Naperville Neuropathy Relief – Treatment for Neuropathy Naperville Bolingbrook Plainfield
Neuropathy Relief Treatment in Naperville, Illinois
Managing peripheral neuropathy in private practice can be one of the most frustrating clinical experiences for patients and physicians alike.
Until now most treatments have focused only on symptom control, largely by way of drugs. In diabetic patients, blood sugar control is also used. Physical therapy alone often provides little if any lasting relief. As you know, drug costs and patient compliance, as well as the side effects of medications have left us all wishing there were more effective treatment options.
Well now there is! Synergy Institute is proud to offer a proprietary 5 step treatment protocol for Neuropathy that combines the synergistic effect of neuropathy specific therapies and the ReBuilder™ 7.8Hz electrotherapy device.
Our comprehensive treatment program consists of the following neuropathy specific treatments:
1.Nutrition and diet education
2.Manual massage Techniques
3.Exercise and Rehab techniques
4.Spinal Therapy
5.Clinically tested ReBuilder™ and Neurocare Electrotherapy
With a comprehensive approach to the problem, patients can achieve not only long lasting relief, but long term self management. Most patients are able to be transitioned to home care after a successful clinical trial.
The ReBuilder® Treatment System is designed to be used in the clinic for a 5 week clinical trial. This treatment is non-invasive, safe, effective, affordable, is registered with the FDA, and is covered by many insurance plans. The ReBuilder® treatment is comfortable and relaxing to the patient and is applied directly to the affected extremities by using a warm water bath. It has no interaction with, nor does it interfere with, any medications the patient may be taking. Having a much more powerful electrical impulse than that of the human body, the ReBuilder® re-polarizes and re-educates the nerves to follow the correct paths. It also enables nerve impulses to jump the synaptic junction, reconnect the injured nerve cells, and deliver minerals and nutrients which revitalize those nerves. When this is accomplished, it promotes new nerve growth, restores blood circulation, returns feeling to the patient’s extremities, and reduces pain. In many cases the ReBuilder® actually reverses neuropathy and chronic pain symptoms and restores nerves to their normal state allowing them to fully function on their own reducing the need for medications.
Neuropathy and chronic pain is characterized by pain, numbness, loss of tactile feedback, and poor tissue perfusion. These symptoms may indicate that oxygen is not getting to all the cells causing dysfunction.
Because the patient’s quality of life is decreased, these results are often devastating. Pain medications do not cure the condition; it only helps mask it and, eventually, leads to complications with adverse side effects such as mental confusion and intestinal problems.
As a result of ReBuilder™ medical’s research and review of published studies from around the world, new models concerning the causes of neuropathy and chronic pain have been presented. The conclusion is that it is not reasonable to merely label neuropathy and chronic pain symptoms as diabetic, peripheral, vascular, or “idiopathic”. What is needed is a more full understanding of the etiology of the condition so new technology can be brought to bear with both ameliorative and therapeutic benefits.
Figure 1: Anatomy of a nerve cell
Neuropathy and chronic pain results when nerve signal propagation is reduced between adjacent nerve cells due to insufficient oxygen being available to support nerve cell metabolism. This is responsible for 90% of all neuropathy and chronic pain cases. The remaining 10% is caused by physical trauma. Thus it appears that the main precipitating factor for neuropathy and chronic pain is hypoxia and demineralization of the synaptic fluid which creates shrinkage of the nerve cells which widens the gap between these cells making it more difficult for normal sensations to propagate, and loss of electrical conductivity in the synaptic fluid itself.
A temporary hypoxia of nerve tissue can be traced to most causes of neuropathy and chronic pain. The primary negative effects of this hypoxia are as follows:
For example, when the lumbar area experiences a muscle spasm, blood flow is restricted through that muscle resulting in reduced oxygen availability to the surrounding tissue, including nerve cells. Because muscles can use either oxygen or glucose metabolic pathways, they can recover quickly from a temporary reduction in the level of available oxygen. Nerve cells, on the other hand, are limited to the Krebs oxidative reductive metabolic system and must take immediate defensive steps to assure survival during this hypo oxygen state. One of the ways they accomplish this is to contract along their longitudinal axis like a rubber band, reducing their surface area and thus lowering their need for oxygen. (This also occurs when these cells are attacked by a harsh agent in the blood such as chemotherapeutic drugs, Agent Orange, environmental toxins, insecticides, etc.) The synaptic junctions between the axons of one nerve cell and the dendrites of the next nerve cell widen. Normal nerve transmission is now compromised because a nerve signal of normal intensity cannot jump this newly widened gap. The synaptic fluid between the nerve cells must be electrically conductive. Pure water does not conduct electricity, so this conductivity relies on minerals and specific neurotransmitters such as serotonin in the synaptic fluid to enable the propagation of the nerve signal. These minerals are delivered via the perfusion of adjacent tissues with fresh blood and kept in suspension by the periodic ionization of successfully transmitted nerve signals across the junction. When nerve signals are reduced because of these larger dimensions of the synaptic junction, necessary minerals are no longer held in place by electrical tension and are slowly leeched out. (See Figure 2 below) This adds to the impairment of effective nerve transmission.
Figure 2: Minerals necessary for proper conduction across the synaptic junction can leech out when not actively used.
Common short term remedies with prescription drugs only ameliorate the pain temporarily and do little or nothing to mitigate or cure the underlying condition. They may provide some level of temporary relief, but as the disease progresses, the effective dosage of the drug needed to continue suppressing the pain increases concurrently. The side effects of these types of drugs are difficult to deal with and add to the patient’s discomfort. When the increased drug dosage reaches a threshold level, the patient can become confused, ataxic, constipated, confined to a wheelchair or may become bedridden. Symptoms similar to Alzheimer’s may soon follow.
When nerve signals can no longer jump the enlarged synaptic gap, the electrical tension that normally holds these minerals in place is absent, causing the synaptic fluid to leach out its mineral content. Electrical conductivity is reduced, thereby inhibiting the transmission of the normal nerves’ electrical signals across this gap.
Figure 3: How a nerve cell shrinks resulting in a widened synaptic junction.
Trauma: Actual trauma is one of the major causes of neuropathy and chronic pain, and results when the myelin sheath is cut or etched away by chemotherapeutic agents, environmental toxins, poorly performed injections, or from amputations and accidents. Traumatic causes must obviously be mitigated by removing the cause as in drug therapy, chemotherapy, physical entrapment, and environmental poisons. Permanent tissue damage may be beyond the scope of any therapy. When these conditions are removed, the ReBuilder® may be a helpful adjunctive therapy in the healing process.
Diabetes: Diabetes can also trigger neuropathy and chronic pain by affecting the levels of glucose and/or insulin in the blood stream. When this occurs, minerals are driven out of the fluid in the synaptic junction thereby reducing conductivity and impairing nerve impulse transmission. Nerve signals propagate from the cell body unidirectionally over the synapse, first along the axon and then across the synapse to the next nerve or muscle cell. The synaptic cleft, the gap between presynaptic terminal and postsynaptic terminal, has a thickness of 10 – 50 nm. The fact that the impulse transfers across the synapse only in one direction, from the presynaptic terminal to the postsynaptic terminal, is due to the difference in electrical polarity between the sending axon and the receiving dendrite. This is one of the reasons that the ReBuilder® sends its signal from one foot to the other – it sets the relative potential in each gap properly so that it forces the signal to jump properly, always toward the central nervous system and not miss-fire and jump the wrong way, perhaps to a sending axon that can lead to the periphery.
Figure 4
(A) At rest synaptic vesicles.
(B) Activated synaptic vesicles (when activation reaches the presynaptic terminal, electrical signals jump across the synaptic cleft to activate the postsynaptic terminal).
As a result of hypoxic cellular atrophy, nerve signals must now try to jump a larger gap through a less conductive medium. This loss of nerve transmission is first perceived as tingling, then burning, and finally as pain when the demineralization and gap widening process progresses. The initial perception associated with atrophied nerves and enlarged synaptic gaps is tingling as some of the normal signals are misdirected to nearby nerves. As the condition progresses, it happens more and more until more signals are misdirected than properly propagated, and the resulting sensation is one of pain. Finally, after the nerve signals can no longer be transmitted at all, numbness is the primary complaint. This secondary effect of neuropathy and chronic pain reduces the strength of the calf muscles which, in turn, reduces the blood flow to the lower extremities. This condition often results in poor tissue perfusion, insecure gait, balance problems, and other mobility issues.
Chemotherapeutic Agents: Prescribed for cancer precisely because they inhibit fast growing or fast acting cells, chemotherapeutic agents cause neuropathy and chronic pain in approximately one third of the patients to whom they are administered. Though nerve cells do not reproduce themselves like cancer cells do, they do change electrical states quickly and are thus particularly susceptible to the effects of chemotherapeutic drugs. The fast acting nerves are mistaken for fast growing neo-plasms. Chemotherapy has the effect of de-mineralizing the synaptic fluid, damaging the integrity of the nerve cells, and making it difficult for the ionization of the cell membranes to propagate the signal along the surface of the nerve. When ionization takes place, the outer membrane of the nerve cells change from positive to negative in a wave like motion taking a positive charge from one end of the nerve all the way to the other end. Chemotherapy is designed to interrupt the ability of the cell to control the permeability of the outer membrane and this process is electrically modulated. This electrical interruption is misapplied when the agent is in contact with the myelin sheath of a health, active nerve cell and causes the nerve cell to “short out” and inhibit the necessary different potentials in the nodes of the myelin sheath.
Cardiovascular Disease: By reducing the amount of blood that can perfuse the tissue of the lower legs and feet, cardiovascular disease can also cause neuropathy and chronic pain. When the arteries and veins become blocked, blood flow is reduced. One of the first symptoms is intermittent claudication which results in a reduction in the distance a patient can walk before the onset of localized leg pain due to reduced oxygen availability. Therefore, the muscle cells switch from aerobic metabolism to using anaerobic metabolism thereby creating greater than normal amounts of lactic acid, the by-product of muscle metabolism. The increased lactic acid collects in the cells causing inflammation and pain.
Lumbar Trauma: Trauma to the lumbar area of the back can be another cause of neuropathy and chronic pain. This trauma can be as slight as lifting a bag of groceries out of the trunk, picking up a grandchild, or bending down to tie a shoe. Our studies show a 60% correlation between repeated injuries to the lower back and subsequent development of neuropathy and chronic pain symptoms. During the acute phase of localized trauma, inflammation develops reducing arterial and venous blood to the lumbar synaptic junctions. Nerves in the region temporarily shrink due to the reduction in activity. Since the body tends to conserve resources, the affected nerves begin to atrophy, the synaptic junction gap begins to widen, and synaptic minerals leech away making signal transmission more difficult.
Signals of normal strength can no longer cross synapses that are damaged by the reduction in blood flow. The loss of signals across the synapses compounds the process of deterioration. Muscle atrophy and a host of other problems follow. We have found that a signal delivered at 7.83 cycles per second (the body’s natural electromagnetic resonant frequency) and at an amplitude approximately 10 times that originally required will cross these enlarged synapses, repolarize them.
High Blood Pressure Medication: High blood pressure medication not only lowers blood pressure, it also reduces the ability of the arterial blood to refill the veins. This vacancy results as the venous muscle pumps the blood back to the heart. When this occurs the blood has a tendency to pool in the lower extremities; the nerves and synaptic junctions do not have enough necessary nutrition and oxygen to maintain their health resulting in nerve cell atrophy, loss of mineralization, and conductivity of the synaptic junctions as explained above.
Psychoactive Drug Therapy: These drugs, used to reduce anxiety or seizures, have the effect of reducing the intensity/frequency of all nerve signals. This, too, can result in loss of motor and sensory nerve function. These conditions can result in impaired mobility and balance issues due to the loss of muscle strength. Whenever overactive nerves that might be causing psychological problems are depressed, they depress borderline poorly functioning nerves as well.
Electro Stimulation of Nerves: The ReBuilder’s® electrical signal is a compilation of two signals transmitted simultaneously. One signal is specifically designed to stimulate the nerves themselves and has a very narrow waveform with a small amount of current under the curve and a relatively high transient voltage (characteristically 40 to 90 volts ac.). The resulting current is miniscule and much below what is commonly found with traditional TENS devices. A larger than normal signal must be used because of the widening gap between the nerve cells (See Figure 3) and the loss of much of the conductivity in the synaptic junction fluid due to demineralization (See Figure 2) the ReBuilder’s® nerve stimulation signal is many times stronger than the normal afferent and efferent signals; therefore, it can effectively complete the circuit. This stimulates the nerves causing them to re-establish their normal metabolic function. This signal, crossing the synaptic junctions, also re-polarizes the junctions causing them to be receptive to reabsorb minerals thus improving the conductivity.
Electro Stimulation of Muscles: The ReBuilder’s® second signal, which overlays the nerve stimulation signal, is designed to stimulate the muscles. This signal has a different, wider waveform with a larger sub-threshold amount of current under the curve and a much smaller voltage (5 to 20 vac.). Muscles are most responsive to this waveform. This signal causes the muscles of the feet, calves, thighs, and buttocks to contract and relax in harmony with the ReBuilder’s® signal. Overcoming any residual inflammatory resistance to blood flow, the ReBuilder’s® proprietary signal also has specific characteristics that cause a complete relaxation of the muscles’ fast and slow twitch cells between each contraction stimulus. In order for the venous pressure to move the blood through the muscles bringing oxygen and nutrients and taking away accumulated lactic acid, the muscle fibers cannot remain in spasm. Adequate blood flow can only occur in a flaccid muscle. This is an important consideration. It is not the contraction but primarily the time interval between the contractions that contribute to the increased perfusion of blood through the oxygen starved tissue.
If the frequency of the muscle stimulation signal is too fast, it does not give the muscle the appropriate time necessary to fully relax. If the signal’s frequency is too slow, the muscle cannot entrain and recruit enough fibers for a sustained contraction. By stimulating the muscles to contract in this manner in response to the ReBuilder’s® signal, the venous muscle pump is used to propel blood, against gravity, back up towards the heart. Blood flow is increased with mineral enriched blood which results in a flushing of metabolic byproducts. This not only offers relief of pain from the build up of excessive lactic acid, but it also triggers the creation of new muscle mass. The synaptic junctions, bathed with this mineral rich blood, are now able to permanently conduct the nerves signals more effectively and efficiently.
Combined Electro Stimulation at 7.83 Hz: This twin electrical signal (one to stimulate the nerve cells and the other to trigger muscle cells) is pulsed on and off at the frequency of 7.83 cycles per second. We have found that the human body is particularly sensitive to this frequency. One postulation for this sensitivity is that the electrical potential between the earth’s atmosphere and the earth’s surface is also approximately 7.83 Hz. Using this signal frequency, we have found that the body not only responds favorably but the brain is induced to release large amounts of endorphins. Endorphins, internal analgesics as powerful as and chemically related to morphine but without any negative side effects, are created and modulated by the body’s own chemistry. The effect of this endorphin release is a generalized sense of well-being, a reduction in pain and anxiety levels elsewhere in the body, and even a reduction in emotional pain. This ensures a very high level of patient compliance not only because the patient feels good physically during the massage-like treatment period but because he/she feels better emotionally afterward experiencing a reduction in global non-neuropathic (nociceptive) pain for a period of 4 to 6 hours.
An additional feature of the ReBuilder® is its simultaneous weighted DC signal. This intentional imbalance to the asymmetric waveform that results in a tiny DC current is designed to stabilize the trigger threshold that regulates the sensitivity of the nerve cell. Like a heart in fibrillation, this normally stable trigger level begins an unregulated oscillation that can result in erratic transmission of incoming nerve signals. Sometimes small signals are accepted for an attempt at propagation, and sometimes only large signals are accepted. This upsets the homeostasis of the part of the brain assigned to managing these signals and selecting the appropriate response. By sending this constant DC signal, the effect is to hold this resting potential at a fixed voltage long enough for the cell to stabilize itself and regain control.
When the conductive rubber electrodes are applied to feet, the current path is directed from one foot, to the ankle, up to the knee, the thigh, the lumbar area, down the other leg all the way to the foot. This means that all the nerves of both legs are stimulated simultaneously as well as all the muscles. This is a unique aspect of the ReBuilder®.
The ReBuilder® contributes to the healing process by accomplishing the following:
The ReBuilder® accomplishes these functions in a comfortable, relaxing treatment that is not only effective in helping relieve many of the symptoms of neuropathy and chronic pain and in limiting its progression, but can cause the regression of pain, burning, and numbness.
When the ReBuilder’s® electrical signals stimulate the leg muscles to contract, this “venous muscle pump” moves the mineral rich blood to the muscles and the nerves. Osmotic pressure and the ionic tension from the ReBuilder’s® signals successfully jumping across the gaps then carries these necessary minerals into the synaptic junctions between the nerve cells helping to restore the conductivity that is characteristically lost.
1.Nutrition and Diet Education –Various nutritional deficiencies can result with Neuropathy. We have a very specific protocol of nutrients that is demonstrating effectiveness with treating Neuropathy including Benfotiamine, Acetly-L-Carnitine, CoQ10, Lipoic Acid, Omegas, and Vitamin D. We also offer a diet program that can help patients lose weight, reduce blood sugar and blood pressure. It is critical to create a healing biochemical environment in the body by addressing deficiencies and correcting any underlying metabolic syndrome before the body can being healing.
2.Manual Massage Techniques increase circulation and allow the muscles and connective tissue to regain their health. We use neuropathy specific techniques to warm up affected area prior to treatment so the body is more responsive to the ReBuilder™ treatment.
3.Exercise and Rehab Therapies are important for reeducating and strengthening the affected areas as they begin to heal. Restoring proper motor function, flexibility, and coordination are necessary for complete healing and allowing the patient to be as independent as possible.
4.Spinal Therapy can be indicating in cases where neuropathy is compounded by disc injury and spinal degeneration that causes pressure on the spinal nerve roots. We have various advanced spinal treatments available that address these conditions.
5.Clinically Tested ReBuilder™ 7.8 Hz Electrotherapy is the cornerstone of the program that allows for the reprogramming on the affected nerves. This treatment when combined with the above steps can dramatically increase the success rate of the program because it addressed the body on all levels that it is affected by Neuropathy.
Our program provides the right combination of manual therapy, therapeutic exercises, centered around the application of a specialized 7.83 Hz Electrotherapy in combination with a home self care program to allow for lasting changes and more complete healing. A typical treatment regimen consists of 3 visits per week for 5 weeks. Some cases may require a more intensive visit frequency and have a longer duration. This will be recommended on an individual. After 5 weeks of care, the patient is released to a home care program to ensure longer term relief. The treatment program is covered by some insurance companies, and is also affordable for the private pay patient.
A rebuilder home unit neurostimulator may be purchased after 1-2 months of supervised in office treatments. You will be trained on how to use the unit and we will give you a home treatment program to follow. We will also help advise you on what other home therapy to continue. This will help ensure you get long term results. It is also recommended that you have a follow up appointments periodically to make sure you have the most up to date home care recommendations. Most patients do best with a periodic tune up.
Call our office to schedule for a FREE Neuropathy Consultation and Evaluation to see if this treatment protocol could benefit you. We look forward to consulting with you on this exciting new program for a particularly challenging problem. We are also happy share information on this program with your other treating doctors.
Why suffer another day? Call our Naperville location for a FREE Neuropathy Consultation today.
Naperville / Bolingbrook / Plainfield – 630-355-8022