New 'cure' for LC, ME etc? Daily Mail article on 'Microcurrent therapy' - Arc4health

JemPD

JemPD

Senior Member (Voting Rights)
So a very dear friend showed me this article tonight

Can a £200 pain zapper really cure your long Covid? - The Mail (mailplus.co.uk) Since it mentions ME as well thought it's be worth looking at.
Was this seriously written by someone who's 'specialised in health reporting for decades'?
And why on earth did she think she had life changing LongCovid when she still felt crap just 1 month after her covid started? many people take that long to recover from flu!

I just havent the emotional or physical energy to highlight all the red flags, but, Science for ME.... particularly since it says
In humans, alongside pain relief and improved healing – proven in gold standard ranadomised clinical trials – it’s been shown to tackle symptoms in patients with fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome, or ME.
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I thought some of you would like to have at it...

here's the 'science' behind the device. The Science behind Microcurrent Therapy - Arc4Health (arcmicrotech.com)

I mean i'd be thrilled to discover that the 'research' holds up, but it smacks strongly of pseudoscience to me? If it looks genuine i'd have a go, but is ATP production really influenced by the body's electrical currents?
 
Pretty sure it's quack-o-rama.

Used to jumpstart muscles in physical therapy treatment of knee arthritis and not proven efficacy for that, I think.

Gives the muscles a twitch. Nothing earthshattering. No message from the divine.
 
I have a tens machine, I have used it for back pain with limited success. I have also tried spinal and vagus nerve stimulation, none of this does a thing for ME/CFS. You can overpower the pain for a bit with a tens but its only temporary relief but effectively numbing the nerves completely, that is all this therapy does for me. A cure for ME/CFS or Long Covid it is not.
 
Standard investigation techniques, used by people.

Look at it
Prod it
Hit it with something
And, in the last couple of hundred years, electrocute it

All to used to see what happens.

Next one up, drill a hole in it, shove something in the hole, and wiggle it about.

All standard investigation methods, used by everything from chimps to toddlers.

But.....chimps and toddlers don't claim they cure anything.

It's not science, or medicine, it's instinct, and as such, may lack something.
 
Thanks @Sly Saint i hadnt seen that.

My instinct is that it's defo twaddle, but i want to have a look at the references they give for their claims on scientific 'research' so i can give my friend more than a 'thats nonsense' response, i'd like to be able to give a factually based dismantling of the claims, rather than what she will just see as scepticism/disbelief.

Not because of any issue where she's pressuring me to do it or anything, she isnt, but i dont want her to be taken in by it. I'd like to spread the scientific literacy around :D

But i dont have the wherewithall at the moment. lol not like i am hugely scientifically literate or anything but since mixing with you fine people i know correlation isnt causation, placebo does nothing objective and subjective outcomes are unreliable without double blinding. So i'm at 'Jack n Jill' book level of literacy at least :)

Whether it does anything at all for LC/ME is highly doubtful, but there do seem to be some refs for wound healing, i'd like to know if these studies are of any quality, i know its doubtful but i'd like to be able to say eg "thats unreliable/poor quality because...

But (which seems like a red flag to me in any case) the first few refs that i managed to click through on are all 'reviews' of the evidence.
 
cassava7 said:
Thread from a physicist with ME/CFS:

https://twitter.com/mareksjf/status/1561738992659357696

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The person in that 2nd thread (not the physicist) seems to be getting confused between microcurrent/electrical current & magnetic resonance - which are, as the physicist says, 'completely different concepts'. So it's unclear to me what is being said about microcurrent and wound healing.

I'd have thought it utterly absurd to think any of these things will 'heal' autism in any case. As i understand it autism is neurlogical difference, not a disease state.

What i'd like to know is whether any effect has been shown on the production of ATP, one can only discern that accurately by looking at the studies themselves & I cant do that detective work right now.

I'm not really keen on anyone's 'opinion' alone, because as we all know opinions are often not based on evidence i want to look at the (likely non existent/cherry picked/poor quality) 'evidence'.

I'd be grateful for someone qualified to tell me if, for example, these journals are reputable for starters...
Bioelectricity and microcurrent therapy for tissue healing – a narrative review: Physical Therapy Reviews: Vol 14, No 2 (tandfonline.com)

Electrical Stimulation Technologies for Wound Healing | Advances in Wound Care (liebertpub.com)

On their main site at the beginning of referrences it says
Evidence Of Microcurrent Therapy’s Effectiveness In Pain Management
A recent review of the published literature identified n=17 studies that were of sufficient quality to merit inclusion (8x RCTs; 3x case studies/case series; 2x cohort studies; 2x controlled studies; 1x cross over study and 1x retrospective analysis) [1-17]. Microcurrent Therapy was deemed effective in 13 of the 17 publications (76%), employing 95% of all trial participants (n=2335), who reported a significant effect in terms of pain relief and pain perception.
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my bolding. I'd like to see the RCTs themselves... there are, tellingly it seems.... no details or refs for those RCTs. And the bit i bolded sounds suspiciously like they were subjective outcome measures without blinding. No objective evidence seems to be advertised - which seems to say it all really - because if it existed they'd be shouting about it.

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Maybe there's something to this or maybe it's post hoc ergo propter hoc (after this, therefore because of this).

Which means that the spontaneous improvements in long covid symptoms happened and would have happened without use of the device.

I would need to know what the course of improvements in symptoms (and recovery) looks like in long covid. Is it always gradual or can it change dramatically in a week or two or even a few days. Will these micro current users relapse in the future?

Same principle (post hoc ergo...) as attributing an adverse event (diagnosis of autism, for example) with a recent immunization.
 
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JemPD said:
The person in that 2nd thread (not the physicist) seems to be getting confused between microcurrent/electrical current & magnetic resonance - which are, as the physicist says, 'completely different concepts'.
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Well, they're nearly identical in that they involve scientific-sounding concepts that are mysterious to most people, and thus easy to make magical claims for. "Magical" electricity and magnet treatments have been around for hundreds of years ... with no proven success, so reskinned versions aren't likely to be any more successful.

I will point out that there are some non-magical treatments that do work, such as pulsed currents speeding up tissue healing, but those have clinical evidence and don't claim to cure all ailments.
 
shak8 said:
Maybe there's something to this or maybe it's post hoc ergo procter hoc (after this, therefore because of this).

Which means that the spontaneous improvements in long covid symptoms happened and would have happened without use of the device.
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oh i'm almost certain that, at least for LC in the early days (like is being described in the article) it is a post hoc propter hoc scenario.

Creekside said:
I will point out that there are some non-magical treatments that do work, such as pulsed currents speeding up tissue healing, but those have clinical evidence and don't claim to cure all ailments.
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well they're saying that this is a pulsed current - so whats the difference?

Please dont misunderstand me i'm not pro the device i think it's highly likely to be snake oil, but i just want to be sure & be able to argue with more than my own opinions about it looking like pseudoscience.
 
If it sounds too good to be true, it's most probably marketing or fraudulent claims.


There are many testimonials by horse owners on the equine branch of the company making the micro stim product.

I dislike testimonials in place of evidence so much I could take a hatchet to them (not the people, nor the horses).

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