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Showing posts with label headache. Show all posts
Showing posts with label headache. Show all posts
Monday, October 22, 2012
Alpha-Stim Certification Program
Thursday, October 18, 2012
Radio Interview with Marlene and Ian "Strategies for Healing from Addiction"
When Begin Healing Inc. was recently displaying Alpha-Stim at Association of Christian Counselors conference in Branson, MO, we met Shanon and Gary Worrell from Strategies for Healing Inc. They were very interested in our device, and believed that many of their clients could benefit from it, so they invited us to be interviewed on their radio show called Strategies for Healing from Addictions.
Click here to go to their site and listen to the interview.
It was great to talk to the Worrells about their practice and how Alpha-Stim can treat the depression, anxiety, insomnia, and stress that can lead to or be caused by addiction.
Thursday, August 30, 2012
Alpha-Stim and Sleep Medicine - Interview with Dr. Shirazi - Issue # 9
Dr. Shirazi DDS MS LAc MA FAACP D.ACSDD RPSGT earned his DDS degree in May of 2000 from Howard University College of Dentistry, in Washington D.C. He continued his studies in Oriental Medicine, earning a Masters degree from Samra University. He is a California State Board Licensed Dentist and Acupuncturist. In 2007 he received the prestigious Fellowship Award from the American Academy of Craniofacial Pain. He has also completed hospital mini-residencies in oriental medicine at the China Beijing International Acupuncture Training Center (CBIATC), and another at Kyung Hee University and Medical Center, in Seoul, Korea, both in 2005. He has recently completed a Master of Arts degree in Spiritual Psychology, and he is the founder of the Bite, Breathe and Balance study group. He is the first dentist or acupuncturist to be licensed as a Polysomnographic (sleep study) technician.
Alpha-Stim and Sleep Medicine
Interview with Dr. David Shirazi
Surely. It’s
not like I’m inventing something new. I’m only standing on the shoulders of my
mentors, and the people who have come before me who really educated me and
supported me when I went and learned new and wonderful things.
I am a
dentist; I am a licensed acupuncturist, an Oriental medical doctor; and I am a
licensed sleep technologist. In my practice, I don’t do any dentistry – any general dentistry I should say. We treat
jaw disorders, headaches, migraines, snoring and sleep apnea, and the
Alpha-Stim has been a great asset to have.
Do you use Alpha-Stim to treat pain,
insomnia and anxiety?
All of the
above. Chronic pain patients typically have trouble sleeping; they typically
have a lot of anxiousness, and a lot of depression. There are plenty of studies
that corroborate insomnia as being directly related to depression. For these
patients, I do a motor reflex test that is taught by Dr. Steve Olmos, and the
test can actually help show if a patient is in a form of sympathetic dystrophy.
You know how we have the autonomic nervous system, para-sympathetic, and
sympathetic? When someone is in
dystrophy it means their autonomic system has shifted strongly over to the
sympathetic side, which changes their cortisol levels, which changes the
adrenal levels and how much the adrenals can support, which ultimately will
affect sleep. It is hard to break this cycle, because the causes of it can be
so wide-spread. So what we do in my office on these kind of pain patients is if
I feel that someone is absolutely in dystrophy, I’ll recommend that they get an
Alpha-Stim on their own. If they are on the borderline or just chronic pain, I
will use the Alpha-Stim on them at each and every visit in addition to the
acupuncture, in addition to orthotic therapy, in addition to many things.
So you are doing acupuncture in your
sleep medicine practice?
Absolutely.
That’s amazing. Did your interest in
dentistry lead to your interest in acupuncture? Or did you already have an
interest in acupuncture?
I really did.
What happened was, when I was about 18, I had a cold, which is not a big deal,
and I have a neurotic Jewish mother who insisted that I go to the doctor. And
so I went to the doctor – and I should tell you that everyone in my family is
either a doctor or a dentist – I went in there and the doctor prescribed antibiotics.
So I asked him, “Well, this problem is in my nose, right?” and he goes, “Yes.”
And I knew about rhino viruses, so I said, “Well, if it’s in my nose, isn’t
that a virus?” He said, “Most likely, yes.” And I said, “If it’s a virus, why
are you prescribing me antibiotics?” And he said, “Well, the theory is that the
antibiotics clear the bugs in your body so your immune system can focus on the
virus.” So I called up my mom, and I said, Mom this is what he’s telling me, I
don’t know if it makes sense, what do you think? (And she comes from a period where whatever
the doctor tells you to do, you do. You just don’t question it.) She said if
the doctor tells you to take it, you have to take it. So I took it, I got better,
but I don’t feel like I got better because of the antibiotics.
When I did my
research and realized about possibly building a resistance to the antibiotics
by taking it needlessly, et cetera, I just decided that when I have my own
family I will have studied something in the holistic, yet scientific, realm
where I can help my family and treat them in a safe way. I feel allopathic
medicine is very effective in emergency medicine. If we’ve got large open
wounds, bullet holes, knife wounds, sudden shock, syncope, near death
situations, I really think allopathic medicine is at the top for that. For
everything else, however, I find it to be rather inferior. And I say that in
relation to the other kinds of medicine out there, like Chinese medicine, like
naturopathic medicine, et cetera. Those systems are both very scientifically
oriented, believe it or not, they have double-blind studies, they have research
behind them, and we clearly see them working.
So your experience as a 18 year old
with a cold, and being prescribed an antibiotic for a virus, led you down the
path to find other sorts of therapies that would be more
effective than giving someone an antibiotic and just hoping that it works.
Yes, exactly.
Interesting. Not
only are you practicing an Eastern or Oriental form of medicine, but you also implement
lots of different types of technology. It seems like one of your goals is to
find a drug-free therapy first and foremost before you do anything else.
It’s not
actually my intention specifically to have a drug-free protocol. It’s to find the cause of the problem, and to
treat to that cause. That’s my intention. Now, medications are great when we
need to treat something in a temporary way. Sometimes, for example, in the case
of pneumonia and antibiotics, they are extremely effective in treating the
cause of the problem, and other times they can actually cause more harm than
good. So my intension with medication is to use it when I see fit, but I don’t
prescribe very much.
I’d like to hear more about how you
use Alpha-Stim in your practice. What indications or other conditions do you
see respond most beneficially from an Alpha-Stim treatment?
Again, for a
person that has chronic pain, I go for that because it needs to be “unlocked”
and the faster we unlock it, the better. So I have them wearing the Alpha-Stim
[earclips] while I’m doing acupuncture on them. They seem to go well together, they don’t
seem contradictory; they seem supplementary in my experience. I’m not a
licensed therapist in any way, but if I see a patient and I’m concerned that
they might have an underlying depression, I will surely use it on them because
I have certainly seen the research that supports how Alpha-Stim works. Anxiety,
of course, and insomnia, if they have either kind, primary or secondary
insomnia, I’ll have them wear their Alpha-Stim in the earlier hours of the day
to balance out their circadian rhythm and cortisol levels, so that I can get
them to bed and actually sleeping. Patients have seen the results, it just
speaks for itself.
Do you typically have people come in
to your clinic for their Alpha-Stim treatments, or do you find that after
seeing the benefits of it that people are more willing to purchase them for
home use?
Absolutely,
and I do both, home use and office use. Sometimes I will say, you know, I
really recommend this device for you, and they’ll say “What is it?” and I’ll
go, “I’ll tell you what, we’ll put it on at your next visit, and you can see
for yourself.” Usually the experience alone is enough to convince them.
If you don’t mind me asking, do you
use the Alpha-Stim yourself?
I have, if I
ever have trouble sleeping, I’ll wear it. I just came back, I did some training
on lasers in Italy, and I had the Alpha-Stim the whole time I was on the plane.
I’m not going to say that I had no jetlag, but it was minimal.
I know what you mean, I love bringing
it on plane trips. It’s one of my main uses for Alpha-Stim, I love to travel
with it.
Yeah, I feel
the same way.
I am also very impressed that you are
using it for anxiety, pain and insomnia, when usually practitioners like to
focus on one indication that we have. But as a sleep dentist, you’re able to
implement it into your practice with protocols that are broader and all
encompassing.
Yeah, and one
thing I forgot to mention is the use of it in fibromyalgia patients, because I
find it to be very helpful in reducing their pain and especially helping them
sleep. Once it has gotten to the state of fibromyalgia, it is no longer a
peripheral nerve problem, it is now a central nerve problem, and the Alpha-Stim
works directly on the brain. I believe it goes a long way in helping these
patients. The medications treating fibromyalgia elevates both 5-HT and NE levels apparently, which are also the functions of the Alpha-Stim, only with the Alpha-Stim, it is releasing the body's endogenous levels of both 5-HT and NE, rather than artificially increasing it. I have not seen the research that supports these medications, let alone supports them over the Alpha-Stim.
I thought that fibromyalgia was more a
disorder of the sympathetic nervous system, but it’s the central?
Well, the
sympathetic is part of the central nervous system. It is a disorder of the
autonomic nervous system, but what is happening is there is a phenomenon called
“central sensitization.” Essentially,
what that means is if we have multiple areas of our body that go to the same
portion of the brain, the wires can get crossed. Let’s say you have pain on
your right thumb, your right thumb hurts you, and you don’t do anything about
it. You are getting signals of pain from your right thumb, and you just ignore
it, you just say, oh that must be my arthritis, and ignore it. Well, whether
you ignore it or not, every time you use that thumb that stimulation is going
to the brain talking about pain. So what will happen is something else in the
brain that is also connected to your thumb, let’s say your other thumb, will
start hurting – even though there is nothing wrong with it. You might say, well
why is my left thumb hurting? You go have it x-rayed, MRI-ed, and you can’t
find anything wrong with it. There have been plastic changes in the brain that have
caused other parts of the body to hurt – and that’s what central sensitization
is. We’ve only known about it for about 20 years, it’s really cutting edge. In
my opinion, that was one of the biggest paradigm shifts of the last century. Now, rather than focusing on the thumb that the patient complains of, we can now focus on the origin of the pain, and in this case the right thumb.
Well, we definitely do hear about
acupuncturists that are using Alpha-Stim 100 with the probes to essentially
treat a person the same way they would with needles.
You can do
it. And the brilliant thing is that is it down-regulatable to your staff,
because you are not breaking the skin, and as long as the doctor is the one
making the diagnosis and telling them what to do, it’s completely legal.
It’s always wonderful to talk to a
doctor that knows so much about Alpha-Stim and all of the different indications
that we are cleared for, and it sounds like you have a great grasp on it, and
you know exactly how to use it in your practice. That’s just wonderful to for
us to hear, so thank you for talking with me today.
Thank you for letting me talk about what I love doing.
Thursday, May 10, 2012
Interview with Dr. Jeff Marksberry: New Studies - Issue #8
This month we feature Part 2 of our interview
with Jeffrey A. Marksberry, MD, who is the Science and Education Director of
Electromedical Products International, Inc (EPI). EPI is the company that developed the
Alpha-Stim technology and manufactures the units. As leading research analyst for studies on
the Alpha-Stim, Dr. Marksberry has vast knowledge of current and past studies on electromedicine, microcurrent, and
Alpha-Stim in particular
New Studies on Alpha-Stim
Interview with Dr. Marksberry, Part 2
Tell me about the new
PTSD studies, as it seems very relevant now that the war in Iraq is coming
to a close. The veterans are coming home, and we need to be able to treat them
somehow.
Well, we have got three studies on PTSD underway, all in
different stages. There is one at the University of North Texas, which is just getting
approval to start by the college. There
is another in San Antonio, and they don’t have
anyone to analyze the data, so we actually got them in touch with some
researchers at the same University, North Texas. So they will have the data and they are going
to analyze that. And the third one is in
press to be published in the next couple months. So there are three. There is also a traumatic
brain injury study at the University
of Baylor, and they are in conjunction
with the VA clinic in Houston.
Aside from studies on
veterans or VA studies, are there any studies happening or being released soon
that you are excited about?
Yeah, actually I got an influx this last month or two of
people wanting to do research. I am the liaison between them and the company,
so we loan them [Alpha-Stim] devices and we help them set protocols. I think the one I’m most excited about is a
Fibromyalgia study. It’s at Virginia University, they finished, and they are
writing it up, and it’s a big study.
They looked at pain with Fibromyalgia, they looked at sleep, and I
believe they also looked at anxiety and depression, but they did FMRI imaging
in the study as well.
We’ve got another one that’s going to start that I’m excited
about is at a VA clinic. We have got
over 27 on-going studies, and all of them but this one are based on CES, but
this one will actually be using the probes, and they are going to double-blind
it.
Really the most gratifying thing I’ve done now is going to
NICoE and seeing their facilities, they are the military leaders on PTSD and
brain injuries. I’ve done two trainings
there. I trained at camp Lejeune,
which is a marine and naval base. That’s
where the Wounded Warrior headquarters are, the battalion, so most of the
Wounded Warrior work comes out of there, and so I trained some of their
doctors. Just seeing them tell you what
they have been doing is amazing stuff.
That’s interesting,
I’ve been doing follow-up for a couple conferences and I was just on the phone
with someone who works with Wounded Warriors.
Tanya does our government services and she works a lot with
Wounded Warrior programs. They call any
soldier that’s injured, or marine or whoever, a wounded warrior. I think it is headquartered at Camp Lejeune, North
Carolina. I
went there and trained some of their mental health and pain doctors. So that was really cool, and they want to
have me back. They are moving offices,
but when they are all set up together they want to have more training so they
can use it and integrate it more.
How does the arsenal
of research on the Alpha-Stim compare to other devices, or even
pharmaceuticals?
Any of our competitors – we absolutely kill them. One time I did a device comparison, so I
found every competitor of ours, of the CES, that I could, and put the name of
the device, the pricing, anything I could find, what they claim they treat,
then research. I think only
Fischer-Wallace has one or two studies they have done – other than that, they
only just claim our research. They will
basically just copy and paste off of our website and put it on theirs. But as far as pharmaceuticals go, they usually only do one or two large-scale
studies before they get approval.
Afterwards, I’m not sure they would do any – unless they want a new
indication. Other researchers,
independents, will do research with it. Once aspirin, you know, is approved
they don’t need anymore research. Other
people will go an tell them, “You better do this study,” and over the years
they get more, but most drugs don’t have a lot of research that they’ve done –
but over the years they get more from independent sources.
I think we stack up pretty well against most pharmaceuticals
for research though. Those companies do
pay for large-scale studies to get first approval, and a lot of times it may
have 2000 patients in it. We don’t have
that kind of study where it’s got 2000 patients in it.
When I was reading
articles about the FDA’s re-classification of the Alpha-Stim, and the FDA’s
Proposed Rule, the FDA was saying, “That was only 20 patients.” So the studies are completely dismissed just
because they are small, but I don’t think that’s valid because it’s a quantity
over quality argument.
You know, when I’m at a conference and a practitioner says,
“Well, you don’t have a big “in.” Where is the 2000 patient study?” I would say, well, you can pick any drug, but
let’s say Zoloft, they have a study with 2300 patients. You can go to their
website and see it. That study, and this
is documented, that study actually started with 5000 patients. Ok? They went through phase one, which was “See
how well it works for everybody.” And
they took the bottom 25% of doctors that were in the study, and if their results
weren’t very good, they got thrown out of the study. And then they did phase two, where every
doctor got paid more to be involved. And
they did another trial, and the bottom 25% were picked out again. They do that
about four or five times until the “best” practitioners, who are really incentivized
to get good results now, because you are getting paid more for every step that
goes on. There is more and more
incentive to stay in the study, and you get better results. They threw out the bottom 25%, so now they
are up to just the best patients and the best doctors that they can get results
with. So there are ways of skewing
things, and just because you have got 2000 patients, it doesn’t mean that it’s
better than something that’s got 100 patients in it.
Right, if I was at a
conference and this question came up, I would be like, “Well, how many patients
do you see?” You know? Do you see 20,
30, or 40 a week? Then what if 80% of
them got better from this? Would you
say, “Oh that’s not very valid. It’s only 20 people.”
Yeah, exactly, and that’s the way you have to think about it,
and people don’t. People get accustomed
to the drug Rep coming in and saying, “We’ve got this study. It had 3000
patients in it. The P value was….” You
know, it’s the quality of the study and not the amount of patients that were in
it.
Last question
then. I don’t want to get you in trouble
with anyone. But I’m curious as to what
you think the future of micro-current, in terms of medicinal use.
I’d say the future would be wide open. Getting the calls that I get on a weekly
basis are amazing. We have our four
indications, which we market for, and know a lot about, but we’ve had, in the
last few months, stories about two people that were in comas, that were in
vegetative states, that came out of the coma.
Actually their spouses started using Alpha-Stim with them. I mean, out of comas, vegetative states. I’ve also talked to two people, and they were
about a week apart, one gentleman, he had a tremor for 25 years. He’s only 37, he’s had a tremor since he was
12. Played the violin, but doesn’t play
as much as he wants to because of his tremor.
Went home for Thanksgiving, and his mom put her Alpha-Stim on him, and
five minutes later his tremor was gone.
I mean, those things aren’t what we market for. I’ve talked to people who are autistic who have
gotten benefits, with ADD, so many things that we don’t, and can’t, market for,
that we get reports from practitioners and patients, is very encouraging. It makes me think that really everyone or
anyone who has got problems and doesn’t feel perfect should at least try it and
see if it helps them or not.
There’s no reason why it shouldn’t be more mainstream and
utilized more.
Is there anything
else you want to add?
We’ve got a lot of studies on the way we are very excited
about. Twenty-seven is a huge
number. And all together we’ve had about
50 studies published. We’re doing a lot
of webinars, excited about that. We
really feel like education for the practitioners is the best way to get them
involved, better than selling more. So
we are really pushing that.
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