Transcript: Somebody has something called a MAS mat. So the question is how do you convert the Hertz frequencies? I’m not sure what that question means. Hertz is the term that’s used for frequency. A frequency is a number of pulses per second of a magnetic field. The way to think about it is this: think about the waves on a pond. Every time a wave hits a peak, you’re going to count that peak and then you wait until the next peak and you count that peak, and you time it. How long does it take to go from peak to peak? That is a frequency. That’s one Hertz, one cycle per second. So it’s a cycle. The other term that’s used, instead of Hertz is cycles per second. So one Hertz is one cycle per second. 100 Hertz is a hundred cycles per second.
There’s a lot of confusion about frequencies with PEMF systems. And quite a bit of the research talks about specific frequencies for PEMFs, but in previous discussions, I’ve mentioned that probably the most important thing is less so the frequency than it is the rise time of the actual slope of the magnetic field curve. So as the magnetic field goes up, that slope of the magnetic field is what produces the action in the body. That slope is responsible then for creating current or charge production in the tissues. When a curve goes up and it goes flat, like a square wave, it will go up and then it goes flat and it comes back down. When it’s going up, the most energy is being produced. When it goes flat, nothing is happening, it’s wasted energy. Then when it’s coming back down, it’s also producing some degree of energy in the body on the way back out again. So as you go in, you produce energy. As you go out, you produce energy.
I think that a lot of what happens, and there’s some theoretical physics stuff going on here, is that it’s a bit like an elastic band. If you pull on an elastic band and let it go, it’s going to go out very rapidly. Then it’s going to come back. Does it come back as fast as when it went out? The answer, clearly, is no. So the same thing probably happens with magnetic fields. There’s more of a push to produce the magnetic field going up the slope and then as it retracts, it retracts passively, so the slope up usually is faster and the slope down is much more gentle, more relaxed. As a result, the downslope tends to produce less action in the body than the upslope. So the slope is the most important, how often you repeat that slope. How often you go up determines the amount of energy production in the body.
With normal waveforms, which is how most Hertz concepts are derived – they’re derived from a mathematician called Hertz in Germany in the 1800s – there’s a zero line. And so the wave goes up above and below that zero line. That’s a typical frequency. That’s what we normally think of in terms of frequencies. So now we’ve confused it because if you’re measuring peak to peak, you don’t care whether it goes below the baseline, the zero line, or not.
With high-intensity PEMF systems, all you get is the pulse and it goes back to baseline, pulse goes back to baseline, like a heartbeat. Does a heartbeat reverse itself? No, it’s a pulse out. So PEMFs that are designed that way basically go out and they’re not really classically Hertz. So the better term to use, and a colleague of mine, Dr. Robert Dennis, talks about this, that unless they are sinusoidal and they pass through the midline, we probably should be using the term pulses per second and not Hertz. So there’s lots of confusion, and depending on who you’re talking to, you have to clarify what you mean by Hertz, and does it cross the midline – is it AC, or is it simply going back to baseline?
The problem with the research about the frequencies is that research often did not account for the slope of the curve, did not account for the intensity, and also doesn’t really account for the depth of action in the body.
I like the MAS. We used to carry it on my website, drpawluk.com. I stopped carrying it largely because of the cost. It has a wonderful set of frequencies you could choose from, but it becomes very confusing as to what works and what doesn’t work. And a lot of this is like whisper down the lane. I prefer systems that are much more basic in terms of their frequency offerings to you. The key is really the intensity. In the MAS, the whole body pad is only 25 Gauss. Gauss is a measure of magnetic field intensity. The smaller pillow applicator in the MAS, which is like a rock, is a hundred Gauss. So you’re paying approximately $5,000 for an MAS system that gives you a hundred Gauss for the pillow applicator and only 25 for the whole body pad.
We have systems called the Parmeds home system, which gives you 70 Gauss for the whole body pad and 200 Gauss for the smaller applicator. For $3,500 you get a lot more machine than you do with the MAS. And that’s one of the reasons I stopped carrying it. Now, if you happen to own one, keep using it. The issue really is that you might have to use it more. You may have to use it for more time during the day and more often in order to get the same benefits as a higher intensity PEMF system.
