Visceral and Somatic Disorders: Tissue Softening with Frequency-Specific Microcurrent

Authors: Carolyn R. McMakin, MA, DC¹ and James L. Oschman, PhD²

¹Fibromyalgia and Myofascial Pain Clinic of Portland, Portland, OR
²Nature’s Own Research Association, Dover, NH

Originally published in The Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine, Volume 18, 2012

Abstract

Frequency-specific microcurrent (FSM) is an emerging technique for treating many health conditions. Pairs of frequencies of microampere-level electrical stimulation are applied to particular places on the skin of a patient via combinations of conductive graphite gloves, moistened towels, or gel electrode patches.

A consistent finding is a profound and palpable tissue softening and warming within seconds of applying frequencies appropriate for treating particular conditions. Similar phenomena are often observed with successful acupuncture, cranial-sacral, and other energy-based techniques.

This article explores possible mechanisms involved in tissue softening. In the 1970s, neuroscientist and osteopathic researcher Irvin Korr developed a “γ-loop hypothesis” to explain the persistence of increased systemic muscle tone associated with various somatic dysfunctions.

This article summarizes how physiologists, neuroscientists, osteopaths, chiropractors, and fascial researchers have expanded on Korr’s ideas by exploring various mechanisms by which injury or disease increase local muscle tension or systemic muscle tone. Following on Korr’s hypothesis, it is suggested that most patients actually present with elevated muscle tone or tense areas due to prior traumas or other disorders, and that tissue softening indicates that FSM or other methods are affecting the cause of their pathophysiology.

Introduction

Electricity has long been used to stimulate healing; the recorded history dates from 2750 BC when sick people were exposed to electric eels. In 1812, Dr. John Birch in London healed a nonunion of the tibia with electric currents passed through needles surgically implanted in the fracture region. By the mid 1800s, this had become the preferred method for treating slow-healing bone fractures.

However, the Flexner Report and the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906 led to the abolition of electricity for healing until the 1980s, when careful research confirmed the effectiveness of electrical currents for stimulating bone healing. It was then discovered that coils could be used to noninvasively induce current flows through fracture sites. This is known as pulsing electromagnetic field (PEMF) therapy.

Following on this success, other investigators have successfully applied PEMF to a variety of other tissues, with each tissue responding to a particular frequency. For example, recent studies have documented frequency effects on tendon repair and collagen deposition in bone.

Understanding Energy Medicine

Energy medicine recognizes that the human body utilizes various forms of energy for the internal communications that maintain and organize vital living systems and for powering processes such as nerve conduction, digestion, circulation, and movement. Energy medicine also involves the use of energies of particular intensities and frequencies and other characteristics that stimulate the repair of one or more tissues, or that enable built-in healing mechanisms to operate more effectively.

Physics and biophysics study how the various kinds of physical energy interact with each other and with living systems. For example, moving electrical charges create magnetic fields in the surrounding space (Ampère’s Law, 1820), and moving magnetic fields induce currents to flow through conductors (Faraday’s Law, 1831). Electromagnetic fields arise when charges accelerate.

Hence, when oscillating or pulsing microcurrents are applied to the human body for therapeutic purposes, there is the possibility that beneficial effects may be due to the microcurrents themselves, to the magnetic fields induced in conductive tissues by charge movements, or to electromagnetic fields.

Energy medicine and bioelectromagnetics recognize the importance of resonance—the tendency of objects such as atomic nuclei, electrons, or molecules to vibrate strongly at certain frequencies and for these vibrations to be coupled through space to other objects with similar resonant frequencies.

Frequency-Specific Microcurrent

FSM has emerged over the last decade as a reproducible treatment for various somatic and visceral conditions including fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue, and myofascial and neuropathic pain. The technique is based on pairs of frequencies, low-level micro-amperage currents, and the principles of biologic resonance.

Key Treatment Protocols

FSM practitioners consistently observe a profound and easily palpable change in tissue texture within seconds of applying frequencies appropriate for a particular disorder. This “state change” can usually be detected anywhere on the body when one has found the correct frequencies and placements of the conductors, provided the patient is hydrated.

Treatment Methods Include:

• Conductive graphite gloves
• Gloves wrapped in moist cloth
• Gel electrode patches

The softening is not superficial, as in the epidermal layer, but is in the deeper skeletal muscles.

Observable Changes During Treatment

Specific changes include the following:

• Rapid tissue softening: The tissue rapidly and profoundly softens within seconds
• Systemic effect: Usually tissue all over the body softens when a beneficial frequency combination is applied anywhere on the body for any condition—likely a change in system-wide muscle tone
• Localized responses: Sometimes there are unresponsive regions that stand out amid the softened tissue—apparently due to localized muscle tension. These areas can be addressed with additional frequency choices and locations of the conductors
• Texture transformation: Muscle tissue that is hard, tough, scarred, firm, rigid, “gnarly,” or stiff begins to soften and within minutes feels “smooshy,” like pudding in a plastic sack
• Warming effect: The tissue becomes warm. This can be felt through the conductive gloves. Some sensitive practitioners can feel the warming with their hand several inches away from the skin
• Consciousness changes: The patient may become somewhat dreamy or “spaced out”

Clinical Example

For example, place a hand on an arm muscle while testing the eight possible frequency combinations previously identified for treating sinus conditions, with the microcurrent applied via conductive gloves inserted in warm moistened towels placed on the neck and forehead. One or more of the frequency combinations will result in profound softening of the arm muscle as the sinus condition begins to resolve.

Treatment Applications and Methods

Figure 1 Examples: (Descriptions of original diagrams)

A. Conductive gloves placed in warm wet hand towels for treatment of sinus conditions on the neck and forehead. Eight possible frequency combinations are tested in sequence until the therapist detects profound softening of an arm muscle.

B. Treatment of the upper back, shoulder, and posterior neck using conductive graphite gloves to restore biomechanics and relieve pain. The fingers sense change rather than force it. The frequencies and currents do the work. A latex or nitrile glove is worn under the graphite glove to prevent current conduction to the practitioner.

C. Gel electrode pads used to treat lumbar ligaments without nerve involvement. Another pair of electrode pads is placed on corresponding points on the abdomen. Electrode polarities are arranged to produce an interferential field so that the current and frequencies pass diagonally through the area to be treated, as an “X” in three dimensions.

Side-Effect or Causal Relationship

There are two contrasting perspectives on tissue softening with FSM:

1. Side-effect perspective: It is a “side-effect” of the application of therapeutic frequencies, and has no physiologic significance
2. Causal relationship perspective: Injuries, physical or emotional traumas, or other pathologic conditions can increase bodywide muscle tone or local muscle tension, and that tissue softening indicates that the pathophysiology is being addressed

Based on the work of Irvin Korr and others, we suggest that patients often have some degree of elevated muscle tone or tension stemming from trauma, disease, injury, or other conditions, and that tissue softening indicates that treatment is progressing.

Understanding Muscle Tone vs. Muscle Tension

Muscle tone or “residual muscle tension” refers to the continuous and passive partial contraction of resting skeletal muscles, or the muscle’s resistance to passive stretch while in the resting state. Physical disorders, injuries, and stress can result in abnormally low (hypotonia) or high (hypertonia) muscle tone throughout the body.

Muscle tension refers to a condition in which particular muscles remain chronically semicontracted. Muscle tension is typically a response to stress, overuse, or injury to a particular part of the body. Stress can also lead to sympathetically mediated constriction of blood vessels, reducing the flow of oxygen and nutrients to muscles, tendons, and nerves, often referred to as ischemia.

FSM is effective at normalizing both bodywide muscle tone and localized muscle tension, and at ameliorating their consequences.

Historical Context and Trauma Response

Many patients experiencing a traumatic event go on with their lives without lasting negative effects; others have reactions that lead to chronic physical and/or emotional issues. For example, psychologic factors have been associated with primary fibromyalgia syndrome, and research suggests that most people are “in shock” from old traumatic experiences.

Musculoskeletal pain can have multiple causes, and some patients benefit from therapies that “unwind” old traumas. Physiologists, neuroscientists, osteopaths, chiropractors, and fascial researchers have explored various mechanisms by which injury or disease increases local or systemic muscle tension or tone.

Theoretical Framework: The γ-Loop Hypothesis (1970s)

In 1975 and 1978, Irvin Korr introduced a “γ-loop hypothesis” to explain the persistence of increased local or systemic muscle contractions associated with various somatic and/or visceral dysfunctions. The hypothesis states that such dysfunctions lead to increased resting muscle contractions mediated by the autonomic nervous system and by the γ efferent loops regulating local muscle tension or global muscle tone.

Key Components of the γ-Loop System

The γ loops consist of:

• Efferent neurons: Neurons from the central nervous system to the periphery (such as motor neurons)
• Afferent neurons: Neurons from the periphery to the central nervous system (such as sensory nerves)
• Gamma (γ) motor neurons: The efferent component of the fusimotor system that controls and modifies the sensitivity of muscle spindles

Appropriate FSM treatments targeting specific conditions may therefore restore normal autonomic function and/or shift the “γ gain” regulating muscle tone or tension. Autonomic effects could also account for circulatory changes (tissue warming) and effects on consciousness (the dreamy or “spaced out” condition often observed in FSM).

Sustained Sympatheticotonia

Korr pointed out that there is a large though scattered body of clinical and experimental literature describing chronic hyperactivity of sympathetic pathways in many clinical conditions, involving a variety of organs and tissues. He suggested that this widely shared feature of local, regional, or segmental sympathetic hyperactivity is overlooked because of barriers created by specialization.

Korr referred to this hypothesis and its consequences as sustained sympatheticotonia. Sympathetic activation can have both local and systemic effects on:

• Cardiac output
• Distribution of blood flow
• Heat dissipation through the skin
• Release of stored metabolites
• Local muscle tension or systemic skeletal muscle tone
• Range of motion
• Emotional affect

In other words, any injury or inflammation or any somatic or visceral dysfunction anywhere in the body can elevate muscle tone throughout the musculoskeletal system, or increase skeletal muscle tension in selected areas.

Modern Research: The Fascial Connection

Fascia Research (Beginning in 2004)

Fascia is the bodywide structural and tensional component of the musculoskeletal system and has extensions to all of the viscera. At the 1st International Fascia Research Congress, held at Harvard Medical School in 2007, it was proposed that all collagenous connective tissues whose morphology is shaped primarily by tensional loading and that is part of the interconnected tensional network that extends throughout the body could be considered “fascial tissues.”

Revolutionary Findings

Beginning in 2004, a series of reports by Robert Schleip and colleagues confirmed earlier suggestions that fascia may have both sensory and contractile properties. They showed that lumbar fascia, plantar fascia, and the fascia lata contain myofibroblast cells that stain for α-smooth-muscle actin. Further research showed that smooth muscle-like contractions can be both induced and inhibited pharmacologically.

These important findings have implications for visceral and somatic disorders or dysfunctions, and could also be a component of the elevated tissue stiffness. The contractility of intramuscular connective tissue could be a significant component of passive muscle stiffness, which is also referred to as passive elasticity, passive muscular compliance, passive extensibility, resting tension, or passive muscle tone.

Clinical Implications and Mechanisms

The Fascial Network’s Role

The fascial network is pervasive, extending to the capsules and interiors of organs, and could therefore be involved in both the origin and resolution of both somatic and visceral disorders. Recent research suggests that fascia is the medium involved in the effects of acupuncture, including effects on organ pathology.

When the body is injured, stressed, or traumatized, fascia responds by:

• Laying down new fibers to provide support for the injured area (following Wolff’s Law for bone and Davis’s Law for soft tissues)
• “Gluing” adjacent muscles to each other

Thickening and gluing of fascial layers can persist long after an injury has healed and leave behind dense pockets or nonresilient bands that can be felt deep in the tissues. These palpable densities may correspond to trigger points and taut bands, and/or to inflammatory pockets. Residual local tensions and gluing in the fascial network can give rise to compensating tensions extending throughout the musculoskeletal system.

FSM’s Therapeutic Mechanism

How FSM May Work

Korr’s hypothesis of sustained sympatheticotonia may apply to FSM, since a consistent observation is that application of the correct treatment frequencies leads to a palpable local or bodywide tissue softening and warming, which is often associated with vasodilation.

Frequency effects on the autonomic nervous system have been noted before. FSM may actually reset γ gain and sympathetic tone, with beneficial local and/or systemic consequences on resting muscle tone and visceral functioning. How specific frequencies may cause such changes remains an open question.

Clinical Validation

The tissue softening taking place with FSM provides rapid feedback when optimizing a protocol for a condition not previously treated with FSM. Since so many variables are involved—two separate frequencies, signal intensities and waveforms, positioning of the conductive materials, and the patient’s condition—tissue softening facilitates the determination of the best combinations.

Conclusions

The main hypothesis of this report is that tissue softening noted when a therapeutic frequency is applied to the body is accounted for by the fact that most patients actually present with elevated muscle tone or tense areas related to previous traumatic or disease experiences, as originally proposed by Irvin Korr.

Key Points

1. Fascial involvement: Because of its anatomical pervasiveness, the fascia is involved in every aspect of physiology. Hence, the fascia constitutes a medium by which superficial injuries or contractions or constrictions might influence internal organs, and by which organ pathologies might be expressed in the periphery.
2. Integrated approach: Recent research has indicated that fibrosis created by a superficial injury can extend into the viscera to create so-called fibrocontractive diseases. These concepts provide a possible fascial basis for the so-called somatovisceral and visceralsomatic reflexes.
3. Clinical significance: The tissue softening taking place with FSM renews interest in the possible relations between somatic and visceral pathologies and provides a measurable indicator of treatment effectiveness.

Future Research

Several possible mechanisms have been discussed by which trauma and disease lead to elevated muscle tone or tense areas. The most recent research has shown that fascia has both sensory and contractile properties that can influence passive muscle stiffness, elasticity, compliance, extensibility, resting tension, and muscle tone. This new work expands our understanding of the mechanisms originally proposed by earlier investigators.

The fascial network’s involvement in both somatic and visceral disorders suggests that FSM’s effects on tissue softening may reflect fundamental changes in the body’s structural and functional integration, offering new perspectives on the relationship between local treatments and systemic healing responses.

For detailed treatment protocols and additional research, see McMakin C. Frequency Specific Microcurrent in Pain Management. Edinburgh: Churchill Livingstone/Elsevier, 2011.

Correspondence:
Carolyn R. McMakin, MA, DC
Fibromyalgia and Myofascial Pain Clinic of Portland
819 SE Morrison
Portland, OR 97214
E-mail: cmcmakin@msn.com