At the beginning of May 2024, my wife and I travelled to Troutdale Oregon for a medical treatment as a last-ditch effort to resolve my chronic pain. What occurred there though, makes me question everything I thought I understood about medical science.
I lived with chronic pain for 29 years. Despite this, I worked full-time, painted, cooked, traveled, hiked, and attempted to live a normal life. Nonetheless the pain affected me in every conceivable way, physically, emotionally, cognitively, psychologically, socially, and professionally. I lost weight because I couldn’t eat, I got sick because I couldn’t sleep, I was unable to work, I had to cancel plans because I couldn’t function. Chronic pain negatively affected every part of my life and my marriage. So, it was out of desperation that my wife and I flew to Oregon.
As of five days after arriving in Troutdale, my daily chronic pain is gone. The thick scarring all over my body turned into normal tissue; the same occurred inside my body where I can feel the absence where it used to be, and greater flexibility was restored. I have normal sensation in areas that were numb from nerve damage since I was in my teens; I can move muscles in my face that were frozen in place and bound to my skull from extensive scarring going back decades; I can close my mouth all the way where before I couldn’t; I have better skin tone where capillaries were repaired in damaged places across my body; I have better pronunciation because the damaged tissues inside my mouth and throat were repaired; I can smile on both sides of my face where I couldn’t before; the thick hard numb tracheotomy scar on my neck feels like normal skin, and much more.
All of these things happened in a timeframe of minutes and hours, not weeks or months or years, and with no surgical procedures nor pain whatsoever. This didn’t make any sense. I’ve been dealing with medical issues for almost 30 years now – having experienced hundreds of reconstructive surgeries in the best hospitals – yet nothing that I ever experienced or heard of could explain it.
According to modern medical science, it is impossible for the human body to spontaneously transmute thick hard scar tissue and nerve damage into normal healthy tissues and normal functioning nerves within minutes. Except, that’s what literally happened. As I write this, I’m running my forefinger on my right hand over the back of my right thumb just below the nail. I’ve been doing this subconsciously since I was 12 years old when my dog, Zack, accidentally slashed me there with his tooth; leaving a thick rigid scar that I felt there all my adult life. Now, I feel only normal skin
where there used to be a hard raised line of scar tissue.
Even stranger, this was all accomplished using a technology developed over 100 years ago. There’s extremely limited knowledge on how this technology came into being and who first developed it.
What is known is that it was used widely in the early 1900’s until it was banned and suppressed and all those who knew of its origins died out and the knowledge was lost.
This sounds like a weird conspiracy theory, but it’s true. This was a side effect of The Flexner Report of 1910 – that practically eliminated all forms of energy and naturopathic medicine at the time –
chiefly allowing only surgery, drugs, and radiation as the only acceptable forms of medical practice.
Only in the last 30 years has there been a slow and extremely cautious grassroots revival of some of the electro-medicine technology and research, pioneered by Dr. Carolyn McMakin. So cautious in fact that most knowledge about it still only occurs by word of mouth, even though there are now thousands of licensed health practitioners around the world using it daily. It has its own thriving
online community of health professionals, thousands of publicly accessible case studies with scientifically precise details to explain what was done and how it worked, many published whitepapers and research articles across the web, has articles dedicated to it on the National
Institute of Health website, and the machine that runs the technology is an FDA approved medical device.
I feel compelled to write this account for those who may be helped. This method is called Frequency Specific Microcurrent (FSM). It doesn’t just work for people dealing with chronic pain, but for countless other conditions that are difficult or seemingly incurable according to modern medical science. I realize though, for me to relay this account in a way that accurately conveys the significance of this journey, I must start at the beginning.
Please be aware that some of the historical details about my past are disturbing.
History
I was born in Ukiah California in 1979; at the same hospital where my life was saved 14 years later.
My early life was complicated. An only child of divorced parents, I was shuffled between them throughout my childhood. While living with my father into my early teens, I experienced sustained emotional abuse that eventually led to my suicide attempt on August 17 1994 using a 20-gauge shotgun beneath my chin.
I failed. Instead of losing my life, I lost my face and bone structure from the cheekbones down, including my nose (found later upon the ceiling fan). I lost my sight when some of the lead pellets passed through my optic nerves – cauterizing their way into the prefrontal cortex – into my brain,
where they still remain. My father found me shortly after; called 911; I was rushed to Ukiah General; the head ER doctor saved my life using silver nitrate to cauterize the bleeding; then I was airlifted by helicopter to UCSF in San Francisco. Larry, the doctor who saved my life, has been a good friend and mentor to me since then.
I was placed in a drug-induced coma for weeks while numerous surgeries were done to stabilize what was left of my shattered skull. I flatlined 3 times; was given my last rites each time, and survived. In subsequent years, I had over 300 surgical interventions and reconstructive surgeries; some surgeries were a couple hours, the longest took 44 hours which was done in shifts by 3 medical teams. Primarily spearheaded by Dr. Corey Maas at UCSF, my facial bone structure was
replaced. They used screws, metal plates, titanium bars, skin, cartilage bone grafts and other parts of me to fill in what was missing.
My nose was reconstructed when I was in high school. I also dealt with hypertrophic scarring throughout my teens. Every time I had surgery, the scars would become huge and thick and ropy.
Since the most reliable way to replace missing parts within a person is to use their own body parts, I had scarring all over my body where skin, muscle tissue, bone, cartilage, and arteries were taken from my legs, arms, stomach, hip, and elsewhere to reconstruct what was lost.
Nonetheless, the events of my life were mostly normal. I graduated high school, went to college, joined the work force, got married, travelled, and did lots of personal, professional, and creative stuff between then and now.
However, some important challenges did surface. My wife noticed that my memory was faulty at times. We could be talking about something, making plans, or experience events together, and I would forget them so thoroughly it was like they never happened. I was in denial about this for years, and finally in 2016 I had a neuropsychological evaluation done at my wife’s insistence.
The result of the evaluation was definitive. Due to the presence of shotgun pellets still lodged within my brain, including the damaged parts where the pellets burned their way in, I was diagnosed with a traumatic brain injury (TBI) affecting the pre-frontal cortex, resulting in short term memory loss, emotional issues with impulsivity and reactivity, and erratic logic at times. I was told this was irreversible and that I needed to learn to live with it.
I had a breakdown in December 2022. I told my wife we had to divorce. By that point I tried everything I could think of to get better. I met with psychologists, read books, had talk and behavior therapy, auditory neurofeedback therapy, tried mindfulness and meditation techniques, and nothing worked. I couldn’t stop being reactive, impulsive, and forgetful to such a degree that it was harming her and our marriage. For me, my past was like a broken mirror. All jagged pieces mixed up and nothing ever connected. There was little to no chronological order to anything. I couldn’t remember anything greater than 10 minutes.
Serendipitously, while we went for a walk-in early December of 2022, my wife saw a sign for a local psychologist in Pacifica. When I met with Dr. Jeffrey Bruno later that month, he realized I was in
crisis mode, and he recommended I not make any hasty life decisions that I was on the verge of
doing. He first suggested testing to consider a more personalized treatment approach. I knew what the problem was, brain damage, but I agreed to wait and be tested anyway.
Fixing the Brain
In February 2023, I had a quantitative electroencephalogram (QEEG), a diagnostic test that measures electrical activity in the brain. Dr. Bruno said the bad news was that the right and left
hemispheres of my brain were extremely out of sync and not properly communicating; resulting in the left side of my brain working much less then it should be, and the right side working continuously to compensate. This meant that much of the information I received was mostly bypassing my analytic side of the brain and going straight into my emotional responsive side. This explained my constant reactivity and difficulty with impulse control. There were parts of my prefrontal lobe that exhibited only minimum brain activity.
That was the bad news, he said. The good news was that he could possibly fix it. The treatment was Cranial Electric Stimulation (CES), a noninvasive brain stimulation therapy that used small electric currents and electromagnetic fields to stimulate the growth of neuropathways between the imbalanced hemispheres of my brain. The next five months involved intensive CES treatments, oxygen therapy and clinical counseling, 3 days a week. The first couple months were dedicated to addressing the brain imbalance, and the remainder to restoring my short-term memory.
It was a slow and gradual process, but the treatments worked. The confusion and frustration that I once felt is gone. I can process new information faster than before and am much calmer now. My short-term memory also returned. I don’t have perfect recall, but I can have a conversation now and remember it later. This seems like a small thing, but it affects everything. Even parts of my damaged prefrontal cortex showed greater brain activity where before there was little. These changes significantly improved my marriage and personal life, though my chronic pain was still an issue in our lives.
Fixing the Pain
As a result of the physical trauma and later reconstruction, my internal facial anatomy is unique. My salivary gland and ducts were damaged. This resulted in swellings that build up every 2 or 3 weeks. While in high school, I used to take a pair of sharp scissors and stab myself inside the mouth when the pressure and pain became too much. As scar tissue increased, the swelling turned inwards and would rip open somewhere inside – my facial tissue – when enough pressure built up. This occurred regularly for 27 years.
In 2022, one specialist tried injecting Botox into the gland to turn it off. It worked, and every few months he repeated this. As the salivary gland atrophied, I expected the pain to disappear. Instead, it drastically increased. I met with various specialists, and was alternately diagnosed with
trigeminal neuralgia, an unspecified muscular issue, sympathetic nerve damage, then cluster headaches. No diagnosis was ever correct, and there was no relief from the pain.
Finally, the psychologist who I was seeing for my brain treatments suggested FSM. He explained there was a series of low-grade electric frequencies that were invented over 100 years ago that corresponded to cell frequencies in the body, and if you applied the correct frequencies, the cellular tissue could suddenly change, and the targeted issue might be fixed in minutes. He said that Carolyn McMakin had written a book about this, called The Resonance Effect.
“Okay,” I said. I thought he was nuts. That couldn’t possibly be real. If it were true, it would change everything about modern medical science and people would be using it everywhere. Out of desperation though, I read her book. In it, she describes how she healed Terrell Owens, the football player who suffered a massive fracture in his fibula with surrounding tissue damage so he could go onto play in the super bowl only six weeks later. I looked it up, and this really did happen. (What Doctors Don’t’ Tell You) (Microcurrent Technology, Sports Injuries, Lessons From NFL). So, I scheduled an appointment to meet with Dr. McMakin at her clinic in Troutdale Oregon on the second week of May 2024.
We spent the first 3 hours going through my entire medical history, starting when I was a child and covering everything I could think of between then and now. As we spoke, Dr. McMakin was building a picture of me, my life, and my pain profile. I told her what the various diagnoses were from all the specialists I’ve seen over the years, and she was particularly interested that the pain in my neck increased drastically after starting the Botox injections.
She said Botox is one of the most powerful neurotoxins in the world; it turns off the ability of the vagus nerve to communicate with glandular tissue. Also, the vagus nerve is like a spider web throughout the body that can generate pain signals continuously when damaged, inflamed or scarred. She believed the vagus nerve was further damaged when the Botox was injected, which might explain why the pain worsened after the treatments began two years before.
At 5:00PM, Dr. McMakin said “Okay hop on the table, let’s see if I can fix that.” She placed a wet towel on my neck and another on my head, hooking up a pair of alligator clips to run the current through each. She ran through various frequencies, some for removing scar tissue in the nerves, others for reducing inflammation, and more for removing scar tissue within gland tissues. She felt where the knot of scar tissue was within my jaw and turned up my nerve sensations in that area before turning it down. I felt the pain increase then decrease as she worked, it was very strange; like she was playing my nerves like a virtuoso.
At 6:15 PM she stopped and asked me how I felt. I wasn’t sure. I was still in a lot of pain all that night. When I woke up the next morning though, my pain was about 90% less than it had been for years; it felt great but strange to be nearly pain free for the first time in decades.
The next day she focused on removing the scarring inside of my salivary gland and the connective tissues there, also repairing nerve damage and capillaries. Again, the wet towel was placed on my neck and another on my head with the clips attached to each. Towards the end I felt Dr. McMakin move the towel away from my neck, followed by a shocked silence. Sounding surprised she said, “will you look at that,” and motioned for my wife to come and look. They both bent over my neck; suddenly my wife exclaimed “holy fuck it’s gone!” The thick numb tracheotomy scar I’ve had on my neck since my teens had disappeared. I felt only normal skin where it used to be; even the nerve sensation was restored. This occurred seemingly by accident at some point within the 2 hours she was working on the salivary gland scarring.
Neck scarring before and after
Later that night I discovered the same thing had happened to most of the scars all over my body. Places where I had skin grafts that have been thick and numb for decades were suddenly soft and had normal sensation.
When I met with Dr. McMakin the following Thursday, she unstuck the scar tissue binding the skin on my forehead to my skull, making it possible for me to move my right eyebrow which I had not been able to do since 1994. She removed the underlying scar tissue on my chin bone, so I had more flexibility, plus the scarring in my mouth and cheeks to free up muscle movement for greater
mobility. I could smile and pronounce better than I had since before the injury. Even my skin tone changed to a more natural color as she repaired the capillaries for better circulation.
The biggest surprise came at the end of that day though. When I was 15, I had a major tissue graft
taken from my right leg. It included muscle and an artery and whatever else came with it, which was threaded up into my neck to provide a new blood supply. The scar was large and went down to the bone, and the outside felt hard and indented as the scarring pulled the surrounding tissues inward.
The scar was also a discolored reddish color since the pigments in the tissues were all damaged. My wife watched as Dr. McMakin applied the current to my leg. The internal scarring against the bone suddenly let go and my calf muscles popped out into a normal shape that matched my other leg and the coloration all across the scar changed as the capillaries within the skin graft were repaired. I felt nothing out of the ordinary when this happened, and all of this occurred within a couple minutes.
On the last day, Dr. McMakin removed the scarring from my esophagus left over from past intubations, plus internal scarring beneath the skin in my neck. When I put my hand around my throat afterwards, I felt only the density of normal skin and muscle where before it was hard and inflexible.
Before we left, Dr. McMakin added a series of programs to a home unit. The FSM home unit is about the size of 2 decks of cards together and only requires a standard 9-volt battery to run. The latest programs included all those that she ran on me throughout the week, plus a collection of others to handle more common issues if needed later. I was shocked to learn that all the physical changes I experienced could have been done from anywhere using a standard 9-volt battery.
Conclusion
In the time since returning from Oregon, many things happened. I had emergency sinus surgery plus unexpected dental work done, everyone in our household caught covid, and so on. I successfully used the FSM home unit for all of these and more. The surgeon warned us that there would be bleeding for 3 days post-surgery. However, the Stop Bleeding protocol removed post-
operation bruising in 12 hours and there was no bleeding, and the Wound Care protocol healed my incisions much faster than he expected. When my 82-year-old mother-in-law had dental surgery, excessive bleeding was a concern since she is on blood thinners for a heart condition. We ran the same protocols after her procedure and she stopped bleeding in 1 hour, and within 24 hours she had no pain and couldn’t even tell where the procedure was done. When she returned to the oral surgeon for her post-operation checkup, he was shocked and said he had never seen anyone heal that fast before. Later, when she had a severe asthma attack where I heard the whistling in her
throat as she struggled to breathe, we ran the Asthma protocol on her while preparing to take her to the hospital. Within minutes though, she was breathing normally and tested at 98% oxygen saturation shortly after. After we all caught covid and ran the Covid protocol repeatedly over several days, each of us noticed improvement within 48 hours and we all tested negative by the 5th day.
When I had residual fluid in my lungs in the week after having covid, I ran the Lymphedema protocol on myself and felt the fluid disappear and was breathing normally after 1 hour.
This is all originally based on the Van Gelder Frequency List from the early 1900’s, which was significantly expanded upon through decades of practice and research by Dr. McMakin and others.
I tried finding evidence that an official government or medical university study was ever done to evaluate FSM, and there was none published anywhere I could locate. The article RIFE FREQUENCIES AND FREQUENCY SPECIFIC MICROCURRENT appears to explain why.
I’ve always shared the skepticism of the AMA and others regarding the effectiveness of certain alternative forms of treatment. However, there is a point at which mounting evidence, including the successful experiences of thousands of people including scientifically precise and reproducible results, should inspire further study, especially considering how profound many of these physical changes are.
About pain, most people cannot understand the effect that chronic pain has on the physical and emotional wellbeing of the afflicted. Most often feeling well each day is taken for granted. Those who have never experienced true prolonged pain can’t imagine it nor truly understand it. It’s like
ocean waves constantly pounding away at a cliffside, breaking away pieces one crashing wave at a time until it finally collapses. It can eventually break both the mind and body.
Last year one of our dearest friends stopped eating and drinking and eventually died because she could no longer take the pain that she endured daily. The same health condition she had was successfully treated by others using FSM in the past. I miss her and often think how different things would have been if she knew of this treatment as an alternative; she might still be alive now.
I find it profoundly frustrating that this healing technology hasn’t been given a place in mainstream medical practice as it should have years ago. Imagine how many people around the world could receive help from a technology that fits in your pocket and can make such profound changes while running off standard batteries. Imagine what something like this could do in countries where standardized healthcare doesn’t exist. Imagine the countless millions who suffer daily from conditions that are impossible to treat by the accepted practices of standard medical science
today.
There are reasons why this hasn’t happened, some of which I alluded to earlier. Yes, the AMA suppressed this knowledge in the early 1900’s, but the technology was reintroduced in the 1990’s; public information about what it does and how it works is easily available. However, the technology itself is difficult to access and is expensive. Anyone can go to the Frequency Specific Practitioners page to locate a local FSM professional and set up an appointment, but depending on where you live that option might not be available or too difficult to accomplish. Also, the FSM machines are
heavily regulated by the FDA, and are unobtainable unless you are a medical professional, a licensed practitioner, or have the aid of one to obtain an FSM device on your behalf.
Another reason why FSM is not used everywhere is due to politics. If it is possible to cure certain medical conditions that traditionally require life-long use of medications to deal with, or conditions that require repeated treatments to manage incrementally without ever fixing the underlying issue, imagine how this might threaten corporate profits by reducing repeat customers. There is a scene Dr. McMakin describes in her book where she was told this, that pain should be managed and not cured. However, there are now licensed FSM practitioners all around the world. There is a huge
online FSM community including decades of research data, whitepapers, and case studies for anyone who is interested to browse. The FSM machine has been approved by the FDA for years. It would be impossible for any industry or lobbyist effort to reverse 30 years of accrued data and momentum at this point by trying once again to stamp it out.
Personally, I don’t want to be a slave to any health condition. I can’t speak for anyone else, but I do know for certain that FSM has made real and lasting physical changes to my body. It’s not only
visible to others, I can literally feel these changes by touch. The visible scars on my body are different; so too is my skin tone where damaged capillaries were repaired. I have better
pronunciation than I did before, and most important of all, the pain I have endured daily for 29 years is now gone. My wife and I no longer have to regularly make contingency plans for pain. I can enjoy foods I haven’t been able to in years. I can take part in more activities without fear. My marriage is better as a result.
There are moments when everything changes; critical pivot points after which the trajectory of life is entirely different. Some are easy to recognize, others not. I know the day I shot myself was one such; the day I met my wife was another. So too, the day we walked by the psychologist’s office on a cold rainy evening when my wife noticed his sign in the gloom. Also, the day I met Carolyn, who restored a hope I thought had long since burnt to ash.
I will always be grateful to those who helped me along this journey, it has been a long and dark road at times. I don’t know what the future holds, but it seems a whole lot brighter to me now than it ever did before.
With Carol McMakin , May 2924
Bryan Garaventa, school yearbook photo. 1993)
- WHAT IS FREQUENCY SPECIFIC MICROCURRENT THERAPY?
- Microcurrent stimulation in the treatment of dry and wet macular degeneration
- Effectiveness of Microcurrent Stimulation in Preserving Retinal Function of Blind Leading Retinal Degeneration and Optic Neuropathy: A Systematic Review
- Observational Study to Assesses the Efficacy and Safety of Microcurrent Therapy with a Portable Device in Patients Suffering from Chronic Back Pain, Skeletal System Pain, Fibromyalgia, Migraine or Depression
- Visceral and Somatic Disorders: Tissue Softening with Frequency-Specific Microcurrent
- Non-invasive brain microcurrent stimulation therapy of long-COVID-19 reduces vascular dysregulation and improves visual and cognitive impairment
- Physiological effects of microcurrent and its application for maximizing acute responses and chronic adaptations to exercise
- Frequency-Specific Microcurrent for Treatment of Longstanding Congenital Muscular Torticollis
- Microcurrent Therapy Mitigates Neuronal Damage and Cognitive Decline in an Alzheimer’s Disease Mouse Model: Insights into Mechanisms and Therapeutic Potential
Bryan Garaventa
Hacking the Brain and the Pain, a True Story about FSM