Alpha-Stim
Celebrating 27 years
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US Government Federal Supply Schedule Date: May 5, 2005 I have a small acupuncture practice in the Los Angeles area. I have been trying the Alpha-Stim with my clients and associates for about two months. Most of my clients notice the calming effects of the Alpha-Stim by the end of the first session. They are intrigued by the subtle nature of the effect. They know they are not being drugged or overpowered in any way. Instead, the calmness feels very natural and in harmony with their own thought processes, like a window being opened ever so slightly. Those who rent a unit for a few weeks just to experience the calming effect are often surprised to find that cravings for alcohol and binge foods have fallen away spontaneously. After using the unit myself, I've noticed an easy detachment from a surprising array of little cravings and compulsions I had picked up over the years. I've also noticed that letting go of cravings seems to go hand in hand with a clearer sense of priorities, again evidence that the effect is entirely natural and in harmony with the brain's highest functions. I find that it can even enhance executive function and meditation practices! When I first tried the Alpha-Stim at a neurofeedback conference a few months ago, the treatment made me dizzy, even at the lowest setting of 100 µA. I returned the unit to the demonstration booth and opined that the Alpha-Stim was not for me. I rented the 5-DVD set of presentations by practitioners, however, thinking that the unit might be useful for some of my patients. When I heard Dr. Kirsch say on one of the DVDs that initial intolerance of even the low current settings is almost diagnostic of fibromyalgia, a bell went off, because I have chronic fatigue syndrome, basically the same condition! I bought a unit immediately, and later, along with an associate, bought ten additional units. In the past, because of my fatigue, I have found myself agreeing with neuroscientists such as Elkhonon Goldberg, who speculate that the placement of all the arousal centers in the lower parts of the human brain is an example of haphazard design, a fluke of evolution. After all, unlike a well-designed computer network, the brain has no distally located back-up system if something goes wrong (at least until the Alpha-Stim)! And, of course, things do go wrong in these areas all the time. Our ability to get things done as we age is affected, of course, but the rest of our organ systems can be affected as well: cardiovascular disease, diabetes, immune dysfunctions, a host of afflictions can begin at this level of the limbic brain, but are not treated at the that level by contemporary medicine. Having entered the field of acupuncture with these cares in mind, I wasn't entirely surprised to find that some of my patients using the Alpha-Stim reported back that they were waking up with warm hands and feet for the first time in years, that bowel function had normalized in some cases, and that long-term tension in neck muscles had relaxed. The Alpha-Stim has further convinced me that we can no longer allow the limbic brain's arousal system to continue as the step-child of modern medicine. Today, the limbic system is routinely ignored while treating disease supposedly originating at or below the neck, even though we know better. This oversight is becoming increasingly serious now that the first-world countries are experiencing an epidemic of type 2 diabetes that threatens the economic solvency of our medical delivery systems. Almost half of all diabetics abandon their diet, most out of a compulsion to comfort themselves with food. Are we going to give up on all these people, just dismissing them as victims of poor impulse control? Or are we going to start practicing brain-based 21st century medicine? It's time to wake up and experiment with using technology like the Alpha-Stim to ease dietary and life-style transitions we need to make in order to avoid a host of evils, including a medical-economic catastrophy in the making. |
