Well, I was able to to take a vacation from my back pain since early December. I have had almost no pain for over a month. So I plan to go back to my ortho to see what he thinks.

My opinion: to heal a broken back it takes more than just PEMF. The real answer is PEMF that works (not the scams), PLUS Vitamin D3 (10,000 to 50,000 IU per day), PLUS vitamin K2 as MK-7, be sure to take 5 or 6 gel tabs and distribute those through the day because of the limited half-life of K2 once it is in the body. I got this advice from Bob Dennis, not a doctor, he's the guy who developed the PEMF system for NASA in 1997. He's a scientist. He recommended a book on Amazon: Vitamin K2 and the Calcium Paradox.

Reading back over my earlier posts, I almost can't even believe where I was just as recently as 2 or 3 months ago.

I am a different person now without chronic pain. I enjoy my kids, have a lot more fun just doing normal things every day, and I am kind of tired about talking about my pain that is now gone. So I think I'm done here. I hope my research is helpful to other people. But let me add a few things.

I did extensive research and I actually hunted down and talked with scientists as well as inventors of the ICES and PEMF and TVEMF technologies. I can tell you for certain that the most expensive systems ARE NOT the most effective. The vast majority of PEMF systems are a scam in my opinion. They on the unregulated fringe and it has become like the Wild West, so you hear a lot of baseless and irresponsible claims. But when you really research it, and test the products side-by-side, it is clear that a few of them really do work very well. In my opinion the ones that derive from the original NASA research seem to work best by far. I am not advertising for any one company because several completely different companies have PEMF technology directly derived from NASA. No one company has exclusive rights for this technology. And because it is real, the trend I am seeing is that the technology gets better every year and the price goes down. That's what happens with legitimate electronic products in an open market. The phonies are over-priced, large, bulky, suck a lot of power, make a lot of baseless claims, have a murky origin in some foreign land, and did I mention, tend to be way over priced? Or they are just small, cheap, crude and don't work. Or they have a lot of needless bells-and-whistles, like touch screens or bluetooth wireless... nonsense that just adds complexity and cost. IMHO the best is one-button (or zero button) simplicity, inexpensive, compact, efficient, with verifiable pedigree back to real science and real engineering. My advice: search for blogs with a lot of followers that talk about PEMF and ICES, and caveat emptor.

I don't think you need to spend more than $1k for the best PEMF technology. Just search around and find the legit companies that sell products that can trace back to NASA. There are a lot of real ones, and quite a few fakes as well. I am trying to figure out an easy way to tell the difference between them. If I can figure it out I will, and will post it here.

Another thing: these "whole body" PEMF systems are not necessarily better, but they sure do cost a lot more. Dr. Pawluk, who sells many of these systems, makes that perfectly clear. That would be like saying acupuncture needles need to be huge to be more effective... nonsense.

The science and technology of PEMF keep advancing. My money is on the home-grown NASA technology that is in the open market and keeps getting better and less expensive every year.

If I figure out a way to easily sort the good from the bad I will post again, until then my earlier posts summarize my findings.

Since I began posting on this site I keep getting "ads" from people in the form of supposed messages from members concerned about my "debilitating pain" asking if I have tried "a compound cream." I have gotten two such emails very recently, after clearly stating that my pain issues have been resolved. I no longer have debilitating pain. But I keep getting the same email from "concerned members".

So, I have two comments about this:
1- Please stop sending me these advertisements. That stuff does not work, and anyone who has suffered chronic back pain can tell you that. Please stop preying upon the desperation of suffering people.
2-If anyone else gets these advertisements about "trying a compound cream" we should probably report it as abuse. If it is just me getting these emails, then it probably does not rise to that level.

Interesting that someone else found the same resource I recently found. ASDJ found a discount code for the micro-pulse ICES system, posted above, same check-out code I used: "pemf". I think it is their wholesale sample price code, not sure, but it worked for me for a single unit purchase last week. Micro-pulse is the manufacturer of allevawave, somapulse, and several others. I ordered one of these last week using the code and it arrived yesterday. Looks perfect to me, same as the more expensive ones I tested a few months ago, newest design (model A9a). Plain-Jane packaging, probably because it is a sample. But I checked and the warranty is full: 1 full year.

So, as promised a month or two ago, here is my advice on avoiding PEMF scams:
for the affordable and portable ICES-PEMF systems go straight to micro-pulse.com. They only recently began selling directly to consumers, maybe in December 2014(?). But this is the original manufacturer for allevawave, somapulse, and the others. They own the patents and trademarks for ICES. And now they give discounts that price them WAY below anyone else on the internet. And they are the ones who stand behind the units; they do all the warranty repairs, they manufacture and sell all the accessories, etc. Evidently micro-pulse is owned by the inventor of the original NASA PEMF technology: Bob Dennis, the guy I talked to a few months ago.

Anyway, FWIW, I think this is the real deal.

and BTW, I am still (unbelievably!) pain-free. Doing yoga and exercising again, able to pick up my 3 year old, I'm back among the living. I plan to have my last few oxycodone tablets bronzed, but I'll keep a freshly-charged 9 volt battery ready for my new micro-pulse A9... just in case.

Just a quick update:

still pain free! Have shared ICES-PEMF with friends and family and it works most of the time very well.

One thing I recently discovered is that if you contact www.micro-pulse.com and ask for their discount code, they will just give it to you. My dad got $100 off. Not sure if they still do this but might be worth asking. In fact, to be fair across the board since what you really want is the best value for your money is ask all of them for a discount. Go with the best price as long as it says ICES.

Hi there
I have a PEMF loop and love it for mild strains. Unfortunately, I tried everything you mentioned and more. I didn't get true pain RELIEF until I did surgery. My surgeon is fantastic and it was the best thing I ever did. I still use the PEMF loop for recovery, but it is not a miracle tool. It's better than nothing, but a whole lot.

One last thought...have you gotten a second opinion. That's what it took for me to get to the bottom of my problem. I decided it was a second opinion or a drive off of a cliff :-/

I understand fears of back surgery, but I will tell you I woke up in absolute bliss. Pain free. Totally pain free for the first time in years. Recovery isn't easy but compared to the life I had before surgery, it was a cinch.

Hi JLC9375,
I had seriously considered surgery, but in my case the surgeon I finally saw sat me down and told me the honest truth: in his opinion my condition was inoperable. His candor was both disarming and quite remarkable. Unfortunately he also increased my desperation because he pointed out that there were no really effective treatment options for my condition: just a life of misery, pain, and meds... PT might help, he said.

He also pointed me toward research literature on back surgery. It turns out that by the 2 year mark post-surgery, back surgery has at best only about 15% positive outcomes. Initially most patients report pain relief... but extend the outcome tracking to 2 years and the findings consistently show that about 85% of back surgery patients are in just as bad, or worse, condition than they were before surgery.

I sincerely hope you are in the lucky 15% !!!!!

Admittedly the outcome research on PEMF systems for back pain is quite a lot more sketchy and incomplete, but in my experience there is clearly some benefit, at least for my serious and inoperable condition. And one great benefit is that PEMF is not irreversible, as is surgery. So far I have been almost entirely pain free for over half a year, and hopefully I will not need the surgical option. I suppose only time will tell.

I really can't compare other PEMF systems out there. What I can say is that the Micro-Pulse does work. And I have tried it in other people too and it works. VERY good too.

Knee pain, back pain. My wife could barely walk from hip and leg pain. A couple of hours with the Micro-Pulse on high and pain reduced by 80 percent and walking fine. I found it does take time to PEMF to work. It's not always a quick fix. I found it works better when you sleep with the device for atleast 8 hours. Sometimes 12 hours of wearing it is required.

It does work! 100 percent.