In this interview, Bob Dennis answers audience questions on the ICES next-gen PEMF device, including:
- Do the ICES help with autoimmunity, injuries, brain fog, chronic pain, and many other conditions?
- An update on how the ICES works to support healing
- How to use the ICES and try out to see if it is for you
- Contraindications for ICES use
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Here’s the transcript:
Disclaimer:
Alex: Okay. So first, I’m going to read a little disclaimer. This podcast is not intended to treat, diagnose, prevent, or cure any condition. This is not to be construed as medical advice from Dr. Dennis or SelfHacked. These are simply our opinions to be used for educational and entertainment purposes only. Presently, the ICES device is not FDA approved and you should consider this technology to be entirely experimental.
About Dr. Robert Dennis
Bob has a Bachelor of Science in mechanical engineering and a masters in kinesiology and biological engineering from the University of Michigan. He also received a Ph.D. in biomedical engineering from the University of Michigan as well.
He was an independent technical consultant for NASA and is also a retired fire chief in North Carolina. He also recently joined the editorial board for the new Journal of Comprehensive Integrative Medicine, which will publish its first issue of scientific papers in Alternative and Integrative medical scientific research in Spring 2018.
He is currently an Associate Professor at the School of Medicine and College of Arts & Sciences at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. He is the Founding Chair Curriculum in Applied Sciences and Engineering, CASE, at UNC, Chapel Hill.
He has also held faculty positions in Mechanical Engineering and Biomedical Engineering at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and was a Visiting Scientist in the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at MIT and at the Harvard-MIT Health Sciences and Technology Program.
It’s a great intro and – [crosstalk]
Bob: Thanks.
Joe’s Experience with the ICES
Alex: So, I’m going to explain a little bit more about Joe and his experience with ICES. Joe has a great experience with the ICES device that Dr. Dennis created. It helps him with brain fog, fatigue, and food sensitivities. You can see Joe’s personal accounts and how he uses the device on our ICES post, which we will link to in the show note. We also did a long form interview with Dr. Dennis previously, where Joe asked his questions. For this podcast interview, we are addressing reader questions about the ICES device and technology.
Nattha: My name is Nattha and this is Alex. We are both SelfHackers and Joe’s sidekicks at SelfHacked.
Bob: So are we good to go?
Alex: We’re good to go.
Nattha: Yes, we are good to go.
Bob: I’d like to start with just a general statement that I’m really very happy to be here again talking to the SelfHackers. Most of the really helpful suggestions and useful information that I get are from readers of SelfHacked, from Joe’s readers, and people who watch. So, the new devices that I’ve designed are largely in response to the questions that people have asked from SelfHacked and to suggestions that people have made. So when we’re talking about technology development, really, in the last two years, the self-hacking community, it’s had a really big impact on the direction that this technology is on.
How the ICES works: Update in Hypothesis
Alex: All right. So, for the first question. Can you remind us how this device works?
Bob: [00:03:14] Well, you know, the electromagnetic way that it works is that it generates a very, very controlled electromagnetic pulse where the slope of the magnetic field going up and going down forms a sort of a narrow trapezoid. And the key thing about it – and I’m starting to publish this now – is that the slope of the magnetic field is what matters the most, I think, in any PEMF system including mine.
What ICES stand for is Inductively Coupled Electrical Stimulation. The inductive coupling is an idea that goes back to about 1974. So, we’re trying to get electromagnetic energy deep into tissues without using electrodes and without having to drive current directly through the skin or anything like that. So, the electromagnetic way that ICES works is that it uses induction to get electromagnetic energy deep into tissues where it transforms into a micro, nano current and then it stimulates tissue that way.
It’s a really efficient way. Maybe a thousand times more efficient, for example, in microcurrent stimulation – getting some really small currents deep into tissues and then to stimulate large volumes of tissue. So, there’s a lot of calculus involved. But when you do the math and physics, what you’ll find is it’s just really an efficient way to electrically stimulate [inaudible]. That’s sort of the physics description of what’s going on.
The biological description is a scientific fact that we know that we can calculate and that there is an electric microcurrent. We don’t understand the molecular biophysics of why that should have a response. So if you’re asking from a biological standpoint, “Why is it that ICES works or PEMF work?” Most of the information you can get on the internet, I think, it’s just kind of marketing hype. Now, as a scientist, I can tell you I’ve reviewed every paper that there is on PEMF. Looked at them, and I’ve read them, and I’ve studied them.
I’ve been working in this area for 20 years, and I can tell you there are some hypotheses to how it may work biologically. But, it’s not fully explored. I think that there’s maybe a couple of Nobel Prizes’ worth of biological research just to figure out how it is that cells and tissues can react to these microcurrents and respond in the special ways that they are responding to PEMF and ICES. I mean, I would tell you more if there was more to know. But I think the honest answer is we don’t really know for sure.
Alex: So, how is your theory of how your device works? How has it changed over the years?
Bob: [00:06:09] Yeah. It’s gotten more and more specific. So, scientifically, it’s okay to start with a theory, but then you need to reduce that theory into a testable hypothesis. You say, okay, the theory about something and it says it works this way. But science really kicks in when you can make predictions, and you do that with a testable hypothesis. You look as if the theory says it does something, then what you do is you boil it down to a hypothesis that makes a prediction. If it’s doing that “something,” then maybe I can measure that specific outcome. And ideally, you would measure an outcome that would tell you whether or not your hypothesis was right.
So what I’ve been working on is trying to formulate scientific hypotheses about what it does and how it works that will help me narrow down two things. One of them is a political question, “What is it doing for people?” And the other one is that basic scientific question, on sort of a quantum or molecular level, “Why is it good for the cell?” I’ve made some progress in that but those are both really difficult problems. And I think we’ve made a lot more headway just because I talk to a lot of clinicians. I’m, probably, actively talking to maybe 150, 170 different clinicians who use this and several hundred active users who email me all the time.
I think the best insights into the science of what PEMF is and what is my technology, it’s a form of PEMF, ICES is. I think the best information is coming from people giving me feedback about what it’s doing. So, I kind of changed my mind on this, really, in the last two years. I’ve thought of what if I’m thinking, “Why do I have to understand the molecular biophysics of it?” And, I’ve come to realize that what you really need to understand is, “What are the biological effects?” When you collect this information widely enough, then you can start to see patterns, like why should PEMF have an impact on urinary incontinence, and chronic pain, and traumatic brain injury, and peripheral nerve disease.
How ICES Reduces Inflammation – the Cell Danger Response
Why should one thing have a benefit for all of those things? What’s the thread that kind of connects to all of those? And, it’s one of these things that Joe and I talked about. It’s this cell danger response and inflammatory and metabolic change in the way that cells function that sometimes goes wrong. And so, when you get an injury, sometimes you can have a response where your body just works on however it responds to the injury. So, we have these chronic states of dysfunction metabolically and in terms of inflammation. My theory on how ICES helps – and how PEMF works – is that it helps to reset pathologic cell danger response.
How exactly it does it in the molecular level, we don’t know. But every shred of evidence that I’ve ever gotten clinically from either clinicians or readers points right back to that.
Alex: So you’re saying that cells get stuck in this cell danger response and ICES can help to reset that.
Bob: [00:09:28] Yeah. So, people tend to use one word to like [inaudible] inflammatory response, right? But PEMF and ICES do. ICES does something different from the inflammatory systems than aspirin or NSAIDs do. Otherwise, you won’t need PEMF, right? You would just take some aspirin. So inflammation is this big, complicated response called the feedback loop. It seems to be doing something different within that big inflammatory response than an NSAID would do or another sort of chemical inflammatory program. And what it seems to do, what PEMF broadly seems to do, is it seems to break this feedback loop, this pathologic inflammation where cells and tissues get stuck in give it a reset. When you get a metabolic reset, the inflammation goes down.
This is my guess, the swelling part, I mean. I have measured that to the highest standard available, repeatedly. We know that’s what’s happening. It’s just that different mechanism than the chemical mechanism. So, we have a pretty good handle on what it’s doing biologically, and that seems to be, essentially, allowing the body to reset itself back to its state where…
Alex: Okay, great. So for the audience, the cell danger response is a phenomenon described by Robert Naviaux, am I saying that correctly?
Bob: Yeah, I think so. Robert Naviaux.
Alex: Naviaux of UC San Diego. So, basically, it says that many modern chronic diseases, including tough ones like autism and chronic fatigue, stem from the cell’s own protection against virus infections, which can be sensed when something in the cell steals high energy electrons like NADH to make their own energy. This causes the mitochondria to reduce its function and the cell to secrete ATP to warn other cells that danger is going on.
Bob: So that’s I’m sorry.
Alex: Oh, go ahead. Go ahead. Yeah.
Bob: [00:11:34] Yeah. I was just going to say, so that’s an excellent introduction to it. And he is talking about the metabolic aspects of cell danger response. And I thought I’d make it a little bit more general so people can understand it. Imagine humans during the evolutionary sequence for the last several million years. When you’re in the jungle, the proximal threat from an injury, the proximal threat that threatens your life the most immediately is an infection. So, if you have a broken bone and you can’t hunt or you can’t gather food, that’s going to kill you in a couple of weeks.
But if you fall out of a tree or something and you get a cut, an infection can kill you within a day or so. So there’s an evolutionary pressure to heal primarily. First, by having a really, really powerful autoimmune response to prevent infection. And, this is a really common thing. They’ve done studies on orangutans and stuff for a while. By the time these animals get to be adults, about 40% of them have already had a major bone broken.
Injuries are really common in the wild and the evolutionary pressure has been to respond to that with this overwhelming inflammatory metabolic response to prevent – trying every resource the body has to prevent infection. Now, fast forward to early in the 19th and 20th century – we deal with sanitation, clean water. We have all these behavioral responses now, right? We have the antibiotics. We have all of these things that we do. We just keep a clean environment. We kind of have things in our environment not be sharp and dangerous.
So all these kinds of little things that we do that make the infection not a real threat anymore [laughs]. And intellectually, we know that’s true, right? But as an organism, we don’t [laughs]. So we still respond to every injury or perceive injury as an immediate threat to our survival. And this explains a lot of things. I think that these responses are much broader than just metabolic. I mean, you could think about like how road rage may be a pathological response, as a fight or flight response that people have as if their lives were threatened because somebody cut in front of them on the freeway. Right? I didn’t just see it in Los Angeles. I’ve seen [laughs], you know, I’ve seen it so much down south.
Alex: All the time [laughs].
Bob: Yeah. People are arguing – because I used to live in El Segundo but, people [inaudible] where I live. We are little bit more laid back. But I remember the road rage thing. And, as people responding in this primal way where threat is not even there. Right? So we do it in a pathological way which, of course, this cell danger response is mediated by the brain cells. We do it metabolically, and we do it in the inflammatory sense. So, that’s not the healthiest way to respond in the modern world, is it? And so what I think PEMF is doing for us is it’s allowing the inflammatory portion of that response, that unnecessary pathologic inflammatory response, to be normalized, switched off.
Nattha: Cool.
Bob: Right?
Health Condition Questions
Alex: So how does this work with things like autoimmune diseases like MS and Hashimoto’s?
Bob: Well, I kind of like to go down the list and just give really honest answers. You guys had sent me a list, and can I just sort of pick them off and tell you what I think we know?
Alex: Yeah. you can do it. [crosstalk]
Do the ICES Help with Autoimmune Diseases Like MS and Hashimoto’s?
Bob: [00:15:12] So if we look at autoimmune diseases like MS and Hashimoto’s, many people ask me about MS – not so many about Hashimoto’s, which is viewed as kind of a rare disease. Just a few hundred people have it. While it’s really serious for them, it’s just not as prominent as MS. The honest answer is we don’t know whether or not it works for that. But the one or two people who’ve told me they’ve tried PEMF, in general, it seems to be helpful. Probably because it’s helping switch off this pathologic inflammatory response that is doing so much damage to nerves, to the central and peripheral nervous system.
Crohn’s and Colitis
[00:15:55] Crohn’s and colitis…that one’s kind of a mixed bag. My sister suffered from Crohn’s and it didn’t help her at all. Other people that I know who suffered from Crohn’s, they say that it actually gives them quite a bit of relief. I’d say it’s probably about 40 – 50 percent hit or miss, and I don’t understand why. It may be how people are applying it, or may just simply be biological diversity.
Rheumatoid Arthritis
[00:16:18] Rheumatoid arthritis. People tell me that it works really well for that. But you have to remember – the reason I designed this system the way I’ve designed it is because I had a really really bad back injury as a firefighter on a rescue. It kind of really, really damaged my back and it has caused a lot of lower spine pelvic degenerative problems. The reason I designed the system was to deal with that degenerative process and to deal with the pain. So I was really heavy on opioids, and I am drug-free now. That’s what it’s designed for. But I don’t know if it works for other things. So largely, going down the list, it kind of comes down to self-experimentation. And I’ll just tell you what people tell me and what I’ve observed. Sorry, Nattha, you were going to say something?
Does ICES Help with Systemic Inflammation?
Nattha: So when it’s like a systemic inflammatory response, how do you suggest to use it? Or how did the people who get the results with the coil – how long to use it?
Bob: [00:17:25] That’s an excellent question. So I’ve been working with many doctors about this because they’ll say, “Well, do they need a whole body mat?” It’s because their whole body hurts or they’re having a total body system response. And, it kind of seems to split into two things. Some people who do have a whole systemic problem probably do need a whole body mat. And that’s something I’m working on but I want to keep the prices down, and I want to keep the energy really down. And I’ve really sort of focused on the mobile systems, and the market – it won’t bear the price for the whole-body thing. I notice some copycats, which will keep me even more honest than I want.
But I’m planning to come up with an affordably priced whole body one. What I can tell is that about 5% of the people who have systemic inflammation – what I think is happening in most cases, and this is what happened to me, because when I was in high school – I broke my tailbone. Over the years that caused some sort of a pro-inflammatory beacon that eventually took over my whole system.
So what I’ve been finding working with clinicians is, you can find that initial injury. In a lot of people, it’s in their late 30s or early 40s, they’ll have an injury that never quite heals. And, that’s what you want to focus on. To a lot of people it’s the shoulder, or a knee, or a foot, or their lower back, right? And then, the stories are almost always the same. So like, “Well, I struggle with that for 5 or 10 years, it never went away. And now, everything hurts.” Right? So they want to treat their whole body.
Probably 90 to 95% of the time, if you just really thoroughly treat that first injury and you cut off that pro-inflammatory beacon that’s coming from it, within another week or two, the rest of the body just normalizes. I’ve seen that about 90 or 95% of the time. I loved studying it. It’s really hard to study. The suggestion I give the clinicians is, take a really thorough, medical history and try to zoom in on the first chronic injury a person had. And then sort of treat that so it goes away, and then keep treating it for a couple of weeks.
Most of the time, people really, really respond. Now there’s a 5 or 10% amount that doesn’t, and in that case, I usually tell them, “Well, you know, my products aren’t really the right ones for you. You want to get a whole body PEMF but I hate doing that because it’s also really expensive, right?” Hopefully, I’ll fix that problem too [laughs]. Do you want me to keep going down the list, or do you have some – [crosstalk]
Nattha: Sure.
Does ICES Help with IBS and Leaky Gut?
Bob: [00:19:52] So, gut inflammation, leaky gut, IBS. Once again this one’s a hit or miss. Probably a third to half of the people say it helps them. IBS more so than leaky gut, I think.
[00:20:07] Skin problems that have systemic inflammation as a root, haven’t seen a lot of feedback on that. So I can’t really answer that one.
ICES Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation Protocol for Depression
[00:20:17] Anxiety, depression, psychosis, or schizophrenia. What’s really interesting about all of those is that there’s actually an FDA-approved device called a Transcranial Magnetic Stimulator, TMS. And it was this device that was made to stimulate your brain, and cause depolarization in your brain. You can actually make a person slur their speech when they use that. What they discovered was that when they use it on the prefrontal cortex left of a person’s brain, it’s actually FDA approved. And it is actually just a PEMF – a pulsing PEMF device that’s specifically made for use on people’s brains. If you want to understand that one, look up the literature on TMS, FDA-approved, for that – but of course, only the FDA-approved devices are approved.
In my new products that I’ve made to try to help people, obviously, a lot of people are asking about that. You get like a model M1 – I actually have two of these TMS simulator protocols that people can use. And, there are a couple of people who’ve tried it and really helps them like these kinds of things that the FDA-approved, big, expensive, approved ones can do. The interesting story about that is, the FDA-approved devices were using very very high power. And, if you read the literature, most clinicians say that would really work better. It’s probably like way too much power to get the clinical benefit, so much so that people are actually that — major side effect in about half a percent of people, users.
So what my device does is, it actually uses the low power level. They probably would work better, but it’s not FDA approved. But, you can do self-experimenting on that with like a model, you know, the model M1.
Where to Put the ICES Coils For…?
Nattha: So, just a quick question, Bob. So for IBS, as I heard it’s a condition with both the neural and the gut component – where do people put the coil in the gut, or is it like somewhere else?
Bob: [00:22:17] Well, this is the thing. People do actually try different things and oftentimes you have the symptoms in a location in your body that’s not really where the problem is. You see this, for example – referred pain all the time where you might have pain in your leg or in the spine. So, I don’t have enough information with people who have tried trans-abdominal placement of the coils, or that use a two-by-two coil array for months. Or, they use one of the bigger PEMF machines. What they tell me is that it helps with IBS, and I think it helps that component of IBS where you just have this chronic inflammatory problem that is related to a lot of gut problems, and by reducing inflammation, that’s very powerful.
S,o it only takes a few days for the layers on the inside of the body. So, it’s one of those things that if it worked, boy, there can really be a response. I’ll just keep going down the list, right?
Alex: Oh, I have a question.
Bob: Yeah, sure.
Alex: Back to the TMS, what is the best place on the head to stimulate anxiety and schizophrenia…?
Bob: [00:23:24] Well, we don’t know about anxiety or schizophrenia. We know a lot more about depression. And — [crosstalk]
Alex: Depression, okay.
Bob: If you go to my webpage, I actually have a link to some clinical papers on depression, which is right over the left prefrontal cortex which is –
Alex: So prefrontal, okay.
Bob: Prefrontal cortex is what they have approved. Adults have used it – used it differently. Different people actually use it differently. But the approved devices are left prefrontal cortex. It is above the left ear by about a half inch. This kind of varies. And if you get it wrong, if you go a little too far back, you’d be actually at the premotor area. And with a really powerful TMS system, it’s gonna really cause other problems.
Nattha: Yeah.
Bob: If you put it over different areas of your brain, it can cause slurred speech and do things like that. But, the power in my device is really, really low energy. So, it doesn’t actually cause any side effects. It seems to be very safe. People tell me it works very well.
Nattha: So for the brain kind of issue, does it have to be pointed directly at the part of the brain, or is it something that you can, like, roughly place somewhere and get the effect?
Bob: [00:24:34] I think in the case where you have a specific region that you could see on an image, which is almost never, right? But in that case, you’ll want to have a really good aim. But for the most part the brain is kind of a tight compartment inside your cranium, right? And a lot of the problem just has to do with generalized inflammation. The generalized placement of the coil seems to work really well.
What we’ve actually done – I’ll get to in a few minutes. We’ve done some tests for traumatic brain injury where this transcranial, front and back, trans-temporally, trans-occipitally, and even at the base of the spine region of the brain, side by side – all seemed to work about the same. So, you know, if it’s like a generalized brain thing, you don’t really have anything to aim at, right? So, which one of those major volumes of the brain?
Audience: Can I ask a question, too? You can – [crosstalk]
Bob: Sure.
Audience: For some reason. I was just reading about the transcranial device for anxiety and depression of the David Delight Pro. Are you familiar with that? And – [crosstalk]
Bob: [00:25:41] I am not familiar with that specifically, no.
Audience: It’s a TC whatever device and then you put on goggles with the flashing light similar to – [crosstalk]
Bob: [00:26:45] All right. Mm-hmm.
Audience: The two and then brainwave entrainment music. It’s supposed to be very powerful but it’s expensive. And I’ve been – I’m struggling with…
Bob: [00:26:02] Well, I think those things are really interesting. I’ve been studying that, both optical ones as well as the electromagnetic brain entrainment for a long time. The device that I have, the M1, even though I’ve optimized it for, like, severe chronic orthopedic pain, many people who are readers of the SelfHacked website have asked me, “Can you put it in different brainwaves?” And so, I’ve actually put in protocols for brainwave entrainment for all of the major known brainwaves, alpha, beta, theta. All of them. So they are all sort of built in there, and I get a lot of really, really positive feedback from people. They are all like, “Wow. This is really, really, really great.”
Nattha: What is this device?
Bob: [00:26:50] So it’s the one that I sell, you know, I’m not a salesman. I’m a scientist. But…
Nattha: This one.
Bob: Yeah – [crosstalk]
Nattha: The M1D1. You have a great – [crosstalk]
Bob: [00:27:51] Yeah. There you go. Yeah [laughs]. I don’t want to try and sell you something. I want to sort of make it available to people who want to use a self-hacking scientific tool. That’s what that is, right? The last one I wear, actually, for my lower back problems. I’m wearing one right now. And it works really well for that.
Robin: About the M1D1. I just joined, so I’m a little late – [crosstalk]
Bob: [00:27:17] The model M1 is the one that’s got all the features packed into it. It’s the latest design that I have. It’s the most portable. It’s not the least expensive one but in my opinion, I think it’s close to the bottom in terms of how expensive it is. So, we have some stuff that’s more expensive for like serious research purposes. And I think M1 is the one that you should be interested in if you want to do a bunch of different self-hacking experiments like brainwave entrainment, TMS stimulation, fixed frequency stuff. For the different application, the M1 is what you want.
Nattha: Oh. Thank you, Robin. So for the audience, we would like to get through the list of conditions that we get in the survey, which is quite comprehensive. And then, if that doesn’t address your questions, you can open the floor to new guys so that you can – [crosstalk]
Robin: Oh, sorry.
Nattha: Ask your questions.
Bob: Oh, that’s fine – [crosstalk]
Alex: Oh, no worries.
Nattha: No problem.
Bob: [00:28:11] Let me kind of go through the list in this sort of check mark if that’s okay. So, we were in soft tissue injuries. And if, you know, especially things like ligaments, and then muscle, and even skin. We’ve had much better response with that than I thought. Than I thought we would. It’s not really – I didn’t design it for that. I was more looking at orthopedic problems. But in particular, for skin ulcers and stuff, I’m working with the doctor, for example, who’s in the jungles of India and he deals with all kinds of jungle ulcers. And we use it for that. He has tried everything else but it works even in places where hygiene and sepsis is a problem, and clean water is a problem. They don’t have electricity, and this is really helping a lot of people. It’s making the open wounds kind of go away.
We’re also working with the United States Navy right now to set up a skin and wound regeneration experiments. Seems like I just got an email from them today, so I’ll probably be working with Kansas State University, and some injury stuff in animal models. It’s very interesting and I think the potential is really there. I just haven’t had time to gather as much information about it.
[00:29:28] Migraines. This is one of those things that’s a yes and no. Dr. Will Pollack thinks that works wonderfully for those and uses our device for that. So I would just take Dr. William Pollack’s advice on that.
[00:29:42] Atrial fibrillation. I do have a couple of people who’ve tried it for that. Purely anecdotal – one of them is a clinician and chiropractor. And they tell me that it’s helpful but we are talking just one or two. So I don’t know if other people tried it, maybe it didn’t help them, and – I didn’t hear from them.
[00:30:01] Lyme disease. There are probably three clinicians now who think that this is an essential part of their treatment for Lyme disease. So, they do like a nutritional support and then they add the PEMF or the system that I offer. And they say it actually enhances the effectiveness of their other treatments. I think one of the best ways to think about PEMF is it’s like the uber edge of treatment.
Every clinician I talked to says that PEMF, my system and others, too, seems to make their treatments two to three times more effective. So whether it’s nutritional, stem cell, low level laser light therapy, acupuncture, IR, all these things seem to work better. And we’ve actually done some studies where we even post the circuit coil. The recovery is two to three times faster.
[00:30:55] Encephalopathies or brain swelling from infections. Don’t know. And I’m always concerned about dealing with infections, although the scientific literature suggest that PEMF doesn’t make infections worse. It kind of has a slight, maybe not statistically significant, improvement on infection.
[00:31:15] Autism. I have a number of people asking me about that all the time. It’s such a big deal now. And I’ve never gotten any good feedback so I can’t really say.
[00:31:25] Traumatic brain injuries, on the other hand, I can say, categorically. We did a study with William Pollack and here at the level with my colleagues who are neurophysiologists. We studied eight people with traumatic brain injuries using the device that I invented, using the brain gauge to measure people’s brain function. We also tested them clinically, and we found that using our PEMF system dramatically benefited everybody on the whole TBI spectrum – from mild to chronic, all the way to really severe.
Nattha: Is that a published study?
Bob: [00:31:55] Yeah. Actually, you can find that on a website for brain gauge. It’s like cortical metrics dot com. But if you want me to, I’ll send you the link. But if you just type in brain gauge, it’s one of those studies we did in 2017. Just click on publications, I’ll have a link to it on our micropulse page, M1 product [1].
[00:32:22] Brain fog. Joseph knows a lot more about that [laughs] than I do. And Joe also tells me that it works great for that, and I believe him. Okay [laughs].
[00:32:23] Parkinson’s disease is another one of these things where – [crosstalk]
Alex: Oh.
Bob: I’ve – oh, I’m sorry. Did you – [crosstalk]
Alex: I [inaudible] of brain fog, I guess most issues come from food sensitivities. So whenever he tries to use the ICES device he puts it on his gut. And once he gets rid of those food sensitivities, all the other issues he has tends to drop off – [crosstalk]
Bob: Isn’t that interesting?
Alex: And he feels much better.
Bob: [00:32:52] I really do think that there’s something to that. So with this big whole systemic inflammatory response, if you can find the source of it, you’d shut that source off, you get a whole systemic benefit. And, I think one of the mistakes people make with PEMF is that they tend to chase their problems around where they sense them. They sense the brain fog where it’s the sense of pain or dysfunction. But really what you need to do it is kind of try to find the source and deal with that source. I think that’s the case with brain fog. And a lot of these things have got brain connections, right?
Alex: Mm-mmm.
Bob: [00:33:20] Parkinson’s disease. I had probably three or four people give feedback on that. And they say, in every case where I’ve gotten feedback, they’d say putting it across at the base of the skull, behind the head, side by side is very helpful. It helps people initiate movement. Better movement control, boy, I would love to study that. But it’s just anecdotal. That’s what people tell me.
[00:33:40] Hiatal hernia and mesh implants. I’ll also put that in there because sometimes a lot of people have mesh implants. I can tell you that a friend of mine who is an MD, PhD down in Houston. He had really severe meshoma from a hernia operation. And he actually used our device and was the first person who has ever recovered from meshoma at the point where it started to recover. First person medical history, and he thinks it’s the greatest thing. As I say he’s an MD, PhD, but he’s also an n of 1 so we haven’t had a chance to really study it. We are trying to get collaborations with people with this one. You get far enough along and then the meshoma problem will kill you.
[00:34:29] Sleep. This is another thing that the model M1 is targeted for, for self hackers. And in fact, I have an even more experimental version of the M1. It’s like the M1X, where we just got one complete one that actually is an extension of the delta wave that actually shuts off and goes to sleep for 40 minutes and lets you relax. And then, it turns on gently. The delta cycle turns on again. That’s discrete. And that seems to help people. Everybody who has tried that tells me it helps a lot.
[00:35:02] Stroke and traumatic brain injury recovery. It seems to be helpful. Once again, clinically, anecdotal, and a few people who are caregivers tell me that it’s helpful.
[00:35:12] Migraine. I think we had that one. Yeah. Above a little bit, I talked about that.
[00:35:20] Prostatitis and benign prostatic hyperplasia. I’ve have had five different people, all five of them were clinicians, ask me about that. And one of the things they asked me, was concern over some papers published saying that about four pulses per second works really well, but higher pulse rates don’t work as well. So, one of the things that I included on the model M1 is a four-pulses-per-second protocol, so you can just use it. And in all cases, they told me that it was very, very helpful, and I actually have some data from some clinicians who were tracking prostate markers and it’s pretty easy to sit on the coils. Wear it as much as you can. It doesn’t take a lot of energy and they seem to have a benefit. But once again, this is anecdotal. I didn’t generate the data, but I’m hearing it from clinicians I worked with.
[00:36:19] Increasing dopamine. It’s probably in some way related to Parkinson’s. Maybe because you’ve changed the inflammatory state, and maybe the substantia nigra, which is where these cells are dying that cause Parkinson’s. Maybe, but I don’t know.
[00:36:40] Phantom limb pain. I haven’t got a single data point relating to anything about that.
[00:36:46] Back pain of all kinds. It seems to be very helpful. Lots and lots and lots of people – as in 93% of the time for back pain and chronic idiopathic pain in general. So 13 out of 14 people said it’s very very helpful. About 6 to 7% of the time, people don’t respond, and I don’t know why. Might be because they’re not using the device right. Sometimes, you know, there may be biological diversity and the different types of injury. [inaudible] Their pain may be caused by something else. That’s the one I feel really pretty strongly about.
Another one that’s not on the list here – but it’s just like an idiopathic urinary incontinence. A lot of people, especially men, will have this problem. More women have one of these problems we haven’t ever talked about. In every case where a person has asked me if this would help them and they’ve tried it, they have told me they’ve gotten considerable reliable results. And I think that as we age, you know, getting to our 50s and 60s, most of us have like kind of a low-grade inflammation in the pelvic cavity. And that causes all kinds of problems from back pain, maybe sciatica, hip problems, urinary incontinence, all organ stuff that’s working together.
If you reduce the inflammation, my hypothesis is you don’t have to regenerate nerves, you just simply reduce inflammation and then the whole neuromotor system works better, regains function, and fixes these problems.
[00:38:29] Pain from cysts in the spine. I do not know. I think there was one case where someone had tried it. They said it was helpful, but they don’t know how much. And I don’t know how much.
[00:38:40] Root canal inflammation. We’ve actually had a study in Egypt. Right before they had their Arab Spring, and we were doing massive craniofacial reconstructive surgery where they actually have to reconstruct big parts of the bone of the maxillary arch. We found in every case that the healing after the surgery was two to three times faster and pain was reduced to almost nothing. So, for craniofacial major things, it seems to really help reduce pain that results from surgery or other types of energy. As far as being complicated by the infection, you gotta be careful about that.
[00:39:21] Stress. People are asking me about that. A lot of people – it’s really quite interesting. A lot of people have a deep relaxation response when they use our systems. No, I don’t know if that’s anything sort of psychological. But some people do and I don’t know why. It may simply be the interaction with the inflammatory autoimmune system with the consciousness and mental state. And now what I don’t understand, some people tell me it’s like the biggest thing for them and others.
Nattha: Does the device actually change the brainwaves when they put it on – [crosstalk]
Bob: [00:40:05] Well, it seems to. Actually, a lot of people will tell me that it changes the state of their thinking. Now, I haven’t done an EEG to verify that it’s changing a person’s brainwaves. But there’s enough of the literature [laughs], you know, to a – [crosstalk]
Alex: [inaudible]
Nattha: [inaudible] Yeah, cause we have the EEG, so we might actually try that.
Bob: [inaudible] [laughs]. [inaudible] What I really want to encourage people to do in the self-hacking community is to try things and then tell me because that’s what I was saying in the beginning. The best information that I get is from people just like you guys saying, “Okay. I will.” Now, I’m a prominent advocate of the self-hacking community, and I’m going to tell you to go ahead and try it. And, I’m going to go ahead and measure it. There are people who’ve told me, for example, people track their heart variability like three times a day every day for like three or four years. And they’re like, “Wow. It really reduces HRV you know.” And I’m like, “Cool. Yeah, I’d love to know that.”
So when people don’t have any reason to fake it, they’re just telling me what they’re saying, and I get the best information that gives me the biggest picture view of what it’s likely doing system-wide, and it’s coming from people who are self hackers. You ask people who are doing these things and, actually, like one guy in particular sent me a bunch of graphs. Heart rate variability “Look.” So, you know.
[00:41:22] Atherosclerosis and clogged arteries. I don’t know. That’s one of these things that is probably a really long process that would take a long time to reverse. Whereas like peripheral nerve dysfunction, it’s something that can be corrected it really quickly, because if you reduce inflammation, the nerve acts and works a lot better, and within a few days, you can see a difference. Other things, they seem to take a long time and so, any kind of cumulative thing like clogged arteries, I would expect a long time.
[00:41:52] Fungal infections. I can tell you from the PEMF literature, there’s a suggestion that PEMF in general, especially that 10Hz trapezoid, has a pretty good static antifungal, antiviral effect that’s small. It’s not really potent, and I wouldn’t think of using it, to fight the infections. It doesn’t make things worse. It doesn’t just non-specifically cause cells to propagate. Mostly, this is done in vitro, too. So – in Petri dishes. You know, the number of colonies of things that are growing every fiber.
[00:42:35] Preventing colds and cases of flu. No data on that. I – don’t know much about that.
[00:42:42] Boosting blood cell counts. Actually, when people use our system after cancer treatments that hack their erythropoietic systems where you’re making stem cell, they bounce back very fast. Their neuro-oncologist asks them, “Do you know you shouldn’t be making blood cells that fast or that soon? What are you doing?” Sometimes people will just say, “Well, you know, nothing.” Because they don’t want to admit to it. But, I think what’s happening is that it’s accelerating the rate at which – oh, so the question would be boosting blood cell counts if you’re perfectly healthy and normal? Probably not. But, blood cell generation recovery after like radiation – I think there’s something there, and I’d like to study it more. And, people who’ve tried it have told me that they think it’s very helpful.
[00:43:33] Obstructive sleep apnea as a nerve stimulator. I don’t know. I know some people have played with it and tried different experiments, but they never told me what the outcomes were.
[00:43:42] Can it help normalize the stress responses? I think it probably does at the autoimmune level. Maybe or maybe not at the metabolic level. Maybe at the psychological level if you’re dealing with brainwave entrainment. But I don’t know for sure.
[00:44:02] Does the ICES have any cosmetic benefits or help with weight loss? Well, you know the best information I’ve ever gotten on that from one of your readers named Deb. If you just look at it at the SelfHacked website and look at the last interview I did with Joseph, he’s made about a half-dozen comments in the last two weeks talking about that. She sent me an email yesterday – she had to change her pant size cause she’s lost so much weight.
On the other hand, I don’t hear that a lot. So I would think, you know, if it really [laughs] worked for that I would be getting calls from like Oprah Winfrey and everything [laughs]. You know, I hope I didn’t just violate copyright or something [laughs]. I don’t know but, boy, wouldn’t that be interesting? And, I think about people’s metabolic responses and causes of obesity and metabolic syndrome in general, which is more than just complicated enough so that some people will respond and some won’t.
Nattha: Yeah. So…
Bob: Okay?
Alex: All right.
Nattha: Now we are halfway through the questions, so do you want to take some audience questions now, Bob?
Bob: Yeah. I’m happy to take any question.
Nattha: So, the audience, feel free to type in your questions or maybe we’ll unmute you. Let’s see. I think we’re having trouble finding the chat boxes. You know, maybe while people are typing – [crosstalk]
Audience 1: Hi.
Nattha: Hi.
Audience 1: Can I talk a question or should I type it in?
Nattha: Sure, you can ask. Go ahead.
Audience 1: Okay. I missed that – I really apologize. I missed the whole first part of the webinar.
Nattha: No problem.
Audience 1: I’m curious – [crosstalk]
Bob: Well, that’s where we gave all the secret information [laughs].
Audience 1: I’ve seen that it’s been recorded so I will re-listen.
Bob: Yeah.
Electromagnetic Radiation Concerns with ICES and PEMF Devices
Audience 1: I don’t know if this is already been discussed but the EMFs?
Nattha: Mm-hmm.
Audience 1: Is there a concern about– [crosstalk]
Bob: Actually, I can talk about that a bit. And you might find this interesting. So, you’re talking about like electromagnetic smog, right? And…
Audience 1: Yeah.
Bob: Right? Yeah. So, that’s a big concern and actually, I share that concern. A lot of the researchers that I’ve talked to over the years are physicists and biophysicists who’ve been kind of studying this problem, you know, probably 20, 25 years now. So just to tell you, one of the main features of the technology that I’ve developed is that I continue to reduce the power requirement. What I keep doing is I keep cutting the signal in half and I keep saying, “Okay. Is this half of the signal to reap the benefit, or it’s that half?”
And if I find that one-half of that signal’s helpful and essential, and the other half is not, I eliminate that part of the signal. And I’ve done that now from about 1998, 1999. And, as a result, I’ve reduced that total energy required, to get the same or even a better biological response of cutting 99.8% of the energy. But, if you were to divide the energy into 500 parts, and eliminated 499 of them, but I don’t think they’re helpful.
This is one of the big differences between me and the other PEMF marketers. Most PEMF companies don’t have a scientist or an engineer really on staff. They’re kind of copying a design or something somebody made probably years ago. But, I’ve been trying to get this thing down to really, really low energy to have the same biological effect, as I do think that electromagnetic smog is a huge problem not widely appreciated.
So I can tell you that probably the leading person in the entire world who is – her name is Magda Havas, and she’s in Guelph, Ontario. She has actually visited me a couple of times. And at first, she was very afraid of PEMF. But Will Pollack and I talked her into trying mine. So she actually uses mine now. She is, probably more than anyone, really aware of the sense these problems have. If you have a clean signal and it doesn’t have a lot of extra energy, it seems to be something that biologically is acceptable.
So, just thinking about it as sort of like sunlight – if you get the right amount of UV, you get the right amount of infrared, you get the right amount of sunlight, it can be very beneficial for you. But if you get way too much sunlight energy, it can be very harmful. I think it comes down to getting the right type of energy in just the right amount, and not in any excess. And then, in that case, it can be very beneficial. And, a very large percentage of the effort that I put into this design has been specifically to address that concern.
Nattha: To follow up on that one, do you know if the ICES helps with any responses or bad reactions to EMF in the homes?
Bob: [00:48:55] Well, this is the thing. So a lot of people were asked, “Can ICES or any of these things shield you? So, with any of these PEMF devices – some of them claim to shield you from background EMF. So, I’ve actually tested that and the answer, unfortunately, is no. The background EMFs just do what’s called the wave superposition. So all the noise in the background is still there. I don’t think it shields you from it.
As far as giving you a biological response that’s helpful, that one’s a maybe. Some people tell me it’s helpful with their sensitivity. Others, not so much. So, once again I think this is going to be something that’s going to be sorted out by self-hackers who are sensitive, who try really low-energy PEMF. It may be just any other type of allergy – that its small, pure, controlled dose actually does help build tolerance. That would be wonderful. But I don’t know – in case of this.
Nattha: Any – okay. So – [crostalk]
Alex: Can…we have an audience question from [inaudible]. Can you see the chat, Bob?
Bob: Let’s see here, chat.
Nattha: Can you read it?
Bob: I logged in at 12:30 Central Time.
ICES Protocol for Brain Fog
Alex: I can read it. So I guess, the first one is she wants to know more about the protocol on how to reduce brain fog.
Bob: [00:50:13] That’s Joseph’s specialty. I think that you’d want to get that off at SelfHacked.
Nattha: He – [crosstalk]
Bob: [inaudible]
Nattha: Yeah. It’s like this – [crosstalk]
Bob: But he places it around just half of his head. Why is that – [crosstalk]
Nattha: Yeah. For the hypothalamus, he puts them on the back of his head like this
Bob: [inaudible] Don’t show me [laughs]. Oh, is that where it is? Yeah, okay.
Nattha: Yeah.
Bob: Because I [inaudible] seen him actually stacking it on top of his head– [crosstalk]
Nattha: He puts it on his head. [laughs]. And he just puts it like all night when he goes to sleep, or when he walks around. But in this house it’s not unusual to see people with different things on their heads [laughs]. Yeah. So, yeah [laughs]. Try different points in your head and then just do it like one night and go to sleep – [crosstalk]
Bob: [00:50:59] If I may make a suggestion, right? So, I’ve done everything that I can to reduce the energy in this thing. And the scientific studies I’m doing, especially where I’m studying in a controlled biological systems in the laboratory – what we find is that when you do something biomedically, you can have a dose-response curve that’s linear, right? You double the dose, you get twice the response. Double the dose again, you get twice again the response. That doesn’t seem to be how PEMF works.
PEMF seems to be a threshold, right? It’s either you had nothing and then you get a response. Then, more energy doesn’t give you more of a response.
Nattha: I see.
Bob: I have really strong data to suggest that that’s the case. And so the minimum threshold that you need is sort of on a low end of our devices. Now some people rarely do require a lot more energy, but most people don’t. And so if you’re going to use it on your head, I recommend you start with really low intensity, and also, only do it while you’re awake and alert. And, you can see if you’re having kind of an adverse reaction. I’ve had a few people call me up. Told me like, “Nah. I bought your device. I turned it on to full power. I’ve never used your device or PEMF before. Full-powered strapped to my head and promptly went to sleep. And I woke up 10 hours later and I was kind of groggy.” And I was like, “Ah. Don’t do that.” [laughs]
Ease like a hot bath, right? You start easing yourself [laughs] and find your comfort level. But think about it, I think that more energy isn’t necessarily better because what I’ve seen in PEMF, it is really a threshold response. I want to use just enough biological response, and then more energy doesn’t really give you much more.
Nattha: So ADD, does it help with ADD?
Bob: [00:53:38] You know, I’ve had probably a dozen people ask me that but I’ve never gotten good feedback. So I can’t really say. I think this is one of those things that I’d like to know.
Nattha: Mm-hmm. Cool. So Robin asked another question. How long would you need to wear it for stress and relaxation?
Bob: [00:53:57] Some people wear it at a very low energy 24/7. Sometimes they put it on their lower back and they just get this really great sort of stress relief. Some people wear it on their head. Some very prominent people who I can’t even name from patient confidentiality.
Nattha: Yeah. So…
Bob: Probably, they wear it, you know, very frequently. Some people go jogging with it for an hour. Others will wear it discreetly all day. It’s something that’s experimental.
Nattha: So you say, start from multiple hours to like all day?
Bob: [00:54:30] Yeah. So, most people wear it almost every day for at least half an hour. For chronic, really deep-seated pain I recommend you wear it for four to eight hours if you can every day. Some people like it so much they just put the potency really low and they wear it day and night, 24/7, 365. I never had anyone report an adverse reaction. And, that’s generally true of PEMF.
If you look through the entire scientific literature, there’s virtually no statement that it’s dangerous. Even people who are strongly against PEMF, who are trying to debunk it, they’ll even admit it on their papers. Well, it doesn’t seem to hurt, because it doesn’t do anything at all. But, still just have an abundance of caution. I wouldn’t want anyone to ever get hurt unnecessarily. Please start off while you’re awake and aware with low energy and shorter periods of time. And then expand that to see how you respond. Right?
Nattha: Mm-hmm.
Does ICES Help with Stress?
Audience 1: Can I ask a follow-up to that?
Bob: Sure.
Audience 1: If I was feeling stress and I would normally, like, go meditate or wanna take a nap. Is this something I could wear and it would – and I could experience feeling more relaxed? And…or is it more subtle than that?
Bob: [00:54:55] It’s very much more subtle than that. And the interesting story about that is that when we first started selling them, a lot of people who had really bad chronic pain would buy these things. And, after a few days, “It doesn’t really work. Can I return it?” And we will say, “Yeah, if it’s not helping you.” But what we normally tell people to do is hold on to it for a day or two without using it, “Don’t use it for a day or two.” And then return it. The reason is it’s that the effects are so subtle, people don’t notice them until when they stop using it. Right?
And in every case except for one person, “Hold on a second. It was really helping. I just didn’t recognize it.” In that case, the person said it wasn’t really helpful and then they sent them back. So, the effects are really subtle. And I’m not trying to make a device that makes you feel like you’re doing some kind of a deep massage. I mean, you know, some of these PEMF devices are like literally powerful enough to cause, you know, oscillations between metallic jewelry and stuff. We [laughs] [inaudible] – [crosstalk]
Bob: Yeah. There are cases where people will be wearing like a gold chain and you can see sparks and stuff [laughs]. I’m just saying I don’t think it’s necessary to do that. And so, the only thing that Joe experienced is you hear this clicking. Click, click, click. And that’s part of the physics of how the magnetic fields are changing fast enough, and changing the dimensions of coils for that. But, most people don’t feel anything. It kind of comes out really slowly. And it’s when you stop using it, after a brief period of using it, and feel like, “Wow.” Because you’re going back to the way it was.
So, yeah. It’s not something that you’d feel right away like a massage that’s like, deep and relaxing.
Nattha: So we’re gonna ask more of the questions that people asked. But if the audience has any other questions, feel free to type it in and we’re gonna take a break to answer your questions. Oh, so Roxanne has a question.
ICES PEMF and Workout Recovery
Alex: Here’s one. So she says, “As an athlete, do you recommend to use it on your muscles post workout?” So it says, “If I have a heavy leg day, should I put it on my legs after the workout?” And —
Bob: [00:56:69] So, this is interesting, and we actually have some data on it. Dr. William Pollack – some of his patients were elite athletes, and cyclists, in particular. And they were finding that they were getting their best times in cycling competition, taking several seconds off of their best time ever. These are people who have very, very tightly grooved performance, just by using one of our earlier devices. It was a generation four device from like four or five years ago. And they felt that their recovery was a lot faster, and that their performance was a lot faster from wearing it during the actual performance. I’ve not run these experiments but that’s what people are…
Alex: Another question from Robin. She says that you mentioned wound healing, and says, “If the skin on my arm is extremely thin and breaks up very easily and it’s hard to heal, would it help? And how can you compare this to red light therapy?”
Bob: [00:58:08] I am trying to make a device that would do both. I would say that probably if she has a red light therapy device and has one of ours, what clinicians tell me is that when you combine those two for open wounds, you get the very best possible outcome. So, they seemed to be good adjunct therapies, one and the other. Probably because they work in different mechanisms that come together later to affect that. I can’t say for a fact that it’s necessarily going to help you in your particular case. But, what I’m hearing is that it’s very helpful for open wounds, and it also works well as an adjunct of other therapies, including topical application of different things. Some people use like outside gels and stuff like that, nutritional things. It’s probably a pretty good adjunct.
Nattha: Has there been any research to test whether the ICES reduce inflammatory markers in humans?
Bob: [00:59:08] Yeah. So, I’ve actually done a couple of these studies. And it’s really hard to find them because we’re not seeing them significantly above the background noise until we started doing studies on diabetic mice. Right? And so this is just something we’ll probably publish this year. We have very sensitive assays, an assay called NOD, Non-Obese Diabetic Mice. And, it dramatically changed, in some cases, by a factor of 30 or 40. Some of the inflammatory markers – and depending upon the intensity level how we applied the field – we were getting an increase in some inflammatory markers and a decrease in others.
You have to understand that the inflammatory system has all this feedback, right? Sometimes an increase in a marker is there because the actual output is decreasing. And it’s kind of hard to explain this, but it’s the way feedback loops work. So, just think about like you’re driving a car, right? And you’re sensing your press on the gas, the force in which you use to press that. So that’s your marker. How much force? How many pounds do you put on the brake pedal? And in a functioning car, the number of pounds you put on the brake pedal will correlate with how quickly the car stops.
But the brake line, you notice the cars are stopping, so you immediately press harder and harder and harder. So in that case, you have to signal more force to brake from your foot. But, the system doesn’t respond that way. But, what I think is happening is that PEMF is breaking part of its inflammatory feedback loop. Oftentimes, proinflammatory markers will go up initially because the actual inflammatory response is going down. So first – to answer your question in two phases: One, we are starting to get some data on it now. And the second half is, it’s very complicated because sometimes we’re actually seeing a reduced inflammatory response or we have a concomitant increase in the inflammatory marker. So, very interesting.
Using ICES for the Whole Body
Nattha: So, to follow up on their whole body mat questions. So, somebody is trying to use the 2×2 arrays for the B5 or C5 models for the whole body. Is there a good placement for that?
Bob: [01:01:24] Well, you know, that’s the thing. So, the B5 and the C5 kind of come with these arrays that are about 5 inches square on a side. And, you can put four of them together so you can make a long array that people sometimes put on their spine. Sometimes people place them differently like, a couple of people have sort of a really, truly whole body swelling and inflammatory problem. They’ll place one over each lung and one over each kidney or something like that. Other people will just make a square mat.
And then some people use it like if they’ve got a bad knee, another bad knee, bad back, and one bad shoulder – thoroughly different locations on the body. So the reason that we made the B5 and the C5 that way is so that you can literally just use co-band sports sticker [inaudible]. You can make a pad in whatever shape you really need. You can now if you actually take apart some of the whole body PEMF systems like the big mat – really sometimes the PEMF coil is only about that big. And, some of them have much lower power than ours. So, even though the mat looks like it’s big, the power of their system is probably very limited.
Nattha: So how long will it be for your whole body mat might come to the market?
Bob: [01:02:46] I’m not a hundred percent sure we need one because everybody who has wanted a whole body system – I recommend the C5. Because the B5, it’s really… really, for scientific experimentations, all that you need is a C5, I think. But we’ve never had anybody who really wanted a whole body system come in, then bought a C5, and come back and say, “It wasn’t enough.” Maybe with the C5, this just – happens to be good enough. I don’t want to put something in the market that’s not helpful. Right?
Nattha: Sorry, can you read this question?
ICES Contraindications
Alex: I have a question from Jane. We will summarize it a bit. She said she went to a chiropractor and he recommended that she stop using the device — she said the chiropractor said it was affecting her energy field and that she was addicted to it. She also said that it also helped her pain a bunch. And then when she stopped using her pain came back. Is what the chiropractor said something to be concerned about?
Bob: [01:03:57] Well, I would always be concerned, you know, if your clinician was telling you something. I can tell you this — if people using our device as we described it should be used, about 6 or 7% of people don’t respond. But, 93% of people for chronic pain, back pain sort of respond really well. Of that 93 or 94%, if they use it for two or three weeks after the pain had stopped, it never comes back. So, for really long periods of time, months, or even years.
ICES Continual Use Concerns
So, a lot of people tell me that it can be like microfracture in the foot, or lower back pain, or whatever. For 80% of the people who respond, be it kind of a like a permanent relief, I am not one of those people. My back injury was really severe. So, I’m kind of an obligate user of it. And I would say that — just my opinion, I’m not a clinician. I’m just trying to be a regular, intelligent person here. Addiction is only a problem if there’s really kind of negative consequences, right?
I think addiction may be too strong of a word. I think this may be something that you need to have for the benefit that you’re getting. I’m not happy that it didn’t just fix you permanently and you can live without it – because I don’t believe that people should be tied to a device. On the other hand, it is sort of up to you to decide whether the benefit’s better for you overall. Then, the negative aspects, which you’re not telling me — that it’s doing anything negative other than the fact that you have to wear it, right?
I mean, if you have some kind of adverse side effects — first of all, I want to know about them then. Yeah, you have to weigh it. And, just like any other thing, they have the mainstream methods, right? There are always side effects, and it’s always kind of a trade-off. And, you have to decide, is it worth it to you to have the risk of the device, whatever that is, and the inconvenience, and is that compensated for by the benefit that you’re getting? And what I’m reading, in addition to local relief, there’s a whole body relief and well-being. Your energy levels were better.
So then, the question is, how little can you use it and get these benefits? And then the other question is, is it something that you have to keep using to get those benefits? And, if you consider that a bad thing, it’s kind of a personal choice there.
Nattha: So, like, to add to that. I would hypothesize that maybe there’s something in her body that is causing a long-term cell danger response. And the ICES is somehow able to hijack that process and, like, improve it. But it’s almost like, if she needs to use it continually, then it might be that her body is still generating the cell danger response– [crosstalk]
Bob: [01:07:00] It may be– [crosstalk]
Nattha: Other causes. Yeah.
Bob: There’s a really good point that you make, too, Nattha, is that maybe there’s a process that is better off halted or reversed. And it may be that you’re getting immediate relief, but there’s actually a deduction in this degeneration or maybe reversal process that you are benefiting from that is not obvious yet. But, it may be that over a longer period of time you’ll find that you need the device less and less. And I will tell you this, this is one of the interesting things: The longer that I used the device, the lower I set the power and still got the same response. And, many people tell me this. Once they kind of build up their courage to dial the power back a little bit — that’s why on the M1, there are 15 different power levels, and four on the earlier devices, so you kind of walk back away from the dosage that you need to get the response that you want. And ideally, you know, you walk it down and walk in and eventually just don’t need it anymore. And, that seems to be the trend I’ve seen with people, even ones with very refractory problems — they seem to have the same benefit with less and less, less time, less intensity.
Contraindications with ICES and PEMF
Nattha: Yeah. So now, we have some contraindication questions.
Jane: [inaudible] if I could. This is Jane. And I just wanted to say about that. The energy field measured as I was using the ICES was just expanded in almost an unprecedented way. It’s huge. And I just wanted to say that that was quite a curiosity to me.
Bob: [01:08:41] I find it very interesting, actually. And, you know, I mean there’s different ways of working at the [inaudible]. It would be like, “Do you see that as a [inaudible]?” You have to use the device. But on the other hand, if you have that response from meditation, but you had to meditate to get a response, would you then conclude that you are addicted to meditation? And it comes down to a personal thing where,I would weigh the benefit that you have. You have a better overall well-being. You don’t have adverse side effects, as long as you’re okay with the device. So it seems to me that it’s something you really have to weigh for yourself to decide what’s best for you.
But I think your clinician’s use of the word addicted is probably too strong. Because most people have to go back to chiropractors two or three times a week for, kind of, forever. Are they addicted to chiropractic?
Alex: Roxanne asks, “With the M1 versus C5, is the C5 basically the same but with more coils so it can form a mat if I want to? I just ordered the M1 because you suggested, but now thinking I should get the C5.”
Bob: [01:10:52] The C5 is identical to 4 M1’s put into a package so that you can build a mat, so that is precisely correct. Now the M1 has fewer coils to drive so there’s extra memory. C5 is maxed out. I can’t add any more protocols. It’s just– you know, I’m not one of these guys. I’m not really holding something back and making you pay ransom to get them. I’ve always found that to be extremely objectionable. They hit the maximum that I can pack into something and I’ve said it. Now, that C5 is already maxed out. But the M1, I may be able to add a few protocols and I’m doing that over time. So, the M1 would actually have a few more different protocols. But if you really need to have a mat, then the C5 might be better.
On the other hand, the C5 does draw enough power that you kind of has to be plugged into the wall. And so, it’s not really mobile whereas the M1 is so small where some people wear it on a hat or around your pocket. It’s like 52g of a battery [inaudible], you know, half the size of a deck of cards. It’s ultra portable. So what you get with the M1 is that you can use it all day, all night, whenever you want, pretty much anywhere you go except swimming. Whereas, C5 is kind of like, you know when you can stay still and plugged into the wall. Some people have them both because you’re doing different things with them.
And, I would say, we don’t like to sell the C5 or the B5 to anyone, especially not the C5, unless that you know that you respond to it well, and so if you get an M1 and say, “Nah. It doesn’t really work for you.” And then you would want to have a C5 cause it’s the same thing times four, right? But if the M1 works really well for you and you think it’s a good value then, you know, you can come back to SelfHacked and we’ll have a discount code for you and you can get a C5 at a significantly reduced price. And a lot of people who like it, they like it so much that they want to have one of each. You know, I don’t want to sound like a salesman. I’m just telling you guys what people do. But we don’t want to sell you something that’s expensive but doesn’t help you. So I would start with an M1.
Are the ICES Contraindicated with Cancer?
Nattha: So in the NASA study that tested the magnetic pulse effects on the neuronal cells that found there’s an increased expression of genes that are responsible for growth and regeneration. So I was just wondering if there’s something that cancer patients should avoid?
Bob: [01:12:28] Well, that’s an excellent question and many people, probably 150 to 200 people have asked me that. And it doesn’t seem to cause rampant cell growth. So if it did cause rampant cell growth, then you’d have two really serious questions, right? Cancer and sepsis infection, right? Because if it’s just making cells grow, you’d see tons and tons of cells growing, you know. And it doesn’t seem to be as a primary thing. It doesn’t seem to be causing cells to grow. It seems to be much more subtle, effects to the environment in a way that healthy cells will tend to replicate and change the gene expression profile that they have. So instead, it looked more like tissue in a growth and regeneration phase.
You get a lot of extracellular matrix and other kinds of like lesion proteins and stuff like that, that allow tissue to rebuild itself. Now when you look at the literature, and I used to tell people, “Absolutely no, don’t use PEMF if you got cancer or an infection because we don’t know what’s happening, ”many people simply blew off my concerns when I had never heard of any problems on that. And if you would scour the literature, there’s like nothing in the PEMF literature to suggest PEMF causes a problem with cancer or anything. And in fact, there’s a fair amount of literature now that suggests that PEMF helps with it.
In fact, one of the only three clinical indications for what PEMF is approved is brain cancer. You can look it up on the FDA website. It’s for brain cancer and it’s healthy with brain cancer. So obviously, it’s not exacerbating, you know, tumorigenicity or cancer spread. And, there are plenty of papers suggesting that it’s helpful for very aggressive forms of cancers as well. And, it may be that these really aggressive forms of cancer are obligated to create and grow in a highly inflamed environment. And if you reduce inflammation in that environment it may actually reduce the aggressiveness of the cancer. That’s sort of the hypothesis that I think going around.
But there’s not enough serious consideration of PEMF in the oncology research area. Unfortunately, this is something – there’s so many animal models, or so many opportunities to know the answer here. And I just don’t see any serious effort among cancer researchers.
Are the ICES Contraindicated with Pacemakers and Metal Implants?
Nattha: What about someone with a pacemaker?
Bob: [01:15:51] Well, I would be really cautious with a pacemaker. And I have told everybody with implants and pacemakers, “Absolutely, don’t use PEMF.” And of course, people don’t generally [laughs] follow my advice on this. They wanna go ahead and try it anyway. We’ve never had a problem. Pacemakers are extremely well-built to exclude external interference. So, you don’t see as many warnings as you used to. You used to have to be on microwaves, you know. If you have a …in a public, stay away if you have a pacemaker.
Not a lot of report of problems with that, right? And I know there are probably 8 or 10 people have pacemakers who use our system. If you’re more than about five or six inches away from our system, there’s no measurable field in the background. It’s just like background electromagnetism if you’re away from where you’re breathing. So, I would never say that it’s proven safe cause it’s not proven safe, and you have to be really cautious about it. With pacemakers, we haven’t seen any problems and we’ve never seen a report of a problem anywhere in the literature. Mostly this is because the pacemaker design is excellent and very very much exquisite.
Now, as far as other implants are concerned, like titanium pins and different fixation devices that people have, screws, pins, and plates – we used to recommend you don’t use any form of PEMF around them. Some people that I know very well said, “Yeah, yeah. Whatever. We’ll do an experiment. [laughs]” And every single time people say that it actually helps. If first, they’ll feel, for a day or two, they might feel tingling around the implant like a tiny faint electric shock. Not that it’s uncomfortable, but they can feel it. Now after a day or two, that sensation goes away.
Now within a week or two, they’ll tell me that the implant has actually grafted better. And it’s more stable. So maybe what’s happening is that some of the information around the implant is reduced and then the tissue kind of grab onto it and make it more stable. And that’s what people tell me. So I no longer try to chase people away from using PEMF from sorts of things because I don’t see any problems in any case, because there seems to be some kind of a benefit.
Alex: Mm-hmm.
How to Use ICES for Rheumatoid Arthritis
Nattha: So, Sam has asked, “What about the coil placement for rheumatoid arthritis, wrist and ankle pain?” Should she use single or double coils for joints?
Bob: [01:17:21] I would recommend self-experimenting and everybody seems to respond a little bit differently. So the thing to do is, try a coil placement for maybe two days, three days. Sometimes there would be a response right away. Some it takes a couple of days. And then, keep a journal and say, “Okay I had this protocol, this intensity level, I put the coils on opposite sides of the wrists, or maybe stacked up over the wrist or just one coil.”
Generally speaking, two coils where you’re working is better than just one. Like one coil on one wrist and one or the other. I recommend you focus on one area. And then, sort of keep track of it for a few days. Do something a little different for a few days, and try to figure out which coil placement works best for you. Then once you do that, then you could start adjusting the intensity and the protocol and see what works best for you. In most cases, people sort of have to go through that self-experimenting phase to figure out what helps them the most.
Nattha: Mm-hmm. We have some clients with mast cell activation disorders. So the question is, does it activate with mast cell if they have, like, rather sensitive mast cells that are activated in response to red light and things like that?
Bob: [01:19:25] Absolutely don’t know. That’s the thing. Don’t have any information on this. Sorry. I’d tell you if I did.
Nattha: Okay.
Alex: I have a question. When you use a coil, how does it penetrate into the body?
Bob: [01:18:38] Well, it kind of sort of trails off, right? And so, it’s really hard to describe. I’m going to try to publish a paper on that this year. But the reason there are two coils is that you can use the two coils to form an electromagnetic field between the two coils. You can have it side by side, in which case, you get a sort of a bagel-shaped field. You can have them on opposite sides, in which case, you get like a football-shaped field between them with small end in each coil. Or, you can have them stacked, in which case, you get like a double mushroom shape. So much of it will be coming out like a mushroom and then curling back around.
And the penetration in the field concentration – if you have them on opposite sides you can get 11 or 12 inches of tissue between, and this seems to get a really good biological response between them. If you are doing something superficial like on the ribs – so opposite sides is really good for like transcranial, transabdominal, transpelvic, lower back, or infections of like leg or something. Or even your knee. Sometimes you want them side by side and you might do that over like a shoulder, or for a lower back pain that’s really just right in the spine, rib cage things.
How deep the penetration goes, it’s kind of like, you can’t just say one number, right? Because it’s sort of peers out over time. But because magnetic field are closed, they’re not like a point source radiator like a light or like something else. Because the fields are closed, you tend to get a pretty strong field in really small area. And then, it drops off as one over distance cube, one over distance to the fourth, a couple feet and you get nothing. And then if you’re really closed in the sort of the magnetic flux. It’s different than like a light bulb or…
Nattha: Mm-hmm. Should someone with acute or chronic infection avoid using the ICES?
Bob: [01:20:42] I don’t know. I would be very cautious. There’s never been a report that I know of that says any form of PEMF exacerbates an infection. And, I have been scouring the literature of the regulatory agencies. And they would be right to publish, if there was any kind of pattern or people who use PEMF or electrical stimulation who had their infections get much much worse. That would be something you’d have to be really cautious about. There doesn’t seem to be any indication that, and in fact, a very slight, barely statistically significant benefit. But, I wouldn’t think of PEMF or anything as being something you do to benefit an infection. But it doesn’t seem to make it worse.
Do ICES Have Side Effects or Potential Overdoses?
Nattha: Aha. Is it possible to overdose the ICES use? [inaudible] touch on briefly, but is — [crosstalk]
Bob: [01:21:36] I don’t think so. I’ve cut so much of the energy out, and it’s so much less extra excess energy than most types of PEMF that I don’t think it’s possible to. Some people use it relatively at a high setting, 24/7, with no problems. If you do overdose on any form of PEMF, seems to be the thing to do is stop. And any time or a person is like, the only negative feedback we’ve ever gotten from any of our devices is that it makes tinnitus, ringing in the ears, noticeably worse. And the answer was stop using that or turn it down, problem went away.
So, you know, the only other thing was, like what I was telling you earlier. People who have never used PEMF, when they get one of our systems, they’re really excited for the battery and turn it off, crank it all the way up, prop it on their head, and then go to sleep for a few hours. And they wake up kind of weirdly groggy, you know, like, “Whoa.” You know – don’t do that [laughs]. Sort of ease yourself into it. And I think, based on my readings of the scientific literatures, it’s very hard to overdose on PEMF. I think that’s one of the most surprising things about it because you would think, people would be out there really hurting themselves with really powerful systems. And that doesn’t seem to be the case. I don’t see it in the literature.
Do ICES Hinder the Inflammatory Responses Needed for Muscle Building?
Alex: Oh, we have an audience question. Roxanne says that in order to build muscles it’s necessary to have inflammation to break the fibers out and then rebuild it even bigger. Is PEMF contraindicated for bodybuilding?
Bob: [01:23:03] Well, I can tell you. I actually have a masters degree in Kinesiology and Sports Science, and this is something I’ve actually studied. And when I kind of entered into this area, it was one of the things I was wondering about. And, there’s a lot of belief that inflammation is necessary for wound healing, too. And yet we’ve done some studies where right after, immediately in the recovery right after surgery, we applied PEMF and wounds were healing two or three times faster. Right? And there didn’t seem to be any kind of delay or reduction or attenuation of the healing process.
Even though surgeons will tell you (especially orthopedic surgeons), you’ve got to have inflammation because it’s there. They’re right. It’s always there after these injuries. And it does seem to be part of the healing cascade, but it doesn’t seem to have to be there for very long. You follow me?
Alex: Mm-hmm.
Nattha: Yeah.
Bob: So that’s one thing. The other thing is that inflammation is a really big tent. And, it may be the type of inflammation that you need for eliciting a functional adaptation response. Not just your muscles, but your tendons, your ligament, your cartilage, and your bones all respond in weight-bearing exercise, right?
Nattha: Mm-hmm.
Alex: Mm-hmm.
Bob: It’s well known but you won’t want to talk about it as much as the muscles. But all of these things respond and we do think that part of it is the mechanism of inflammation-triggering this functional adaptive response. It may be that NSAIDs interfere with part of that, but it doesn’t interfere with functional adaptation. And, PEMF doesn’t seem to. In fact, elite athletes who use it seem to think it helps improve their performance.
Let me tell you one of the secrets of the design of my system, I-C-E-S or ICES system. I actually designed it so that it would emulate a neuromotor pattern that you see during the development of a fetus. So some slow twitch, some fast twitch. What I was actually trying to do was emulate the neuromotor responses that are absolutely essential to promote tissue development and maturation. That actually explains what the first several versions of ICES that have the slower and then faster patterns, they’re literally they’re emulating slow twitch and fast twitch muscle.
And, if you study fetuses, they actually do this like contract. And, they do this kind of rhythmically as their musculoskeletal neuromotor system develop I think there’s probably two mechanisms that are involved. One is this pro-regenerative, pro-developmental signal that is acting to promote and emulate the signals that you see during regeneration. And there’s this other signal that seems to be reducing inflammation. And with PEMF — it may or may not be interfering. I kind of think it doesn’t interfere with its functional adaptive response. But once again, we don’t know.
Comparing Between ICES and Other Technologies
Nattha: Mm-hmm. Cool. So now, we have a set of comparison-with-other-technology kind of questions.
Bob: Mm-hmm.
The Differences Between ICES and PEMF
Nattha: So, what are the differences between ICES and PEMFs?
Bob: [01:26:32] Well, ICES is a type of PEMF. And since about 1974…let me put it to you this way. Online I have posted how many different protocols you could have for PEMF. Starting with waveforms, is it sine waves? Is it triangles? Square waves? Is it trapezoid? And then the different frequencies and the different ways of describing the waveform. And, you can pull this off the internet. I’ve got it posted there on my webpage of the PEMF calculator. Just an Excel spreadsheet.
Alex: Mm-hmm.
Nattha: Mm-hmm.
Bob: [01:28:02] And if you do that, you come up with a number that tells you how many different types of PEMF there are. And that number is about one quadrillion.
Nattha: Whoa.
Bob: [01:28:12] So, it’s huge. So, if you know anything about chemistry there is only between, maybe, 30 and 200 million possible chemicals in the known universe. So, it turns out that PEMF is maybe hundreds of millions of times more diverse than chemistry. You know, PEMF is one specific area in the electromagnetic spectrum. And, the ICES technology I’m developing it is a subset of PEMF. So, it’s sort of like saying, you know, when people say, “Does PEMF work or not?” It’s sort of like saying, “Do chemicals work [laughs]?”
Chemicals make you healthy. Only it’s even 200 million times more complex [laughs] than that, right?
Nattha: Yeah.
Bob: You have to ask, well, okay, “What chemical are you talking about? Water [laughs]? Plutonium [laughs]? Testosterone? What are you talking about?” Right? And, so PEMF is kind of the same way. For what I’ve [inaudible] with ICES is, I’ve tried to take out all the extra energy in PEMF that does not seem to have a beneficial effect. And – just keep with just the energy that seems to have this very narrow range of parameters that seem to be biologically beneficial, and that allows me to make it much less– much smaller, much lower energy, which means the possibility for side effects are much lower.
Smaller, which makes it less heavy, less expensive. And because it uses less energy, now you can have a battery instead of plugging it into the wall. What ICES is, what I think about it is, it seems to be the most energy-efficient way to most deeply and profoundly gets that energy to leverage your tissues without any extra wasted energy– I would say that’s a big difference.
ICES vs. Other Devices
Nattha: Other comparison questions. So, can you compare between ICES and photobiomodulation?
Bob: [01:30:13] I think they’re different. I think the mechanism for photobiomodulation is different. And, a lot of these things seem to go well together, like photobiomodulation and PEMF. Every time I’ve ever talked to a clinician who is skillful with both, they’ll always tell me, “You know, you get a synergistically beneficial effect when you use them both.” So I think they have different mechanisms acting biologically in a different way. And, when you use both of them you get the benefit of each one, plus you get this benefit of having the two at the same time. That’s like a synergy.
Nattha: Mm-hmm. What about the Hulda-Clark devices and the German BEMER device? Did you ever hear of them?
How Dr. Dennis Operates the ICES Production
Bob: [01:30:05] Oh, yeah. Absolutely. I would say that the main difference is that my technology is honestly – just experimental. And I’m not finding that it does anything for anyone. What I’m saying is – that doing experiments with it, people tell me it’s helpful and I make it available to people as an experimental device. The big difference is, I think, first of all there are technological differences between our system and theirs. I do PEMF differently than them. And If I go more than a center into it, we gotta start going into the calculus and equations… There’s real difference, right?
But, I think on the consumer end of the technology, the differences really are how I run my company. We spend $0 on marketing, branding, and stuff. We just talk to people like you guys and Joe. We just try to tell them the truth. Whenever somebody asks me about representing our technology, I always give them those same instructions. We tell them the truth. Right? We don’t have multi-level marketing, we don’t have distributors or anything else. It’s just my wife and I. We run the company — I run the company. And we take much of the expense out of it as possible.
On the other hand, I put a lot of money, my own resources, into researching them. I think I spent in 2016, the last time I have the complete record, up to $850,000 I spent developing the technology, which is largely defrayed by research money that I get and product sales. When you buy one of our devices, you’re paying for research funds, you’re paying for us putting it together. You’re paying for more support. And you’re paying for R&Ds. That’s what you’re paying for.
You’re not paying for flashy packaging – you know we ship them out in these simple boxes. You’re not paying for marketing. You’re not paying for any of that stuff. That’s kind of the big difference.
And I can tell you this, I get many many calls from people who own other PEMF devices. And they will tell me, “Gee. You know, once I bought their system, they don’t pick up the phone anymore.” Many people ask me for advice about how to use these other devices and mostly, I have to tell them I just don’t know. But, I do get the sense the after-sale customer supports are for a lot of these devices, pretty weak.
Nattha: Yeah. It’s amazing because you guys swiftly respond to our emails and, like, anyone’s questions, actually. And you must get a lot.
Bob: [01:32:36] Well, we do. Let me comment on that, you know. The way I view it is – if anybody in the world feels the same kind of terrible pain that I was feeling, it makes you almost not human. You’re very grumpy and you’re very angry. When you’re rude because the system is not built to help you, you get that sense of desperation. So I have a personal commitment. We answer the phone 24/7, 365.
Nattha: Oh, wow.
Bob: Like Christmas Day. We take calls on major holidays. We take calls all over the world. We respond as fast as we can. Sometimes, you know, it does take a day or two for me to figure out what works when people are asking on email, but we always try to respond. So, we’re doing our best to be responsive and helpful. And, you know, I just don’t see that — I would say that that attitude does not dominate the PEMF market.
Alex: Mm-hmm.
Nattha: Yeah. And I have been interested in PEMF technology as well for a long time before I joined SelfHacked. And then, they were just unaffordable [laughs]. They were thousands of dollars and the ICES is just within the price range that I could save up for. Yeah. So the question, in that case – so this is wrapping up. So, people are interested in trying out the ICES. Where do they get it and how much do they cost?
Bob: [01:33:52] Well, I would start by going to SelfHacked because I think you guys are going to give a discount, and we don’t really work with anybody else on this one. Get a discount code from you guys. So we tried to make sure that there’s a little bit in there, and then you can get discounted. And so go with that, and then you just go straight for our webpage micro-pulse.com, which I think you guys will put a link to it – and go straight for our products page. If you have any questions, you can email us, but then you can order– it’s just a Shopify storefront.
And we only take orders by the internet, so you can place an order there, and we do everything we can to fulfill that order immediately. So, we don’t have a fulfillment staff that works once a week or something. It’s like, if we get an order early enough in the day and we have stock, we’ll try to ship that out the same day that you order it. Most people in the United States, if there isn’t a weather emergency, it will usually get them in 3 – 4 days.
How Much Do the ICES Cost?
Nattha: Yeah. Okay. So how much do these units cost?
Bob: [01:34:57] How much do the units cost? Well, let me start off with the first one I built for NASA was $74,000. And so, a big part of like taking the cost out of it is taking the energy out of them, I’ve also done everything I can to take the cost out. I think I’ve been able to reduce the cost to like 99.9%. About three years ago, we had our biggest cost reduction by the big redesign – we were able to reduce cost from a sort of around $1,500 to our current pricing, which is a little more than $400 for an A9 and a little more than $600 for an M1.
And so, we had another 72% price reduction. So right now, I’m working on trying to get some benefit from mass production, but I’m not 100% satisfied yet with some of what we can get mass produced. The quality is not quite as good. See, I built each and every one of these things. So, we know the quality is really, really good. It’s hard to find a manufacturing facility, even good expensive ones, that would do that for you. So if I can find some way to take some of the manufacturing burdens off us, by designing simpler to build – I’ll keep trying to drive down the price as well.
But what’s really kind of interesting, I hate to say this, but a lot of the benefit that people get from this kind of technology is that they’ve actually invested something in it. With a few hundred dollars in this technology, people actually tend to take the effort to figure out how to use it and get a benefit from it. What I’ve seen is that with similar cases of technology is, if you get much less than a couple hundred bucks, people actually don’t take it seriously enough to even try. And, if I want to be absolutely certain that a person won’t benefit from one of our devices, you know, we give it to them. And most of the time, it’s like yeah, it didn’t help me. It’s really interesting.
But if they actually bought it, it takes a few days to figure out how to use this thing. A vast majority of people love it. So kindly get in that, you know, I don’t want to make it about money but I’m trying to get into that price range. This is most helpful for a maximum number of people. They would think it should be free. Actually, it’s not. There’s some price where most people psychologically imbue the purchase with enough value that they take it seriously enough.
Nattha: Right. Yeah. So did you guys have come up with a really deep discount for us that you’ve never put anywhere else? Right?
SelfHacked ICES Coupon Code
For the A9 and M1 models, use the $50 off coupon code: SAVE50
For the C5 and B5 Models, use the $100 off coupon code: SAVE100
Bob: Yeah. Yeah.
Nattha: Would you like to go over those?
Bob: [01:37:36] I don’t look at this as a business. So I’m sort of people and technology, and– we will continue, you know, we’re committed to continuously renegotiate with you. And I know Nattha. You know my wife is working with you on this to find what’s the best discount we can have. So I’d almost rather not say what it is here, because it may be better, right? If we can actually take some of the cost out of building it, we’ll just forward that to the customer and you guys will see this discount. So, the best place to find out the discount would be on SelfHacked.
ICES Return Policy
Nattha: Yes. So we’ll put these quotes on SelfHacked and they will be available only for 30 days. And then, in case people are skeptical and they want to know if it’s working for them and just want to try it out, like, what’s your return policy?
Bob: [01:38:31] I think we have a restocking fee. I’m not sure what that amount is. Now some of them like the C5 and the B5, I build each one to order. So we definitely don’t want you to buy it unless you’re sure you want to own it. So you’ve already bought ones like an A9 or an M1 model and it works for you, that’s when you can think about buying the C5 or B5. We really do not like to have people try to return those because they should know by then time they buy one that.
But our policy basically is – within 30 days there’s a restocking fee. I believe it’s either a $100 or $150. And that would be basically worth your pay to go to a clinic and get one or two treatments on the big PEMF machine, and you would know whether or not it helps you. So that’s kind of the cost to facilitate you figuring out if PEMF is going to be helpful to you.
What we found when we had a smaller restocking fee is, once, again, people did impulse buying. So, we’re actually trying to sort of psychologically help people. You’re going to embark on this, you know, be serious enough that you can absorb our restocking fee. What was happening is, if it’s a smaller restocking fee, people wouldn’t take it seriously. They’d buy one and then a month or two later they’d say, “I didn’t really take it out of the box, I guess, I really don’t want it.” And, you know, this is one of these things that we try to – we try to get the pricing the restocking and stuff on so that we’re giving people the maximum opportunity to get the benefit that they need.
The main thing that you get after you buy the thing is that we continue to support it. I mean, you know, we do everything we can to fix problems if somebody broke something, We do, you know. We’re not making any money off repairs, we just want to for a year. And after that, it’s pretty much what it costs to fix it. So, we have kind of a long-term commitment and that’s priced into the device. But we don’t want people to make the.. you know, like buyer’s remorse. We don’t want those kinds of things.
Other Ongoing Expenses with ICES Use
Nattha: So once they’re using it, are there any other ongoing expenses like the coil or other things that they need to purchase?
Bob: [01:42:42] So, here’s the thing. Some people ask me, why do you make these coils so cheaply? Well, I don’t think of them as cheap. They’re actually really carefully designed but they’re inexpensive. Like, I had one person on one of my YouTube videos, “Hey why you should have missed a much better audio connector than anybody in the audio industry knows?” Well, sure, but it would’ve increased the price by a factor of three. Because the coils would be like $75 instead of $20. But, we don’t really have the connectors fail, so it’s not really a problem. So if you make the coils heavier and stronger they become more expensive and they become less comfortable and less convenient.
So the design – the ongoing expenses that you do occasionally need to replace are the batteries. And rechargeable batteries – after you recharge so many times in comparison to the lithium ones, it starts to expand a little bit. Whenever the batteries start to feel like they’re puffing out, safe thing to do is replace it, get a new one. So I tried to make use of the least expensive batteries that we can. The model M1 uses these rechargeable camcorder batteries. They’re only $14 and could last for months and months and months.
The coils themselves, think of it like a toothbrush, or underwear, Something you’d only want to use a certain number of times. It’s just best to get a fresh one, right? And, it’s the same thing with the coils – some people can use them for over a year and they don’t break them. Other people like me, I work in a machine shop and in kind of dangerous environments. And I occasionally rip the wires out, accidentally. So, some people will break them in a week or two. Some people can keep them going for more than a year. Once you get used to it, it should last a couple of months. But I do recommend, just like anything else that comes in close contact with your body, that you keep them clean, and every now and then replace them.
Nattha: I see. So now we’re out of the questions that the audience and other readers asked us. So now, is anyone attending live interested in asking questions right now? Just going to give it a couple of minutes for people to type. And then, this is going to wrap up this call.
I just want to say thank you so much, Bob, for your time and for your passion for working on this device to help so many people.
Bob: Well, thanks a lot and I want to just say thanks to the entire SelfHacked community because you guys have had a tremendous impact on my ability to understand how these devices are used by people. And what people need is for them to be useful. And, much of my product development, since the very beginning, is really focused on responding to what people are telling me. That doesn’t mean that every single request turns into a design change, right? When several hundred requests are quite similar I’ll, sort of, technologically try to combine those into a change that will be most helpful for people. And I try every year or so, every year to 18 months, to come out with a new firmware or a new model to incorporate all the best new models.
Nattha: Okay. All right. Cool. So if nobody has any questions to submit life, we’ll just go and wrap up this call. So, thank you so much and have a great weekend.
Bob: Excellent. Thank you very much.
Alex: Thank you, Dr. Dennis.
Bob: Bye-bye.
Alex: Bye.
[End]
Watch our previous interview with Dr. Bob Dennis where Joe asked his questions here.
Our post on ICES.
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