Here's The Deal

Why is the Signature Series BioPulser® needed? Because everybody suffers, knowingly or unknowingly, from varying degrees of excess muscle tone (hypertonicity). This problem is for the most part ignored by health care providers. In those few instances when the MDs do recognize hypertonicity, they muck around with it by repeatedly but temporarily poisoning the muscles with Botox.

One medical anatomy book, when discussing one of the signs of hypertonicity, referred to it by the oxymoronic title "The Ligamentous Action of Muscles". They then defined this as an inability of the muscles to relax (i.e. hyper tonicity). Their recommendation was to do exercises that help muscles relax; however, since they do not exist, there was no description given of any such exercises. There are exercises that very temporarily fatigue the fast-twitch fibers (sort of like a mini-Botox treatment), thereby inhibiting rather than relaxing muscle.

Palpation of muscles after the use of vibrating devices or heat reveals that the feeling of relief produced is from endorphins (internal morphine) rather than relaxation. So-called muscle relaxant pills actually block spinal reflexes so the only contractions they block are 'guarding' spasms.

The Signature Series BioPulser®, (accompanied by Kanon fingertip manipulation), is the only modality designed to break the vicious neural cycle which drives hypertonicity. The design parameters were determined by the biological constraints of the neuro-muscular system.

The nerve-bodies which communicate with the cerebellum to control muscle tone are located deep inside the muscles. Any attempt to apply an external stimulus directly to the nerve-bodies (called muscle spindles) will be blocked by a reflex contraction of the surrounding musculature.

This is further complicated by the irritability of the "sickened" overworking muscles. This irritability causes excessive reflex reactions so that the harder a muscle's hypertonic contraction, the more gently it must be approached. Once the tonic contraction has been reduced to the correct level, the muscle can sustain high levels of flexibility without reflex contraction.

A solution to this impasse to an external stimulus is found in the old axiom "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em". Or in this case, trick them into joining you. We must somehow make the muscles provide the stimulus to the spindles that are in their grasp.

The tense state of the hypertonic muscles offers the possibility of getting them to vibrate, and the maximum vibration would occur at their natural resonant frequency. This good vibration would then provide the desired stimulus. The muscles can't be bowed like a violin or strummed like a guitar, but they can be drummed like tympani, using a snap percussion like a drummer.

Three factors control the amount of vibration produced by the drumming:

  • First, the greater the velocity at which the drum mallets strike, the more the vibration. The drummer uses wrist action to maximize velocity, which is limited by human ability. The BioPulser® uses a cam to maximize velocity, which must be limited due to one of the biological constraints. The BioPulser® cam maintains a velocity just below that which triggers pain reflex contraction (3.8 miles-per-hour).
  • Second, the more rapidly the percussion is repeated, the more the vibration. The timpanist uses two mallets to maximize the repetition rate which again, is limited by human ability. The BioPulser® uses a timing belt to control repetition rate which again, must be limited due to a biological constraint, i.e., the muscles aren't a simple passive structure, like a drumhead, but are complex reactive organisms; 15 repetitions per second has been found to be the maximum number that will not trigger reflex contraction.
  • And third, the less time the mallet stays in contact with the drumhead, the less the initial vibration is damped. This is the 'snap' in snap percussion and is an example of less gives more.

To reiterate, the percussive drumming produced by the BioPulser® is not, itself, the therapeutic action. The properly applied percussion "drums" the muscles into their natural resonant vibration, which then acts therapeutically on the muscle spindles buried among the muscle fibers. The spindles are responsible for overdriving the muscles into excess tone. Body builders use spindle sickening exercise routines to produce excessively abnormal muscle tone. (A Six Pack is a Sick Pack)

The Applicator Tip's position close to the muscles allows it to pick up the muscle vibrations and carry them into the BioPulser® case. The case acts as an acoustic chamber to amplify the sound. The muscle hum should be easily felt and heard over the light clicking sound of the BioPulser® percussion.

(It don't do the thing if it ain't got that hum)

Part II

There are two common fantasies you will need to put aside to obtain the best results from the BioPulser®. The first is exemplified by a famous misquote of a famous quote. The quote was made by a recognized wise man named H.L. Mencken. The fantasy misquote stated, "For every complex problem, there is a simple solution". The person who made the misquote probably failed high school algebra because he could not accept that you need as many knowns as unknowns to solve a complex story problem. The actual quote by Mencken is "For every complex problem, there is a solution that is straightforward, simple and wrong".

The second fantasy is that muscle tension is the result of emotional tension. The standard misrepresentation is a deer frozen in the headlights, allegedly from fear rather than an instinctive behavior developed long before cars were invented. Omitted is the fact that in most cases, the deer eventually leaps out of the way when fear overcomes instinct. The emotion-prone cerebrum is not the arbiter of muscle tension; muscle tension is instead controlled by the emotionless, computer-like cerebellum. That is why people&em;like cattle&em;can use their fear dis-oriented cerebra to drive their still-functional muscles into a mindless stampede in response to peril.

The cerebellum requires feedback information from the muscles in order to calculate the muscle tension; this is provided by a unique nerve organ called a muscle 'spindle' sensory receptor because of its spindle shape. It is unique in that it is the only nerve organ that contains tiny muscle fibers- some of which have flower-spray nerve endings attached to generate the feedback signal. The spindles are distributed throughout the skeletal muscles.

It is more complex to finesse someone - to coax them into changing - than it is to twist there arm and force them into changing. However, there are those who don't respond to force. The muscle component we have to deal with is like that. The subtlety of the stimulation required is not because the spindles are so small, but instead results from the complexity of the spindle organ. It controls three other actions in addition to muscle tension.

One is the dynamic stretch reflex mechanism (or reaction), so called because the amount of reactionary contraction that is induced is more dependent on the rate of stretch than on the amount of stretch. This is what is involved in the tendon reflex test of the knee joint, a quick tap with a small hammer produces a surprising amount of jerk response. The BioPulser® is designed to tap the muscle so rapidly (faster than can be done by hand) that the dynamic reflex does not fully sense it. The reflex is left in an excited state, which must be allowed to die-out, or the next tap will trigger contraction. The repetition rate of the BioPulser® is limited to 15 per second to avoid the reaction. The cam in the BioPulser® is designed to move the tip fast enough to avoid the dynamic reflex, but not so fast as to trigger the pain reflex.

The second action is the static stretch reflex, which only responds to stretch length, and as the name implies, remains active as long as an outside force maintains the stretch. This reflex is primarily to counteract gravity, but will be activated if too much pressure is applied while doing the finger-tip stroke or applying the BioPulser®

The third function of the muscle spindle is to produce fine motor control, which is why fine control fatigues muscles more rapidly than does gross muscle movement.

The spindle complexity is a breeding ground for Murphy's Law. The machine is called a BioPulser® because it satisfies several biological constraints for you. In return it needs you to use finesse to avoid the stretch-reflex constraints.