Today we’re going to talk about lowering blood pressure in those who have hypertension, utilizing a TENS unit. If you’ve been following the last couple of blogs, February in the United States is our month to focus on heart health, awareness, heart disease, hypertension, all those kinds of things. For me, as I said, previously, heart disease has taken the lives of most of the people in my family, over the years. So it’s something that’s always been of interest to me. My son is studying internal medicine. He’s in his first year of residency. And so we talk a lot about different issues. And as a coach to brain based professionals, we’re always looking for tools from our toolbox or from emerging research that we can use to help things beyond movement.
Although most people think of Z-Health and brain-based training is primarily for pain and performance from a movement perspective, everything in the body is driven through neurology. So are there things that we’re learning, in this kind of current crazy world, of research that we can use that can be an adjunct or a support to the medical management for hypertension?
And the answer is yes. There’s actually some really cool stuff coming out. Looking at things like red light therapy, infrared light therapy, what’s called photobiomodulation. There’s also some very, very cool stuff coming out about using electrical stimulation of various forms to help lower hypertension.
This is so important because we have lots of people who, either through genetic disorders or whatever, have what’s called resistant hypertension, where they’re on maybe three, four, five different medications. And even with that level of pharmaceutical intervention, they are unable to really maintain a healthy blood pressure.
And so we’re going to talk about a couple studies that have come out recently utilizing a TENS unit. Now, if you’re not familiar with the TENS unit, this stands for Transcutaneous Electrical Nerve Stimulation. Typically in the movement world, this is a tool that was used predominantly for pain relief. If you turn it way up, it can make your muscles contract and do all that kind of stuff, but it’s not really meant for that. It’s meant to actually operate on a sensory level.
And what I found over the years is that a lot of movement professionals learn about this in school, and then they kind of go, eh, it doesn’t really do that much. So they stop using it in favor of electrical tools that go deeper into the body and do a lot of muscle contraction.
But the human brain depends on sensory information a tremendous amount. And so a tool that we can use while we’re sitting around watching TV that gives us new or interesting what’s called afferent information or stimulation can have profound effects on brain plasticity. And this is what we’re seeing with TENS units.
I talked in a blog not too long ago, uh, about the use of TENS to help revive people who are in comas. Crazy stuff. And that’s from putting electrodes on the wrist. So what we have seen, recently is a couple of very cool studies looking at using, utilizing TENS. To lower blood pressure. It’s a very simple protocol.
So I’m gonna explain it. If you are interested in doing this obviously you need to run it by your medical professionals first for your health care team if you have devices implanted in your body of any kind electrical devices metal, etc. Don’t do this, period, without advice and approval from your surgeons or whatever.
This is just something I want to share because I think it can be quite profound based on the research that we’re seeing. You can buy a TENS unit really cheaply now. You can get them for $35 to $45 on Amazon. and most of, even those cheap units, are incredibly effective at providing the sensory stimulation that we need.
Here’s how to set up for the protocol to lower blood pressure. The one that I’m going to share with you today, you’re going to have a TENS unit and it’s going to have two wires coming out of it. At the end of those two wires, you’re going to have two ends and the two ends, this is where you’re going to put your pads.
All right. These are going to attach to two pads and the other branch is going to have two pads as well. Where are these pads go it’s very easy to explain. And the reason that we think it impacts blood pressure is there’s some really important ganglion related to sympathetic nervous system in this area.
So your pads are going to go next to the big bump at the base of your neck. Around C7, you’re going to put one on each side and the second pad is going to go toward the midline of the body, about halfway down, your scapula, your shoulder blade. So you find the middle of your shoulder blade and you go toward the midline.
You do not put the pads right on top of your spinous processes. Those are the bumps of your spine. Don’t put them there. They need to go on the muscles. Alright, so it’s the base of your neck and then probably for most people it’s going to be about four inches down and you just do it in a line. There are a couple of different ways that TENS is applied.
Sometimes, once you have those pads on, you can take your electrodes and you can apply your leads and apply them in an X pattern. So, let’s say this one is on the lower right pad and this is on the upper left and then my other wires would, would be done in the opposite way.
You can also do it on the same side. So this is my left upper pad and this is my, uh, left lower pad. In the studies that we have seen, they tend to do this in what they call longitudinal. So they’re actually utilizing the leads on the same side, right? So you can, I think you can test both because we don’t know for sure yet.
In general, we’re going to use the one wire with two leads on one side of the body and then the opposite side, as far as how to use this, once the leads are attached, you start, you turn the machine on and you start at zero and you start turning the intensity up because this is a sensory stimulus, we don’t want muscle contraction to begin to occur. You might get low levels of like, Ooh, I feel like a little wiggle. That’s okay. But in general, we want this, the intensity to be quite high. But as you’re turning it up, you want to make sure that you can feel it, that you’re very aware of the stimulus, but it should be non painful.
It should be pleasant and you should not get big muscle contractions. That’s going to be very different person to person. Some people I might have to go halfway up. Some people, I hit the button once and I’m like, Whoa, that’s really strong. That depends a lot on how many, how your nerves work, your hydration levels, et cetera.
So I can’t tell you the exact intensity that is dependent on the person, but hopefully you understand what we’re trying to achieve. Once you have that running, you just. Do other stuff or relax into it. You’re going to leave it running for 40 minutes. The protocols that we’ve seen so far, 40 minutes, three times a week for four weeks.
What they have seen, even in some resistant hypertension cases, is a 20 point drop in systolic blood pressure at the end of four weeks. In most, most cases, they didn’t see a big change until week two. So if you’re doing this for yourself, you want to do a science experiment. Take your blood pressure the first week, take it the second week, take it every day.
And hopefully by the end of the second week, you’re going to start to see some really consistent drops and the drops really maximized around the fourth week. Now, the studies haven’t really been extended beyond that. So the hope would be that if we continue to use the TENS, using this three days a week protocol, because it’s cheap, it’s easy, it’s non invasive other than maybe you can’t reach your mid back and have to have someone put that electrode on you.
So it’s a really, really simple, powerful, cheap tool that may be incredibly beneficial to those people who struggle to deal with hypertension problems through medication, breathing, isometrics, or all the other practices. All right. So I find this incredibly exciting because if we can make changes in people utilizing something relatively passive like this, that is so powerful.
It’s so much easier to get people to do this and then to take up 150 minutes a week of exercise. All right. So give this a shot. Let us know your results eventually. We hope you find this exciting as we do. And again, as I said, we are a brain-based education company. We work with doctors, coaches, and therapists from around the world.
We have 20 plus years of educating over 12, 000 people in 120 countries. We love this stuff and people have done amazing things for their clients with it. So if that is of interest to you, make sure to subscribe to the channel, sign up for our free blog. Contact us. We have a mini course. We have all kinds of stuff so that you can figure out if this information and this approach resonates with what you do.
And we hope that you find it really, really useful and that most importantly, you can have a huge impact on your clients who may be struggling with hypertension. All right. Have a great week.
Want to learn more? Check out our free mini course.
