TENS vs ELECTRO-ACUPUNCTURE

TENS and electrical acupuncture both provide therapy for pain management, by electrically stimulating the same body structures, but they use a differing way to explain the manner in which they work - acpuncture uses an ancient Chinese theory, while TENS uses modern anatomical, physiological and pharmaceutical knowledge.

The machines that apply pulsed electrical potential therapy vary in the way they are applied to the body.

Acupuncture is applied using needles to pass the electro-stimulation through the skin. Because the stimulating electrical charges are delivered via a needle, there is no resistance to their passage, allowing higher potentials to be delivered.

Acupuncture equipment does not require a high level of electrical design. TENS equipment may be used for acupuncture, but it must be applied at very low voltage, and generally they do not provide enough active leads. However the BioStim™ Analgesic+2 provides 4 active leads to connect to 4 needles, whist the BioStim™ Kinetic+4 provides 8 active leads. With the use of "Split" leads this number of needles can be doubled or even quadrupled.

TENS therapy is applied by using skin surface electrodes, which pass the electro-stimulation across the skin via skin contact electrodes. With skin contact electrodes there is a high skin resistance to their passage into the body, so the pulse charges delivered have to be at a higher voltage potential in order to pass through the skin.

Large area skin contact electrodes are required with TENS equipment to prevent the dispersion of the energy deep within the body.

Muscle Twitching Stimulation similar to that achieved by an acupuncturist is enabled by non-disperson of pulse energy, which enables deep muscle stimulation in the home.

TENS equipment requires a high level of microelectronics design to make them compact for carrying around and still have the therapeutic efficacy of clinical models, to make them suitable for home and mobile use.