This post I would like to talk more about the work we have been doing with electrical foot stimulation (Revitive: Circulation Booster)initially in healthy populations, but the work will continue in diseased groups such as those suffering from diabetes. Diabetes is an awful condition in which the sufferer loses control of blood sugar regulation. The disease basically comes in 2 forms, Type I and II.
Type I diabetes is a genetic condition where insulin is not produced so patients experience rises in blood glucose and need to take regular insulin shots to keep things under control. In type II diabetes it is kind of the opposite problem that patients become insulin resistant so they over produce insulin and can experience hyper (high) as well as hypo (low) glycaemia (blood glucose).
Well high or low blood glucose doesn't sound so bad until you realize that high levels of blood glucose combined with poor circulation (low oxygen levels) can damage tissue in the body and low blood glucose can cause dizziness and fainting.
The majority of diabetics are inactive and therefore a common disease progression is tissue damage. Nerve damage (diabetic neuropathy) is all too common and combined with immobility can lead to blood stasis and swelling of the limbs. This blood pooling eventually leads to microvascular injury (damage to the small blood vessels) which doesn't heal and can eventually lead to amputation.
So what can be done to prevent this terrible disease progression? The most important factor in slowing or preventing this spiral is to create increased flow out of the swollen limb, normally a job done by the muscle foot pump during movement, but if movement is compromised then this creates an issue. Compression stockings have been used with limited success, pneumatic compression devices which rhythmically squeeze the tissues and force the blood back toward the heart have also been effective. Both forms of compression have issues though, the stockings can restrict blood flow when not moving, and the pneumatic pump is large and technical and not easily used.
Our preferred idea was to use electrical stimulation to cause muscular contraction, similar to when you point your toes and foot the floor. This involves placing electrodes over the muscle and stimulating with safe amounts of electrical current, causing the muscles to contract. The elicited contractions are not quite the same as voluntary contractions but they are good enough to squeeze the blood out of the lower legs and back to the heart, mimicking the muscle pump. When the muscle relaxes new fresh blood and nutrients flow into the lower legs keeping the environment healthy and helping to prevent swelling.
So electrical stimulation seems to tick all of the boxes for creating the muscle pump and maintaining a healthy flow of blood through the legs. But most forms of electrical stimulation are also difficult to use. Generally stimulation pads are stuck onto the skin over the muscle but getting the right position of the electrodes can be difficult. This is why we were so excited when we discovered Revitive: Circulation Booster as all that was required was the user popped their bare feet on to the device footpads and switched it on. It is really impossible to get this wrong.
If you have diabetes and are concerned about foot health issues (even if their are no physical symptoms
