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Cranial Electrotherapy, a Profound Alternative Therapy
DEPRESSION

Studies show that reactive depression (that which results from acute changes in the patients life situation such as a job change or divorce) is decreased after 6 days of Cranial Electrotherapy treatment. More deep seated depression (endogenous) in some cases required 3 or more weeks of daily treatment. For this reason, many physicians routinely prescribe a minimum of 2 weeks to a month of daily Cranial Electrotherapy treatments in depressed patients, since it is frequently difficult to gauge the type or depth of depression with great accuracy.
Since many patients have a 'depression habit' physicians should include a home CES unit in their treatment plan so that the patient can meet any new sign of impending depression with effective treatment and thereby break the behavioral reinforcement chain that has both led to and maintained the habit. In this way, a maladaptive habit can be effectively controlled or broken without the use of frequent medications and/or repeated visits to the physician. Other research has shown that Cranial Electrotherapy, when used this way is neither habit forming nor addictive. Such patients use it only when they experience an impending medical necessity.

INSOMNIA

Because Cranial Electrotherapy was originally called 'Electrosleep' in European countries, many earlier American studies were designed to learn whether or not such small amounts of electric currents would actually put people to sleep. That is, just as 50ma of current - called 'electro-anaesthesia' - put an individual into anesthesia so that surgical procedures could be performed, 1ma of Cranial Electrotherapy current was assumed to put them into a normal state of sleep if 'Electrosleep' worked.
Such studies discovered that while Cranial Electrotherapy does not necessarily "put a person to sleep", it does accomplish some very therapeutic changes in the sleep patterns of people who complain of insomnia. The studies below show that whether measured by the patient's own ratings, psychiatrists ratings or by electroencephalograph or polygraph recordings before and after Cranial Electrotherapy treatments, the following effects of CES in insomnia can be expected:
1. Sleep onset latency is reduced. That is, once a person has retired for the evening, the amount of time it takes him to actually fall asleep is reduced from one to two hours or more to the more normal twenty minutes or less.
2. The number of awakenings during the night are reduced. That is, while most insomniacs awaken three or more times during the night and have difficulty falling asleep again, those treated with Cranial Electrotherapy typically awaken no more than once or twice following therapy, with most reporting no awakenings. Furthermore, after awakening, they return to sleep much more promptly than before.
3. Cranial Electrotherapy treated patients spend more time in stage four sleep following CES treatments. That is, patients spend more time in the deepest, most restful stage of sleep than they did prior to Cranial Electrotherapy treatment. It should be noted that some patients who have deprived themselves of REM sleep - the stage during which dreaming occurs - by taking drugs or alcohol as a sleeping aid, sometimes spend the first two or three nights in unusually vivid dream states when first starting CES treatments. This is considered another indication of the therapeutic effectiveness of Cranial Electrotherapy in that persons are known to become increasingly disorganized mentally, some even to the point of psychotic-like symptoms, when they do not engage in the normal amount of dreaming.
4. Finally, it was discovered that many patients receiving Cranial Electrotherapy treatments report feeling more rested when they awaken in the morning following Cranial Electrotherapy treatments.
Treatment parameters: While some patients begin to respond after the second or third day of treatment, others do not have their best response with fewer than 24 days of treatments lasting from 15 minutes to 1 hour. The beneficial effects have been measured in some experimental groups for as long as two years. Some people with insomnia have a habitual pattern of responding to situational stress with an interruption in their sleep patterns. The best results are obtained when Cranial Electrotherapy is used each time unusual stressors occur in their life situations that would ordinarily cause poor sleep. The Cranial Electrotherapy device user is thereby trained over time to expect a good night's sleep no matter what stressful interruptions occurred in the normal flow of daily life.

ANXIETY & Cranial Electrotherapy

Cranial Electrotherapy Stimulation (CES) has been used as a treatment for anxiety in several parts of the world for over a quarter of a century. American medicine has only recently begun to realize its use as a safe and effective treatment. Studies show that Cranial Electrotherapy treatment yields highly significant reductions in anxiety, whether the patients were in a psychiatric setting, a scholastic setting, an outpatient setting, or an in-patient general hospital setting. Further, while many different kinds of anxiety have been studied, as measured by the six different psychological measuring instruments found in these studies, they all responded significantly to CES treatment.
Less intense or less permanent forms of anxiety - the so-called 'situational anxiety' in which a person habitually responds to personally threatening events in his environment with an anxiety reaction - respond to Cranial Electrotherapy treatments within a week or less. The more permanent forms of anxiety - the so-called trait anxiety, or that underlying level of anxiety that a person typically carries with him at all times - require a longer period of Cranial Electrotherapy treatment. This kind of anxiety typically is not reduced significantly in fewer than 2 or 3 weeks of daily treatments.

ADDICTIONS

Foremost among the treatment problems among chemically dependent persons is the need to help them through the psychologically and physically demanding period of withdrawal. The body reacts to the depressed physical state engendered by alcohol and other drugs with a rebound stress reaction. This reaction commonly includes states of extreme anxiety, depression, and insomnia, for which Cranial Electrotherapy treatment is known to be effective.
Underlying the addictive state is an insidious and progressive destruction of normal brain functioning including an often incapacitating memory loss, inability to process information involving abstract symbols, and other dysfunctions associated with the organic brain syndrome, and advanced condition which is known as Korsakoff psychosis.
Studies on the use of Cranial Electrotherapy in chemical dependencies are among the best controlled and well designed research in the U.S. They indicate that Cranial Electrotherapy is a highly effective adjunct to methadone withdrawal in heroin addicts, significantly shortening the time to symptom - free withdrawal when compared with methadone alone, and significantly lowering withdrawal anxiety as measured by the Taylor Manifest Anxiety Scale.
Further, the anxiety and depression accompanying and following withdrawal of both alcohol and other drugs in polydrug abusers is significantly reduced when patients receive Cranial Electrotherapy as a post withdrawal treatment.
Most importantly, perhaps, is the finding that Cranial Electrotherapy treatment halts and significantly reverses brain dysfunction in these patients as measured on seven different psychological scales of cognitive function, bringing many such functions back to the level of the pre-addiction state in the majority of patients studied.
Another problem in the treatment of chemically dependent persons is frequently recurring 'dry withdrawal' in which the individual suffers withdrawal symptoms within several weeks, then again in several months. The phrases used to describe these phenomena are a 'dry drunk' followed by the 'dry withdrawal'. These psychological states lead to high recidivism rates among these individuals as they return to treatment after "falling off the wagon".
Cranial Electrotherapy is now thought of as one of the most effective, non-drug treatments for these periods of withdrawal, and a patient who has a personal Cranial Electrotherapy unit available should be able to use it to prevent a full-blown withdrawal reaction at such times. By doing so he can reduce the need for additional medical treatment in a clinic or hospital setting, and will be less likely to resort to alcohol because of the discomfort accompanying these withdrawal states.
 
Excerpted from: FOCUS on ALCOHOL and DRUG ISSUES, Jan/Feb 1983

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