The Resonance Effect, How Frequency Specific Microcurrent is Changing Medicine
Chiropractic doctor Carolyn McMakin's book "The Resonance Effect" - North Atlantic Books - adds an interesting dimension to the hidden in plain sight world of microcurrent, that could, according to the author, possibly be the way to change the face of medicine with Frequency Specific Microcurrent, (FSM): The subtitle of her book"The Resonance Effect, How Frequency Specific Microcurrent is Changing Medicine" somehow implies that the physics of resonance easily translate into healing for her and her clients.
Branding her kind of microcurrent as "frequency specific" sparks interest, especially in regards to recent advanced microcurrent Russian research, and more of that later, so this seems timely and a great reason to read this. Also, with some form of electrotherapy having been around for thousands of years before being disavowed in the West in the 1920's in favor of pharmaceuticals, the notion of using specific frequencies for specific ailments is very compelling. However, the author's emphasis on frequencies may delude us from the fact that even with the simplest microcurrent device with only two frequencies built in, the same stupendous results she claims have been achieved already in the past. This writer is an ardent microcurrent user, and this review is written with the intent to help microcurrent users, and user-to-be, not to get sidetracked or limited by this book's emphasis on "specific frequencies" only microcurrent.
The mystery list of specific microcurrent frequencies
Author Carolyn McMakin's is really "resurrecting" an electrotherapy treatment with frequencies widely used in the early 1900, and her story starts with Australian osteopath Harry van Gelder. coming from England to the U.S. in 1946 and buying himself a practice. And there, Harry found, left over in a back room, an old electrotherapy machine that came with a mysterious list of frequencies. The discovery story continues, some 40 years later, with Carolyn meeting George Douglas, who had trained a few months with Harry and he is in possession of that mystery list of frequencies. George, as her instructor in chiropractic college, manages to fix her shoulder with one of his nontraditional modalities, and Carolyn gets intrigued by the result. When they decide to partner up, he gifts Carolyn with a new microcurrent machine, and also introduces her to the frequency list. Full of doubts at first, together they venture out to test, if the frequencies list would work with a modern 2 channel microcurrent machine. Carolyn, having had her dreams of becoming a doctor squashed, but not her ambitions, has just freshly graduated as chiropractor doctor. Already she sets out, as her life goal, to validate that Harry van Gelder's old list of frequencies actually can do something to help people, above all, that's her mission, but doing it with the help of the frequency list.
Intuition vs. scientific inquiry
The list contains mysterious pairs of frequencies, one for body tissues and parts, and the other for different ailments. For years, Carolyn applies these frequencies to establish their efficacy in a scientific way, and to test which pairs of frequencies work for certain conditions in specific tissues, in a scientific way. But mostly, she is "intuiting" her own technique, initially.
She allows her intuition to be the guide, and she gives the reader a glimpse of it: "Everything went quiet. There was a moment of inspiration and synthesis. It just felt right." In these moments she feels "resonance" happening. She has an especially puzzling case of neck pain client lying on her table. She writes: "A quiet prayer formed in my mind. Help". While praying, she sees, in her field of vision, the pair of esthetician's conductive gloves resting on that microcurrent facial machine for cosmetology treatments, done in her practice after hours. Her intuition tells her to put the two and two together: The gloves. The frequencies written on a card on her microcurrent machine next to her. "In my mind, I could suddenly see my hands in the graphite conducting gloves, and the current from one glove to the other through his neck muscles". She never had used the frequencies before, but "it felt right" to choose a specific frequency. And then the miracle happened. "His neck muscles melted". The conductive gloves she wears while she massages the client's painful neck muscles turn hot, and so does the tissue under her hands, it dramatically softens, and at the same time the client reports warmth, tension release, and pain gone. Allowing inspiration, intuition to be part of her medicine, this the author calls having a resonant moment. Arguably, was that, in that resonant moment, an effect of frequency, or was it rather the effect of electricity on blocked energetics?
All Science starts with an observation
As much as this reader would like an explanation from her, what her "resonance effect" actually does effect in the body, in terms of biochemistry or electrobiophysics in order to bring about these sudden results, the author withholds that information, hopefully leaving it for another book? And alas, later in the book the author explains, it would take her more than a lifetime to explain this. So not in this lifetime.
And isn't it more gratifying to have thousands of suffering people cured, than having some scientific healing model developed that sometime in the near future might be done with and replaced again with the next one?
Again and again in her book of her many success stories, she describes a similar sequence of events, that a sudden change happens, if the right frequency pair is applied. The conductive gloves she massages with, turn hot, tissues soften, and patients feel the tissue turn warm and instantly are pain free.
This warming effect by the way is not uncommon in microcurrent applications, especially in early sessions, and that without the use of any of the specific frequencies on her list.
"All science starts with observation", she says. All this, she says, she had to" figure out, it was all trial and error and it took time..." She credits a lot of her findings to an inner quiet voice, calling it "the sock puppet voice in my ear". Learning to follow that inner voice she says,"I learned that if a frequency was correct, it changed the tissue in seconds....The frequency had to match the condition and the tissue."
How to spread the word about the "resonance effect"
Starting in 1995, she combines her chiropractic treatments with the frequencies list and microcurrent and eventually is able to establish their efficacy. Over Guinness in a pub, together with her naturopath assistant, they create the branding "frequency specific microcurrent", short FSM, and a logo to go with. And having successfully tested which pairs of frequencies work for certain conditions in specific tissues and having developed them into protocols, she publishes her first paper. She presents her protocol for myofascial pain at the national meeting of the American Back Society, in 1997. Also, early in her career, she realizes that she has to spread the word among the next generation of health professionals and organizes her"Interdisciplinary Health Care Symposium", bringing together medical school, chiropractor college, and naturopathic college students in her area. She then lectures in England, speaks at the NIH Grand Rounds as the first chiropractor ever in its history, presents at the IFM Symposium, and, starting in 2001, with George, teaches her sponsored FSM core seminars in Australia, and that for seven years straight. She has conquered doctors in numbers, won over chiropractors, naturopaths, dentists, scientists, massage therapists, even equine massage therapists and olympic sports trainers and athletes to believe in her system. And she states, that over 2000 licensed practitioners in eleven countries are using FSM now, although I read on the internet, it's a much smaller number, and that might be an outdated number. Beyond a doubt, she gives her trainees solid advice, to stay below the radar of medical inquisition, and to play the game of "evidence-based medicine" in chapter 7 "How do you do that". She tells them to "just follow the rules" (of the FDA) which certainly is not going to change medicine but will surely will keep them in practice, with that prudent attitude.
Her life is her work - rescuing patients
Packed with anecdotal case studies, her book is a good read, especially since she is quite refreshingly frank with her own life struggles. As a writer she successfully interweaves her own biography because it is so closely linked to her work.
Her life has not been easy, challenges are many and constant, her family challenges, her mother's and then her own illnesses, her gruesome work schedule, all interwoven with case studies from extremely difficult client cases whom the medical system rejected and could not help. Yet, Carolyn comes to the rescue and they all get help from her growing list of frequencies and evolving protocols, (except those patients who drop out, seemingly lost but obviously having a secondary gain in being good servants to "traditional" medical indoctrination). By helping even the most desperate cases, especially with inflammatory diseases like chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, myofascial pain, her practice flourishes, and with that specialty, her work load increases even more. If Carolyn McMakin's claims are as astounding as she makes us believe, then all alone she jumps to the rescue even when all other medical efforts fail. And sometimes when she jumps to the rescue, she overlooks her intuition to slow down. She gets severely ill several times, overtaxing her strength in working impossibly long hours, travelling constantly now to give seminars, teaching in clinical settings. She even ventures out into the sports arena and cures top athletes from their injuries for whole nights and days, because they are under time pressure, just like her.