Dr. Jeffrey Gladden explains why direct current electrical therapy fell out of favor in the 1970s due to electrode burns, then dominated for decades by alternating current methods like TENS. Now DC is making a comeback in sports medicine and lymphedema treatment.
So in terms of the broad electrical stimulation landscape, most of the devices that are out there are using alternating current. And so that's where this distinction of direct current is important. And the history's actually very interesting. Just very briefly, many of the benefits of direct current that, that we're talking about today and that we know were actually known decades ago. The Soviets did a lot of work in the 1960s, 1970s, and found a lot of these benefits. But there was always a big problem where when you use high enough therapeutic levels of direct current, they would literally sting and burn the skin because you have positive charges building up around the negative electrode and vice versa. And, that charge buildup creates resistance. And, when you try to send a voltage, create a voltage to send current through that, when there's high resistance, you get more heat dissipation and literally burning the skin. And so, direct current fell out of favor for decades. And, in its place came the TENS units, NMES, interferential, FES, most of what's out there in in the world today. And there is a bit of resurgence of direct current. You know, it's so, so cool. We work with a lot of professional sports teams, for example, and the athletic trainers often say, man, I haven't seen direct current since athletic training school 30 years ago. And we learned that we could use it for lymphedema and this and that. And I always thought there was more to it, but we just never had a chance to use it. And
