Parkinson’s disease is a progressive disorder that targets the nervous system and affects movement.
The most common symptom is tremor, which starts gradually and worsens over time.
In the beginning, tremor can appear in just one finger or hand, but over time it can affect the whole body.
In addition to tremors, other common symptoms also include slow movement and stiffness.
Even though Parkinson’s disease is progressive and cannot be completely cured, you can control it successfully with the right treatment.
Parkinson’s disease is different for everyone.
Early symptoms are usually mild, and go unnoticed.
Symptoms usually first appear on one side of the body, and remain more intense on that side, even when the disease affects the other side as well.
The most common symptoms that patients experience are:
The causes of Parkinson’s disease are unknown.
Certain genetic mutations, as well as having a family history of the disease, can increase your risk of getting it.
Further, environmental factors such as toxins (herbicides, pesticides, etc.) may increase your risk of developing the disease.
Parkinson’s treatment is about managing symptoms.
Medication helps with stiff muscles, tremors, and slow movement.
Physical therapy also helps, as well as speech therapy.
In some cases, surgery is also advised.
Alternative approaches include PEMF, which we will cover more below.
PEMF can help Parkinson’s disease patients, due to how neurons and the disease work.
Neurons’ role in your body is to transmit chemical and electrical signals, whether within the brain or from the brain to the muscles.
All neurons in your body are electrically excitable, and need to maintain a certain healthy voltage to function properly.
This dynamic is affected when you develop Parkinson’s disease.
Parkinson’s disease damages the neurons and their receptors in your body, and causes them to malfunction.
Neurons’ ability to communicate stops, which is why tremor and other symptoms appear.
PEMF therapy helps Parkinson’s disease patients, because it works at the cellular level (including neurons), recharging cells with energy.
PEMF stimulates the neurons that, due to Parkinson’s disease, may lose their potency and potentially die completely.
PEMF’s power lies in the fact that it penetrates deep into the body.
It cannot get blocked by bones, which means that it can go through the skin, muscles, ligaments, and tendons everywhere in your body.
This includes the neurons, as well.
Like all other treatments for Parkinson’s disease, PEMF also only treats the symptoms.
When used correctly, it can significantly improve patients’ quality of life.
PEMF is most useful in calming the nerves and stopping tremors.
Studies prove that 30 minutes of PEMF stimulation is enough to decrease significantly the amount of tremor, or make it disappear completely.
Moreover, depression, anxiety, and mood swings are very common complications of Parkinson’s disease.
PEMF therapy’s effects, in treating these psychological disorders, are documented and well-known.
PEMF can be applied in clinical settings via rTMS, or at home using a PEMF mat, pad, or applicator.
Let’s learn more about these methods in the next section.
Extensive research has been done under clinical conditions using rTMS devices to study how this technology affects Parkinson’s disease.
rTMS is very similar to PEMF, which is why its results are very valuable for us. These technologies share all the same effects on Parkinson’s disease, which is why we will include both in this article.
Here are the most well-known studies showcasing the power of rTMS/PEMF therapy for Parkinson’s disease.
The purpose of this study is to examine the effects of low-frequency rTMS/PEMF stimulation on Parkinson’s disease in mice.
The full name of the study is The Neuroprotective Mechanism of Low-Frequency rTMS on Nigral Dopaminergic Neurons of Parkinson’s Disease Model Mice (1). It was conducted in 2015.
The scientists who conducted the study used several methods to assess the results, such as behavioral detection, high-performance liquid chromatography-electrochemical detection, electrophysiologic technique, western blot, and immunohistochemical staining.
The results of the study are very encouraging.
They show that low-frequency rTMS/PEMF stimulation can improve the impaired motor coordination in mice suffering from Parkinson’s disease.
The resting motor threshold in these mice decreased significantly after stimulation.
On the other hand, rTMS/PEMF stimulation significantly improved tyrosine hydroxylase expression, and slowed the degeneration of nigral dopaminergic neuron (NDN).
The researchers concluded from this that rTMS/PEMF stimulation had a neuroprotective impact on NDN.
They suspect this might be due to the improved expression of a brain-derived neurotrophic factor.
This study is a good theoretical basis for how rTMS/PEMF stimulation affects mice suffering from Parkinson’s, and is a good indication of the effects this therapy could have on people.
Parkinson’s disease commonly causes difficulties in writing, drawing, and remembering shapes.
Therefore, the draw-a-bicycle test has been used as the gold standard by specialists to test cognitive and motor function in Parkinson’s patients.
The bicycle design is used because its shape is well-known by everyone, but at the same time, is fairly complex.
The study was named Reversal of the bicycle drawing direction in Parkinson’s disease by AC pulsed electromagnetic fields (2), and used this test to analyze the results of the treatment.
For the study, the scientists used transcranial application of PEMF, adjusted to picotesla flux density, and observed the visuoconstructional skills.
The study included five patients, all of whom demonstrated a reversal of the drawing direction after several applications of pulsed electromagnetic therapy.
In three of the five patients, the reversal was noticeable immediately after the stimulation, while in the other two patients, the reversal was noticed several weeks to months after.
The scientists were intrigued by these results, because reversal of the drawing direction does not usually occur spontaneously in healthy individuals.
These results are significant, because they indicate that PEMF stimulation may cause a shift in hemispheric dominance in patients who have Parkinson’s disease.
Thus, PEMF therapy could have particularly favorable effects on such patients.
The study named Treatment with AC pulsed electromagnetic fields improves the response to levodopa in Parkinson’s disease (3) included one 52-year-old Parkinson’s patient.
The patient was fully medicated, and classified as severely disabled due to PD.
After his treatment with low-frequency picotesla PEMF, he became completely asymptomatic.
His treatment consisted of biweekly transcranial sessions.
Before his PEMF treatments, his Parkinson’s medication was only 50% effective, decreasing in efficacy as the day progressed.
For example, his morning medication was 90% effective, his afternoon dose was 50% effective, and his evening dose was just 30% effective.
However, after ten weeks of PEMF stimulation, the patient experienced a 40% improvement in his medication’s effectiveness, without any noticeable deterioration toward the end of the day.
The scientists who conducted the study claim that these results can be explained by the fact that PEMF therapy improved the patient’s response to levodopa.
Levodopa is an amino acid naturally found in food, and our body converts it into dopamine in the brain.
Because of that, it’s crucial for Parkinsonian patients.
The decline in response to levodopa is indicative of the progression of the disease, which is why these results are important and encouraging.
They indicate that intermittent application of PEMF stimulation could stop, or at least slow, the progression of Parkinson’s disease.
One of the most common Parkinson’s symptoms is the difficulty in retaining motor skills.
Sometimes, patients are even able to learn new motor skills with ease, but retaining old ones becomes a challenge.
This study, originally named TMS enhances retention of a motor skill in Parkinson’s disease (4), assesses what effect 5 Hz-rTMS/PEMF stimulation would have on the retention of visual-motor skills in Parkinsonian patients.
A group of PD patients received two two-day treatments, which were separated by a period of one week. These included both placebo and real stimulation.
The first day of each treatment was dedicated to learning to adapt patients’ movements to a step-wise 60 degrees’ visual rotation.
Immediately after that, they would receive real or placebo stimulation, and their retention of this motor skill was tested the next day.
The scientists concluded that the retention of these motor skills the day after was much reduced in the group treated with placebo.
They therefore concluded that rTMS/PEMF application after the acquisition of a motor skill might improve skill retention in Parkinsonian patients.
Freezing of gait (FOG) is a symptom that Parkinson’s disease (PD) patients commonly experience.
It seriously affects both balance and mobility.
For that reason, a group of scientists from Seoul, Korea conducted a study named Efficacy of cumulative high-frequency rTMS on freezing of gait in Parkinson’s disease (5).
The purpose of the study was to find out whether rTMS/PEMF treatment could improve the FOG symptom in PD patients.
In total, seventeen patients participated in this randomized, crossover, double-blind study.
The patients received five high-frequency weekly sessions on the lower leg primary motor cortex on the dominant hemisphere.
They also received sham stimulation, and the primary results were measured before, immediately after, and one week after the treatment.
The tests used were the Freezing of Gait Questionnaire, and the Standing Start 180 Degrees Turn Test.
As the results show, the patients who received real rTMS/PEMF stimulation experienced a significant improvement in the steps required to finish the Standing Start test and the FOG Questionnaire.
These effects lasted for a week.
We can thus conclude that high-frequency rTMS/PEMF is a good secondary therapy for Parkinson’s patients who experience FOG symptoms.
Dyskinesia is a common complication experienced by Parkinson’s disease patients.
The cause of this complication is not yet fully understood, but medical experts assume that it has to do with certain imbalances between the basal ganglia and the motor cortex in the brain.
The study, named Low-frequency repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation for dyskinesia and motor performance in Parkinson’s disease (6), investigates the effects of low-frequency rTMS/PEMF stimulation on levodopa-induced dyskinesia and motor performance in Parkinson’s disease.
The scientists examined whether longer periods (10 days) and a large number of total pulses (1,800) would improve the positive effects.
Seventeen Parkinsonian patients were chosen to participate in this study, and were randomly assigned either to the real rTMS/PEMF or to the sham group.
Patients were examined one day after the completion of the 10-day therapy with a levodopa challenge test.
The researchers concluded that a 10-day stimulation with 1 Hz of real rTMS/PEMF pulses caused a decrease in levodopa-induced dyskinesia for 24 hours.
The sham group experienced no significant improvement.
These results therefore show that rTMS/PEMF is a viable treatment for patients who suffer from levodopa-induced dyskinesia.
More research is needed to confirm this, but this study is a good first step.
Parkinson’s disease is a serious health issue that impacts significantly the lives of those who suffer from it.
Modern medicine still hasn’t found a way to cure it, but with the help of medication and PEMF, it can at least be managed, and its progression stopped.
As you can conclude from the studies we’ve discussed in this article, PEMF therapy helps with numerous Parkinson’s disease symptoms.
Moreover, it has no side effects and no serious contraindications, so it can be used by patients of all ages and health conditions.
Richard Hoover is a PEMF expert and content contributor to PEMF Advisor. With a bachelor’s degree in physics and multiple certifications in natural health programs, he is one of the best PEMF experts around.
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