How H-Wave Helps Your Body Relieve Pain and Recover From Injury

What really happens within your body when it goes through the recovery process? Whether it’s from a sustained injury or after surgery – how does your body work to get your system and the affected area back to homeostasis? Read below to learn more about your body’s natural recovery process and how H-Wave can assist with this type of rehabilitation. You’ll also discover how H-Wave’s unique technology can help control pain in order to allow your body to move again, and engage the systems it needs in order to restore function.

The Basics of Recovery

How to get an injured area back to homeostasis

Whether you’ve had surgery, or suffered a significant injury, or are dealing with some type of chronic pain or chronic inflammatory condition; the goal in all these cases is to bring the tissues and the area back towards homeostasis in order to feel better. You don’t just want to mask symptoms and you don’t just want to feel good momentarily, but you really want to help that area recover. The goal is to help improve the health of those tissues in that area.  That is also the key to providing rehabilitative and lasting benefits.  In order to bring tissues and an environment back towards homeostasis, the absolute foundation of that is clear:

You must flush out waste and bring in nourishment.  

Whatever you may call it (congestion, waste, swelling, edema), it’s what causes so many problems and is at the root of so many symptoms that patients often have.  So what you need to do is flush all that waste out. Simultaneously, you’ll need to bring more fresh blood and nourishment into that area.  Nourishment includes all the supplies that the body uses to repair those tissues to be healthy, to feel good, and to perform the way they’re supposed to.  So, how do we flush the waste out? 

Flushing Waste Out – How the Lymphatic System Works

While the heart beats, it sends blood throughout the body.  Oxygenated blood flows through arteries from the heart into all areas, and deoxygenated blood is pumped back to the heart through veins and so on.  During your body’s natural recovery process, large waste particles are produced and can create congestion since they can’t go through the venous system.  This is what occurs so often for people who have had an injury or surgery or suffer from chronic conditions.  In order to remove these large waste particles, it requires the lymphatic system.  

lymphatic system valves

The lymphatic system is a network of thousands and thousands of vessels throughout your body going out to all your extremities.  It’s those lymphatic vessels that absorb larger waste particles and excess fluid from all the extremities and filter out the bacteria in order to eventually return the healthy excess lymph fluid back into your bloodstream. But the lymphatic system doesn’t have a heart beating to force the movement of fluid and waste through it.  It’s a passive system.  In order to absorb those fluids and move that waste away from your extremities and back into circulation, it requires the lymphatic system to be activated by compressing the lymphatic vessels.

The lymphatic vessels have all these one-way valves. As the vessel is compressed, it moves the waste up a little bit through the one way valve up to the next chamber, and then it’ll stay there.  When the vessel continues to be compressed, it’ll move that waste up to the next chamber, and the next chamber, and the next chamber, and it can’t go backwards because of those one-way valves.  This compression of lymphatic vessels can be done in lots of ways.  The way it works on a normal everyday basis is through locomotion.  Your own natural body movement in life compresses those lymphatic vessels and makes sure that waste is not accumulating in the extremities or in any parts of your body and that it’s constantly moving.

The ChallengeEngaging Lymphatics When You’re Injured

When you’re injured or you’ve had surgery or you’re suffering from a chronic condition, a few things can happen which prevent waste from moving through the lymphatic system and allow congestion a chance to build up and cause discomfort.  One example is – you’re unable to move that much, either because you’re in so much pain, or that part of your body is immobilized and you physically can’t move, or it’s too painful to move.  Another example is – that your body has already done so much work trying to repair tissues that even if you are moving, it can’t keep up because there is already too much accumulation of congestion and waste, so you need to move more.  That’s why you might hear so often that exercise is the best medicine and movement is so good.  But what if movement is going to exacerbate the situation and make the environment worse?

H-Wave OTC helps blood circulation

Sometimes you can move a little bit, and that’s why physical or occupational therapy can be beneficial to get your body moving and help move some of the waste through the lymphatic vessels.  But if you move too much, i.e.: too much walking, too much stretching, too much work with a therapist, too much time on a stationary bike or whatever it may be; then you start actually working those muscles and that can very often exacerbate an injury or aggravate a post-op area.  When you work an area too much, you start causing fatigue of those muscles. This type of muscle fatigue is micro trauma and it damages those tissues, so you’ll have an inflammatory response and again, exacerbate the issue.  So, you DO need to compress and activate those lymphatics, but you need to be careful to do it in a way that doesn’t make any issues worse.  This is where H-Wave can help, and it’s what makes H-Wave so unique and so special.  

The SolutionHow H-Wave’s Low Frequency Activates the Lymphatic System

H-Wave has a low frequency setting that works uniquely by activating muscles through non-fatiguing muscle contractions.  By contracting muscles with H-Wave, you are creating very significant compression of the lymphatic vessels.  What’s so special about the H-Wave is it does this without any fatigue to those muscles and without any stress or tension on the tissues.  So there is no chance of exacerbating an injury or issue within the area.  There’s no chance of having an inflammatory response and overworking those muscles.  Even though that premise sounds simple, there are no other methods that accomplish this in the same way.  Any type of physical exercise will relatively quickly start putting stress on the tissues. Pretty soon if you do more than 10-15 minutes, you start causing muscle fatigue and creating an inflammatory response.  

Compared to other electrical stimulation

There are other electrical stimulation devices on the market, but they really have different purposes.  Their primary purpose is often that of a traditional muscle stimulator, which is to contract muscles for muscle re-education.  In that case, you get strong, harsh muscle contractions which are good for muscle reeducation, but put significant stress and tension on the tissues and fatigue the muscles.  So they can have some benefit in very small doses.  But they can’t have really significant benefit for any significant period of time, since using them for more than very small doses would aggravate the issue and cause a rebound swelling or inflammatory response.  The ability of H-Wave to significantly activate the muscles without any negative factors, without any stress on the tissues, without any fatigue, and get a really substantial activation and stimulus to the lymphatic system to flush out all that waste is more effective than any other method out there. 

Compared to other techniques

Other techniques like compression and massage are actually good techniques for activating lymphatics.  However, external compression and massage are so much more limited than contracting the muscle like H-Wave does.  If you want to compress the superficial lymphatic vessels (the ones close to the skin), you could probably do that easily with a massage or a compression device. But the reality is, it’s almost impossible to get the many lymphatic vessels that are much, much deeper in the tissues using these methods.  You would need to compress or massage so hard that you’d really be over-compressing the superficial vessels.   The benefit of H-Wave’s technology is that you’re not compressing externally on the outside of the skin.  Although H-Wave activates muscles superficially, it also activates muscles deep within the tissues, and therefore activates all vessels as well (both superficial lymphatic vessels and those deep within tissues).  Since you’re activating all those muscles in that area, you’re equally compressing all the vessels, without over-compressing any in particular.   This helps to optimally stimulate lymphatics to flush out all that waste, again without any fatigue and without any negative factors.  That’s really the first step in bringing tissues closer to homeostasis.

Bringing Nourishment In – How the Circulatory System Works

Now the next step towards recovery and getting tissues back to homeostasis is bringing nourishment into the affected area.  The tissues are not thriving because they need nourishment and oxygenated blood, and they want to be repaired.  But all the congestion and waste can make it hard for that fresh oxygenated blood to get into the area.  So while you’re system is flushing the waste out, you also want to simultaneously be bringing nourishment in.

increased blood flow

The way nourishment is naturally going to come in is by movement.  If you want more circulation, you need to move more. The more you move muscles, the more you activate muscles.  This causes blood vessels to dilate, which causes blood flow to increase.  Vascularity improves the more you condition an area, the more you move it.  But just like with lymphatics, when you’re injured or you’ve had surgery or you suffer from a chronic condition, often you physically can’t move.  The area is immobilized or it’s too painful to move.  Or maybe you can move in small doses which is beneficial, but you’d have to be very careful to not move too much.  It’s easy to think “a little bit of movement helps, so let me move a lot more and it’ll help more.”  But when you start moving a lot more, you’re now putting stress on those injured or damaged tissues and you’re going to potentially exacerbate the issue.  Or you’re going to move so much that you fatigue those muscles, which can happen very quickly on someone who has been immobilized or injured.  This again, would cause an inflammatory response just like mentioned previously with the lymphatic system.  So you want to increase the amount of nourishment coming in, but without causing any of those negative side effects: exacerbating injuries or surgery repair sites, or causing an inflammatory response.  

How H-Wave’s Low Frequency Helps the Circulatory System

Clinical research has shown that muscle activation affects nitric oxide, the neurotransmitter involved with many things in the body including vasodilation (dilating blood vessels).  Since H-Wave’s low frequency creates muscle activation, when you’re using the H-Wave you’re immediately affecting nitric oxide and getting vasodilation.  That’s causing an immediate and very significant increase of blood flow into the area.  This greatly increases the amount of fresh oxygenated blood and everything else that comes with it – all the supplies and all the nourishment that those tissues need to repair.  

H-Wave's low frequency mechanism of action

Unlike other methods or devices, and unlike regular movement, you can use the H-Wave’s low frequency to create muscle activation for multiple hours every day without worsening anything, and without causing an inflammatory response.  This can really enhance and significantly grow the benefits you’re seeing from any active recovery techniques like walking or therapy that you’re already doing.  What research has also shown is that when you use H-Wave on a consistent basis (for a few weeks, a few times a week), you actually get a conditioning benefit.  You improve the vascularity in that region, which is the same thing you would see if you’re exercising regularly. But again, if you’re injured or had surgery or suffering from a chronic condition, you might not be able to exercise on a regular basis.  What often happens in these circumstances is you lose vascularity in that area. 

But by using H-Wave regularly, the clinical research shows that you can improve vascularity through angiogenesis: the formation of new blood vessels.  When this occurs, you can hopefully get back to your baseline vascularity and possibly gain even more.   When you improve vascularity in a region, it means that your body can deliver more fresh oxygenated blood to that region 24/7, whether H-Wave is on or off.  Because there are more blood vessels, there are more pathways to deliver that blood.  It’s a simple premise – when you keep pumping blood through that area over and over (which is what H-Wave does), your body responds by saying “Hey, I obviously need more pathways. I need more vessels to handle this capacity, this consistent blood flow coming into the area.”  And your body responds with angiogenesis, as it would with doing exercise.  But H-Wave is a way to accomplish this when you can’t exercise regularly or when exercising isn’t enough to get over the hump. 

The foundation of recovery is the ability to flush out waste and bring in nourishment, and nothing does that more effectively than H-Wave without any negative side effects.

If you have a condition or injury that has caused an issue where you can’t move enough to flush out the waste with daily movement, therapy or exercise, then H-Wave can possibly help.  Or if you’re not able to move enough to bring in plenty of nourishment without aggravating the area, then H‑Wave can possibly help. That is really what H-Wave is all about.  It’s realizing that the foundation of recovery is the ability to flush out waste and bring in nourishment, and nothing does that more effectively than H-Wave without any negative side effects.

Effective Pain Control with H-Wave’s High Frequency

The reality is that there are types of conditions sometimes simultaneously occurring to this problem of tissue recovery and the desire to bring tissues towards homeostasis.  Sometimes there are other, more directly nerve-related issues going on.  With chronic low back pain for example, there may be a herniated disc or something that’s actually impinging upon the nerve.  That nerve is constantly firing.  That nerve has gone into a chronic pain cycle.  It’s overactive and firing regularly which is causing intense pain.  Moving nourishment and waste and bringing that area towards homeostasis may be beneficial and may be very desirable, but something more is needed first to shut down the pain in those cases.  That’s where H-Wave comes in with its secondary setting.

Sodium Channel Inhibition
Ion transfer through the Sodium Channel propagates action potential, transmitting pain signals to the brain.  H-Wave’s electric current is believed to cause Sodium Channel inhibition, which disrupts propagation of action potential and transmission of pain signals.

Though moving nourishment and waste is the foundation of what H-Wave does, for patients that need something more, H-Wave’s high frequency setting goes directly after the nerve and shutting down the pain signal.  With this we are trying to create inhibition of the sodium channel “Sodium Channel Inhibition” using H-Wave’s high frequency:

In simple terms, we’re trying to shut down that pain.  We’re not going to be able to cure the underlying physiological issue going on or stop the impingement of the nerve.  But what we can do in about a 30-minute session is shut down that pain to a point where you’re not feeling any pain, or your feeling very little pain, and keep it away for hours after treatment.  A single 30-minute treatment in the comfort of your own home can create hours of pain relief.  However, every patient is different.  It might start with an hour of relief or it might start with six to eight hours of relief, but what most patients see are cumulative benefits.  The more they use the product, the longer and longer the results will last and the more significant the results can be. 

H-Wave’s Ability to Relieve Pain Compared to TENS

H-Wave’s high frequency signal is so effective at shutting down pain, that the technology is actually cleared by the FDA to be used as electronic anesthesia in dentistry.  While this might not be exactly the type of pain you’re dealing with, it’s a great example of the capabilities of H-Wave.  The ability to calm down an overactive nerve and shut down that pain signal is so significant, that H-Wave can be used as a replacement to Novocain or Lidocaine during dental procedures.  Even serious dental procedures like a crown preparation, where there’s thirty or more minutes of drilling on a tooth.  This shows that there’s something really special about H-Wave’s ability to shut down pain.  

H-Wave device next to a TENS device

This is something much, much more substantial than for example, a TENS device and its ability to shut down pain.  As you may be familiar, a TENS at best will mask the pain while the device is on.  But there’s a lot of pain that TENS just isn’t able to address.  Even while the TENS device is on, it can’t conquer severe chronic pain.  At best, it may minimize pain while turned on but there’s no lasting benefit after the device is turned off.  Additionally, there’s no rehabilitative benefit.  It’s not doing anything to improve tissue health, bring those tissues or that area towards homeostasis or towards any type of recovery.  

Benefits of Using Both H-Wave Frequency Settings (High and Low)

Often, many of our patients use both of our modes of operation in order to get maximum lasting benefit, depending on what their issues are.  They might want instant pain relief by shutting down that nerve (high frequency).  Or the pain relief might come from flushing out waste and bringing in nourishment using low frequency.  But for some people they need both. They need to immediately shut down that overactive nerve and break the chronic pain cycle, and they simultaneously (or soon after) need the other part of our treatment.  Our low frequency treatment that is flushing out waste helps the body work towards long-term improvement of the affected area and bringing that area towards homeostasis.  When you put these two modes of operation together, you have a treatment that is so powerful and so effective at helping so many patients regain the lifestyle they want.  It can reduce medication usage and help patients get back to the activities of daily living that they truly enjoy . . . and in the end, live a better life.

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