Pain and Addiction

Pain is a major symptom in many medical conditions, significantly interfering with a person's quality of life. An acute pain may become intractable and develop into a chronic pain in which pain is no longer considered a symptom but an illness by itself. Repeated use of narcotic pain-killer often leads to the development of drug addiction which is a complex and protracted health problem.

HANS treatment helps to fight pain and addiction by inducing the production and release of the body's own painkillers such as endorphins.

To treat pain, place one pair of electrodes on the area with pain (the "Ah Shi" point, meaning "Ouch"), and the other pair on selected acupoints. For different pain disorders or drug addiction, specific acupoints, frequencies, intensities, and treatment intervals are recommended.

Insomnia and Depression

About one in three people suffer from insomnia of some form. Difficulty falling asleep at the beginning of the night is often associated with stress or anxiety disorders. Waking during the middle of the night and difficulty maintaining sleep is often associated with medical conditions such as pain disorder. Early morning waking is often a characteristic of clinical depression.

Simple, effective and free of side effect, acupuncture is commonly used in treating insomnia. However, it is important to understand the root-cause for insomnia before using HANS to treat the problem. To treat insomnia due to anxiety or depression, a low-frequency stimulation is recommended. A treatment interval of twice a week is sufficient to help reduce anxiety and improve sleeping. For insomnia caused by pain, please refer to Pain and Addiction.

Autism

Autism is a brain development disorder characterized by impaired social interaction, communication, and restricted and repetitive behavior. Autism involves many parts of the brain. How it occurs is not well understood.

A recently published clinical trial [Zhang et al. 2012] indicates that after a 12 week treatment with HANS, people with certain types of autism disorders (i.e. passive and aloof behavior) showed significant improvement over the control group. These changes include improved communication, lowered anxiety and better control of emotional response, etc. Biochemical changes were also detected in the HANS treated group. Most interestingly, such biological change paralleled with behavioral improvements.

Treatment with regular 30-minute sessions per day for 2-3 months seems necessary to gain efficacy. Younger patients seem to respond to the HANS treatment better than the older patients. In the clinical study, after the treatment routine was established, not only did most children accept the treatment, some even asked their caregivers for it. The side effects of HANS therapy for autism have yet to be identified.

Pseudo Myopia and Eye Strain

Pseudo myopia is the blurring of distance vision brought about by spasms of the ciliary muscle. When our eyes engage in excessive near focus, the ciliary muscle is constantly kept in a tense position. When the eyes need to see far away, the ciliary muscles are unable to relax. Without timely treatment, the ciliary muscle spasms will persist and the pseudo myopia will become true myopia which is irreversible.

Data from a clinical study indicates that pseudo myopia can be reversed with HANS treatment. The ciliary muscle spasms can be relieved, and the eyes can see far again. Children recently diagnosed with eyesight deterioration are good candidates for HANS treatment. For grown ups, HANS treatment can also relieve eye strain due to excessive use of eyes.

To treat pseudo myopia or eye strain, wear the eye electrode and follow the recommended waveform and intensity. One 30-minute treatment session every other day for 4-8 weeks is recommended to effectively correct the ciliary muscle spasm. After the eyesight is improved and stable, maintenance treatment once a week is beneficial to prevent myopia.

What health problems can benefit from using HANS?

Generally speaking, health problems that respond to acupuncture treatment are likely to respond to HANS treatment. From extensive clinical practices, HANS is shown to be effective in treating acute and chronic pain, opioid addiction, insomnia and depression. A growing number of other health problems are found to respond to HANS treatment, such as autism, obesity, infertility, and addiction to smoking.

Why is acupuncture able to treat different disorders?

Homeostasis is one of the most important physiological principles where sophisticated regulatory mechanisms keep the body in a biological balance in an ever-changing environment. Severe or prolonged deviation of the system beyond the set points may lead the body into a pathological state. Although the manifestations of diseases are different, they often share similar pathological pathways resulted from functional distortions, such as an imbalanced nervous system and/or confused immune system. Since acupuncture facilitates the body's natural tendency to restore homeostasis, it may treat different disorders through the self-healing processes. This explains the common observation that the effects of acupuncture tend to be more pronounced in the unhealthy individuals (imbalanced systems) than in the healthy ones.

Why is HANS effective in treating narcotic addiction?

In drug users, overwhelming doses of narcotics severely suppress the body's own ability to produce endogenous opioid peptides. This is the main cause for withdrawal syndromes when the drug supply is interrupted. HANS is able to increase the production of opioid peptides by stimulating gene expression. The endogenous opioid peptides released into the body are able to relieve withdrawal syndromes, suppress craving, and restore homeostasis.

Is it better to use HANS more frequently?

No. Multiple sessions or prolonged HANS treatment per day may cause the development of tolerance. One of the reasons is that a high level of endogenous opioid peptides will cause the production and release of anti-opioid peptides as a natural negative control mechanism. Unfortunately, anti-opioids reduce acupuncture effects. For acute pain or withdrawal symptoms, the recommended maximum total stimulation time is no more than 2 hours (4 standard 30 min sessions) per day for the first 3 days, and then reduce to 30-60 min of total stimulation time per day. A once every other day maintenance treatment is beneficial.

Would HANS treatment cause any side effect or addiction?

In years of clinical practice with HANS, minimal side effects have been observed, and there has not been any report of "HANS-addiction". It is true that the use of HANS often generates a sense of well being due to its ability to induce the release of endorphins in the brain. However, the endogenously released endorphins induced by nerve stimulation is within the physiological range. It is enough to produce healing effects, but not enough to trigger a "high", so it does not lead to addiction and dependence.

What is the science behind the applications of HANS?

Professor JS Han and his colleagues discovered that neurotransmitters such as serotonin and opioid peptides (endorphins) are the main chemical substances causing the analgesic effect of acupuncture. They also discovered that one of the most important determinant of the analgesic effect is the frequency of impulses applied to the acupoints. Signals of different frequencies transmitted to the central nervous system can induce the production and release of different kinds of chemical mediators. In addition, they found that the functional balance between opioid peptides and the anti-opioid peptides in the central nervous system plays an important role in determining the effectiveness of acupuncture analgesia in different individuals. Scientific findings such as these form the basis for the design and applications of HANS.