his system didn'y and mine did. We still use trigger points when my neck is bad, that's most of the time and it does help. It probably won't go away as it's caused by arthritis in my neck, but it does help. I'm going to start using mt Tens too. Your thread sparked that idea.
 
jonzjob wrote, QUOTE: I sat and watched this for 45 mins this morning and it's quite fascinating. I had never heard of 'fascia' before, but it's well worth a gander. UNQUOTE:

I've already thanked you for that post jon. Just like you I'd never heard of fascia before, but a number of the points raised certainly applied directly to my own case. Thanks for posting, IMO well worth a look by any fellow sufferers.

I'm going to do some googling on fascia in a mo, but would appreciate any info on how you found this stuff in the first pace jon. TIA

As an addendum to my previous post on TENS, and specifically my commenst re day-long treatment. I guess like everywhere else, our chemists stock sticky plaster thingies which claim to relieve such as back pain. There are several brands here, some of which don't seem to help me much at all (I wouldn't necessarily say snake oil though!), but one particular brand here, FLECTOR, works very well for me. If carefully arranged under your underwear, they can easily and comfortably be worn to very good pain reduction effect for 12 hours or more. The manufacturer is Swiss, but maybe available elsewhere, perhaps under a different brand name, I dunno.

Manufacturer: IBSA Institut Biochemique SA, CH-6903 Lugano, Switzerland

I don't know if it's available elsewhere but there is no website that I can find.

Maybe that helps someone anyway.
 

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