I like to share with you the unusual and remarkable things that FSM does - even or especially when they are surprising. Today I did a closing examination and treatment on  a young woman who was struck by a car while riding her bicycle a year ago. When I saw her in November she had sensory loss in both arms, pathological reflexes at the knees, 20 pounds of grip strength in her dominant hand (about one fourth of what it should have been for someone in her very physically demanding profession) and she could not feel her feet. The MRI showed two herniated discs pressing on the spinal cord. FSM could help keep the pain down but she needed and finally had a two level disc surgery and spinal fusion in February.  Once she recovered from the surgery and began physical therapy it was clear she needed facet injections if we were to eliminate the neck pain in a timely fashion. During the second set of facet injections I watched her as she lay prone on the table partly sedated. Her right hand had a tremor, a resting tremor, when she had pain with the injection. Later when I asked her about the tremor she reported that it was random but predictable any time she did balance exercises in PT or got stressed or used her hand. Her physical exam today showed normal reflexes and sensation, 60 pounds of grip strength in her dominant hand and a resting tremor lasting 3 minutes after the effort.

I made a guess about what might be causing a tremor in the forearm muscles. Nerve and spinal cord function had been severely compromised for nine months and it seemed likely that there was a decrease in descending inhibition from some part of the brain caused by the long period of dysfunction. I know just enough neurology to be inquisitive.  I had a hypothesis that the brain was invovled in the tremor and FSM was a good way to test that hypothesis.I started with “reduce inflammation in the motor cortex” with the positive leads at her neck and the negative leads in her hand after she provoked the tremor by gripping the dynamometer. Grip - tremor - place contact on her hand - “inflammation in the motor cortex” - tremor lasted 90 seconds not 3 minutes - so it helped. “Reduce inflammation in the midbrain, hindbrain, medulla”, no change in the 90 seconds of tremor after grip. “Reduce inflammation in the spinal cord and nerve” - made the tremor stronger and increased the decay time to 2+ minutes - made it worse. Interesting.

There is a frequency thought to “reboot” tissue - to help it find the lost instruction that tells it what to do next - kind of “control/alt/delete” for the target tissue. I tried it. Neck to hand - grip - tremor - “reboot / motor cortex” - tremor stopped instantly. Grip - tremor returned. Next structure down the path was the midbrain. Grip - tremor - “reboot / midbrain” - tremor stopped instantly.  Then we put the negative leads contact around her wrist so we could run current and grip at the same time to see if we could prevent the tremor. Grip - tremor - “reboot / midbrain” - tremor reduced and then stopped in 20 seconds. Grip - tremor - “reboot hindbrain” - tremor minimal lasted 5 seconds. “Reboot hindbrain” - grip - no tremor. We tried numerous combinations in this fashion after this but “reboot hindbrain” was the only one that reduced the resting tone in her forearm muscles and prevented the tremor. Even when she could not see the machine she could tell when we switched back to that frequency by the way it made her brain and arm feel.  The physical therapists are going to run it from her neck to her feet when she does her balance exercises to see if they can prevent the tremor when she does them.

I don’t know if the effect is going to last but that almost doesn’t matter - I expect that the connections will recover in time - what we did and saw today was otherwise impossible.  Having the pleasure of watching the patient improve because the brain and nervous system responded so dramatically to one specific frequency combination - when the patient was blinded and the physician was guessing - was an amazing honor. I just LOVE being able to do this. CM