The physiokey looks like a mobile phone.
This comparison is a good one because this device sets up dialogue with the body. The moment it touches the skin it takes only micro seconds for the brain to recognise its gentle impulse and to respond by changing the electrical parameters of the skin being touched. The device measures these changes. Here begins an interplay between impulse and body. This flow of information wakes the body up and starts self-healing.
Science is confirming what we already know about the brain – that it is capable of affecting healing in the body. Non-invasive neurostimulation (NIN) technology uses electrical impulses applied to the skin to coax the brain into stimulating the body’s resources to heal itself.
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The history of neurostimulation for pain relief reaches back nearly 2000 years to Greece. As with many ancient remedies, healers made use of the natural physiology of an animal—in this case the electrical discharge from a torpedo fish. Since then electrical stimulation devices have come a long way, as has our understanding of the underlying mechanisms.
History shows that physicians in Europe and the United States shepherded this development through the 18th and 19th centuries. Even Benjamin Franklin made a well intended although ill-fated foray into medical research with electrostimulation. The popularity of neurostimulation in the early 20th century seemed to reach its culmination with the advent of a colourfully named and widely used device called the Electreat, an early version of today’s transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation (TENS) devices. With the establishment of Melzack and Wall’s gate control theory of pain in the 1960s, clinical neurostimulation underwent a more informed evolution. Eventually experiments revealed the efficacy of deep brain stimulation for relief of central pain and other conditions. Although an ancient practice, the benefits of neurostimulation have likely not yet been entirely revealed or appreciated.
The physiokey is the latest development in neurostimulation technology, being the next step in hand held pain relief devices which have a history going back to the Russian SCENAR device. The nature of the physiokey’s feedback-controlled stimulation allows for a unique evidenced based application that optimises certain treatment parameters and thus achieves consistently good results across a broad range of conditions, both acute and chronic in nature.
The physiokey delivers a damped, bi-phasic, sinusoidal impulse delivered through two fixed concentric electrodes. The device adjusts its output in response to changes in skin resistance or impedance. This means the physiokey is applied without the need for conductive gels, directly onto the patients skin. This advancement in treatment has a significant impact on the way neurostimulation can be delivered and subsequently on the results that can be achieved in the clinical setting.
Every physiokey treatment is designed to optimise four main aspects of any neurostimulation treatment to ensure better and lasting results.
Research has shown that the optimisation of various treatment parameters can significantly increase the effectiveness of neurostimulation across a broad range of painful conditions. (Bjordal, Johnson, & Ljunggreen, 2003)(Melzack, 1975)(Somers & Clemente, 2006)
Missing any one of these parameters could significantly reduce or even negate any clinical benefit from the treatment. (Breit & Van der Wall, 2004)(Carroll, Tramer, McQuay, Nye, & Moore, 1996)
The correct application of the physiokey ensures all of these parameters are optimised and offers the practitioner a way to scientifically apply neurostimulation with evidence-based protocols and achieve excellent results.
- Optimisation of device parameters
- optimal treatment points – keypoints
The physiokey identifies areas of low impedance. These area of low skin impedance relate to major nerve branches trigger points, acupuncture points, and localised areas of sympathetic skin response. Research has shown that targeting these points gets a better clinical result. 6 7 8 9
- high amplitude stimulation
The physiokey delivers safely and comfortably a much higher amplitude signal than would normally cause muscle contraction with a TENS or interferential.
This is made possible by the feedback controlled stimulation and the fixed electrode head – the therapist is able to deliver direct stimulation without uncomfortable muscle contraction. 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17
- varying frequency
A range of analgesic mechanisms are activated when varying frequencies are used. The physiokey has a frequency range from 5 – 460Hz. All physiokey protocols ensure that a broad range of frequencies are delivered in every single treatment. 18 19
- prevents accommodation
Research has shown that treating too often, treating too long, and treating in fixed frequencies causes the body to stop responding to neurostimulation after a period of time, sometimes as little as four 20-minute treatments. 20 21
physiokey protocols focus on delivering short infrequent treatments to multiple treatment points that change in every treatment, and by using a wide range of frequencies, the physiokey ensures patients continue to respond to treatment over the full treatment course.