Microcurrent Technology: Use Your CAs to Elevate Patient Care
Elizabeth Logan;
Geoffrey Ring, RN
As you know, chiropractic assistants (CAs) play a critical role in chiropractic practice, interacting with patients and educating them about the value of care. Thorough treatment is traditionally multidimensional, combining adjustments with proper diet, appropriate exercise and instruction on self-care, stress reduction and other lifestyle changes to achieve lasting results.
The recent trend toward combining traditional practice with other modalities, and using technology to improve patient outcomes, has proven to be very effective for many people. Patients are receiving chiropractic care as well as physical therapy, massage therapy, electrotherapy, physiotherapy and cold-laser therapy at their chiropractor's office. Lab testing, nutritional counseling, dietary supplements and medical spa treatments are also playing a greater role in chiropractic to improve self-image and reducing stress. CAs are well-positioned to play a greater role coordinating care, enhancing the patient experience and growing the client base.
In particular, microcurrent technology, a non-invasive youth-preservation system, is gaining popularity among patients seeking safer, evidence-based care that fosters greater wellness and overall self-esteem. For CAs already performing electrotherapy on patients and working under the chiropractor's license, it makes sense to also become certified to use a microcurrent device, which has a significantly lower voltage and is much safer than some other forms of electrical stimulation.
Microcurrent is an ideal complement to chiropractic goals of expanding beyond spine and body balance to provide a whole-body experience for patients. Youth preservation and facial rejuvenation improve self-esteem, help balance the patient's overall emotional state, and relieve pain and any sense of loss created by injuries.
Chiropractic re-educates the body's muscles and re-aligns joints and spine, while microcurrent re-educates the muscles of the face and restores it to a more youthful appearance. With proper microcurrent training, CAs can serve as facilitators in the patient's wellness and revitalization. What's more, by playing an expanded role in the practice, CAs can add significant value by increasing the scope of the practice, attracting new patients, strengthening relationships with existing patients, raising practice revenue and making themselves indispensable to both the practice and its patients.
What Microcurrent Can Do for Patients
Microcurrent restores youthful skin tone without surgery, downtime or injections, revitalizing the entire face and body. A series of treatments increases skin elasticity and smooths lines, wrinkles and texture irregularities. The "massage-like" current penetrates deep into the face or body to boost the production of lost collagen and elastin proteins. The experience is relaxing and pleasurable, with most sessions lasting about an hour.
In addition, microcurrent decreases inflammation, hastens the healing process after injury or surgery and reduces pain. As one of the next-generation, non-invasive procedures available, microcurrent pairs well with injectable as well as topical regimens, enabling more efficient penetration of medical serums, resolves pre- and post-surgery edema and swelling, and improves healing times. It is ideal for anyone who is not ready for a facelift; has undergone a facelift, but doesn't want to go through it again; or who is looking for a next-generation, non-invasive procedure.
The Technology Behind Microcurrent
A microcurrent device delivers a low-level current that stimulates collagen, elastin, adenosine triphosphate (ATP) production and facial muscles for both instant and cumulative results.
The therapy is utilized to treat serious demands and indications, such as muscle lifting and toning, skin firming, acne, pigmentation, scars, pre- and post-op healing, cellulite treatments, product ionization, and lymphatic drainage of the face and body.
Microcurrent uses electrical currents up to 1000µ (microamps) to systematically reduce the signs of aging by maintaining or increasing muscle tone in:
Circulation
Muscle re-education via a cerebral effect
Hydration
Increased cellular function
During a session, the user isolates approximately 30 muscles of the face and stimulates the muscle fibers with low-level Faradic microcurrent impulses to restore proper tone to the facial muscles.
The skin of the face and neck are the only area of the body where skin is directly attached to muscles. Therefore, as facial muscles lengthen or contract with age, the first signs of aging appear in these areas. Muscles can be either relaxed or tightened depending on the desired effect. As the muscles move, the skin moves with them, diminishing fine lines and wrinkles.
[pb]How It Works
By increasing circulation, microcurrent provides muscles with the nutrients they need to maintain skin tone. The tissue is flooded with blood, providing nutrition and removing waste products. The proper chemical balance is achieved and the tissue becomes healthier. Increased circulation and the resulting effects alter the function, color and overall health of the skin in a very positive way.
Microcurrent effectively "reminds" the brain to initiate more impulses. With specific placement of the probes and subsequent gentle manipulation of the muscles to move them to the correct location, the brain "senses" and remembers the new desired location.
As the brain sends and receives more signals, the effect of microcurrent therapy is re-educated, freshly toned muscle memory. By stimulating the facial muscles, microcurrent rebuilds the facial structure from the inside, truly giving the face a non-invasive "lift."
Hydration is para-mount to skin health, so in addition to the alternating Faradic current for muscle stimulation, a second type of microcurrent is used to hydrate the skin. Galvanic positive or negative DC current allows the user to infuse the skin with special ionized serums by a method called "iontophoresis." This well-documented procedure allows for deep hydration of the skin, in addition to increased circulation, lymphatic drainage, and stimulation of collagen and elastin production.
Microcurrent increases cellular metabolism to enhance healing and hydration of skin, which can produce a latent tissue repair that is cumulative. The mechanism at the core of this process is an increase of adenosine triphosphate (ATP) production in the mitochondria, caused by a chemical reaction stimulated by the microcurrent at a cellular level. In the right current range, a threefold to fivefold increase was seen in clinical studies. ATP is referred to as the "energy of life," and such a massive production and cumulative stockpiling over multiple treatments has profound effects on the skin and muscles of the skin.
Increasing cellular metabolism in the area treated, and directly stimulating the fibroblasts to produce collagen and elastin, leads to a plumping effect of the skin as well as improvement in skin elasticity and texture. Furthermore, muscles are provided with the energy and nutrients needed to maintain tone in the desired "re-educated" location.
Research has shown that ATP reserves and collagen and elastin formation are increased in a way that accelerates wound healing. What's more, scar tissue can be softened with increased collagen and elastin.
Microcurrent can achieve exceptional results by allowing the user to remodel the tissue, make textural changes to the epidermal, and achieve skin-tightening. What's more, microcurrent works well on facial muscles after extended Botox treatment has left the skin atrophied, swollen and sagging.
Together, chiropractic and microcurrent answer the growing demand for effective and natural options to invasive methods of pain relief and long-term health. For chiropractic practices, CAs should consider microcurrent certification and the greater role it could allow them to play in generating rapid return-on-investment and building a successful practice that focuses on holistic care.
Resources
Cheng N, Van Hoof H, Bockx E, et al. The effects of electric currents on ATP generation, protein synthesis, and membrane transport of rat skin. Clin Orthop Relat Res, 1982;(171): 264–72.
Canseven AG. Is it possible to trigger collagen synthesis by electric current in skin wounds?" Biochem Biophys Res Commun J, 1996 Jun;33(3):223-7.
Wing, Thomas W. "How a Chiropractic Modality Became a Medical Modality- The 20th Anniversary of M.E.N.S. Microcurrent." Digest Chiro Econom, 1993 (Jan / Feb);35:28-29.
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