Hey
I recently got a tens unit. Tenks father in law 
Tried it few times on my side hip.
It was painful like 3months. Some kind a bursitis?
After few uses the pain is almost gone!!!
Does anyone use this at home?
I am looking that you can use other programs to bulid muscle and recovery and so
Any thoughts?
Would you recomend it to buy it for myself?
Glad you had success with it. I bought and used the one Lance Armstrong was peddling on his podcast a few years agoâŚ.sorry can remember the brand. My daughters also used it primarily for back and knee issues. None of us had and success with it and we all ended up going to PT instead to correct the issues. Now I have a pacemaker and I donât feel comfortable sending electrical signals through my body so I tossed it out
Glad you are feeling better. But truthfully TENS is purely a temporary alteration of the nervous system. It works in the same way as when you rub your shin after hitting into the coffee table. Temporarily dampens the âpainâ signal by exciting different nerve signals that travel to your brain faster than pain does.
If the barrier to entry is low then go for it. Little risk:little reward. Itâs very temporary passive modality and mostly placebo. I have them at work but only for extreme cases of acute pain. I donât use them with my âregularâ clients. But if youâre finding success then go for it, just donât put it anywhere itâs not supposed to go lol.
As with most passive modalities, they all pretty much work on the same principle of novel and non specific neural input to alter your brainâs interpretation of whatâs âgoing onâ in an area. Works for some people, and not for others. And it only alters the pain, doesnât affect the âwhy.â So itâs still very important to address the crux of the issue otherwise you find yourself in the same loop as a lot of others where youâre perpetually beating it back with a broom and not eliminating it altogether.
Hope that helps a bit!
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Wow
Hopes and dreams just went
Or i will just use it for quad build up
I have bulging discs L5 and S1 and use one when it gets achy. It was recommend by a PT when doing physical therapy for sciatic nerve issues. She recommended on on Amazon and told me to buy it and bring it in, which I did, and she showed me the proper way to use it.
I guess I could add that while its only temporary relief itâs better than taking Nsaid all the time.
The cure? A new spine.
I have a tens machine that I use for relief from sciatica pain in my legs. I get the pain after sitting for long periods on car trips or plane rides. The relief after a 30 minute treatment is almost immediate. I have tried using the machine for relief of pains and aches from training and minor injuries but not had great success in this area. I find that for tired and sore legs (recovery) I have good success with regular use of my Normatec boots. I have not tired the machine to build muscle.
To use electrical stim for strengthening usually takes quite a bit of current to produce muscle contractions strong enough for strengthening, which TENS units usually are not capable of delivering. Most people also find it pretty uncomfortable, if not intolerable to produce those sorts of electrically elictied forces. Unless there is some reason you canât recruit your muscles volitionally, youâre probably better off just doing regular strengthening exercises.
I went to a talk fifteen years ago where an Irish sports research team had developed a protocol for developing muscles using EMS, called âfreezingâ, suffice to say it was unpleasant. Compex is the market leader as far as I know and their devices have many modes. You can look through previous threads on this topic but the summary is that people use these EMS devices for recovery, which helps stretch muscles and many have success with that.
The âfreezingâ protocol would be hugely beneficial to paraplegics and quadriplegics; but otherwise a gym or resistance training (paddles, big gear, running hills) is how to build muscles.
When I lived in Europe I had some physical therapy on my lower back due to sitting at a desk much of the day. The doctor prescribed 30 minutes of massage therapy followed by 30 minutes of TENs a few times a week for over it two months(canât remember) and then some other days of light stretching/body weight stuff to strength lower back.
The tens seemed to the the most questionable of it all, but I bought one of the units to play around with and itâs pretty fun to use on various muscles. Sometimes I wonder if it is better at making your muscles tighter into knots than it does at relaxing them though!
I can definitely see how it some cases it helps, in other cases it does nothing and an other cases it gets marginally worse.
Just donât go too crazy with turning it up. Keep the stimulus relatively light.
Yea people often get a little puzzled and sad that all of these modalities donât actually do that much.
TENS wonât âbuild upâ your muscles either. TENS is purely sensory. NMES is the motor counterpart to the TENS realm and will force âsomeâ muscular contraction but mostly beneficial for severe atrophy, edema, defmgenerative neuromuscular pathologies, etc. It can help get the muscles working a bit from a position of extreme weakness or recondition. But if you are full weight-bearing and can lift a percentage of your bodyweight then itâs near pointlessâŚjust move some weight.
I laugh at the commercial where you shock your abdominals while sitting on the couch. It just doesnât work like that.