Heard about this electrical therapy from someone who probably has PsA but is, as yet, undiagnosed. She told me her pain is considerably improved when she uses her unit regularly.
With the option to hire a unit to try before you buy I was wondering whether it might have some mileage when you have a particularly painful joint? In my case I was thinking about all the enthesitis/bursitis/tendonitis in my shoulders which I can only seem to tame by ultrasound guided steroid injections at nearly £500 a time.
From what I have read TENS machines are thought to interfere with and block the pain messages sent to the brain and also on a low pulse rate may stimulate the body to produce natural pain-relieving endorphins.
If I've understood it correctly 'action potential' is the body's natural electrical impluse that is the basis of nerve cell communication and intracellular process activation. When injury or inflammation is present it decreases the ability of action potential to flow through damaged tissue leading to impaired detox and repair so the APS therapy boosts the occurrence of action potentials in the cells as well as stimulating the production of Adenosine Triphosphate (ATP) which helps with healing/repair/regeneration, pain, detoxification etc.
So the difference is, I guess, that TENS offers pain relief but no healing whereas APS stimulates healing/repair which in turn offers the relief from pain.
I plan to give the APS people a call over the next few days and have a chat to them about it as I see they quote successful treatment of PsA in hands and feet. I'm certainly up for spending a modest amount of money to hire a unit for a short while if it might help me turn the corner on the pesky inflammation in my shoulders while I wait to see if I'm going to get another biologic.
I don't know much of the subject but this seems to be like the electrical pulses used in physio therapy. I had this treatment on my shoulder after an injury and at the same time wondered why the doc did not have this for my for my injured hand. My shoulder is fine....my injured hand is now the source of major PsA pain and swelling.
Makes me wonder if something like this could have helped me prevent the PsA from taking over my injured hand or at least minumize the trouble I've had, helping it heal when it was first injured . Definitely worth looking at I would think.