My wife recently was prescribed a TENS unit for chronic shoulder pain. The instruction book indicates this unit can be used to help reduce pain in your knees, back, shoulder neck, wrist, or basically any joint or area (I am thinking of borrowing it and testing it out). I have a friend who indicated these things are crap and really don’t help. Anyone try one with good/bad results?
I’ve owned all kinds of electro-therapy units in my chiro office from some worth a few grand to the little $55. units. I’ve always used them on myself with good results as well with patients. Try it and see how it works for you.
It will certainly help. I would highly recommend adding some resistance training, as well. Electric stimulation is not the cure-all…unfortunately. I know its “chronic” but some extra strength will help with injury prevention.
I have used one. For me it worked great in certain areas of my body, i.e. on the back muscles I have had great success, Patellar, not so much.
This company seem to have some case studies.
The operative word in your post being “prescribed”. That presumes she has received an adequate evaluation and the problem adequately addressed by some competent health care professional. They are not a benign electronic aspirin and shoud not be used as such. Do you know enough about your pain to confidently apply TENS?
I own one from Europe. Doesn’t help any of my (many) issues.
I can’t speak to your wife’s chronic shoulder pain… in fact if I did I’d say you might want to find out what the specific problem is and get it treated. Shoulders shouldn’t be hurting all the time. I also think TENS is meant for soft tissue healing, and your wife may have any number of other problems that aren’t in that lane.
Having said that I have used TENS to help w/ overuse/tendonitis of the lower calf and upper achilles in a build up to a marathon. I had tried everything else… ultrasound, eccentric stretches, icing, stretching, good injury maintenance habits, etc. On a whim tried a physio that had TENS and had good results.
Again, it’s not just the TENS, but the mental side of it too probably, along with the strengthening, stretching, and icing that goes along with it, and also massage.
your results may vary.
I used a Tens about 10 years ago after I fell out of tree and bruised my hip. This thing really helped alleviate the pain that I felt. I can’t say that it did anything as far as improving muscle tone. When I first got it, I used to run it at the max setting in continuous mode. Later I tried the different pulse modes. All of them helped. My only regret is that I didn’t buy the unit when I had the chance.
It’s not a muscle stim. Primarily designed to address and interfere with central nervous system perception of pain. Muscle contraction is not part of the protocol. again, unless all reasonable treatments have been tried and failed, or insufficient relief, then TENS.
Thanks to all for your responses. Her injury was actually from a tetnus shot that went seriously wrong. I recall my PT using them on many of my past injuries to include back, knee and achilles. I don’t really expect it to help heal anything; however, as I have had chronic back pain from degenerative disk and am going to see my doctor following a MRI/arthrogram last week (ran into a tree mountain biking last October and the tree did a lot better then my shoulder) I was going to see if I could either get one myself or somehow get a deal to purchase one…if it works. Again, thank you.
I’ve got one and use it for inflammation in situations where I’d otherwise use pills.
For certain issues, where increased circulation is beneficial, they are great.
Also good for relieving muscle tension and spasms.