Dr Conners discusses CET (Combined Electrochemical Treatment) using Sanexas technology with Dr Elliot Hirshorn of New Life Medical Centers. CET is a Non-Surgical, Safe, and Proven solution to treat Pain caused by Peripheral Neuropathy and other challenging diseases.

Combined Electrochemical Treatment uses a technique called electric cell signaling, based on the physics of resonance. Resonance is the electrical signaling between cells. Resonance is similar to when a piano is tuned. The tuner strikes the piano string to adjust the energy that vibrates along it to create sound. Adjusting the string creates the ideal pitch or tone for the piano.

Electric cell signaling is similar, and the goal is to optimize the energy levels (the resonance) between your cells. When these signals are optimized and correctly ‘tuned’, intercellular communication is normalized. Your cells are able to successfully transfer energy that’s used to heal injured tissues and relieve pain.

In addition to the electrical cell signaling, a key part of the CET treatment in the injection of nutrients vital to the repair and healing of the nerves. Most people know that when a woman is pregnant she takes prenatal vitamins to make sure the baby’s brain develops well. The same is true as your own nerves are healing – we need to supply them with critical vitamins and minerals so they can heal and repair in a healthy way.

Stay tuned for Episode 19 (you can see all episodes on the Conners Clinic Live page!)

Listen to the Full Podcast Episode

Transcript

Dr. Conners
Hello everybody! Welcome to another podcast, and today we have a great guest who’s been a friend of mine since, how long have we known each other Doc?

Dr. Elliot Hirshorn
It’s probably been about seven years.

Dr. Conners
Yeah, seven years. Dr. Elliot Hirshorn and his wife, who’s a doctor in their clinic as well, have a clinic, New Life Medical Center. You actually have multiple clinics now, right?

Dr. Elliot Hirshorn
Yeah. We are working on that. Yes. In process.

Dr. Conners
That’s pretty cool. In South Carolina, which is a long way from Minnesota and probably a lot warmer.

Dr. Elliot Hirshorn
Indeed. It is. Yes.

Dr. Conners
In Minnesota, especially this time of year. And what we want to talk about is this new piece of equipment that you started with a little over a year ago. How I got to know you, let’s take a step back is in functional medicine, functional neurology seminars. You are a functional neurologist. You do functional medicine, so we practice much the same way, that way. I veered off and all we do is with cancer patients now, you still work with a lot of other conditions. And that’s what I like to bring on this podcast is so that our patients from all around the country can get to know people like you and be helped because people could have more than one condition going on, right? So when they got neuropathy or they have headaches or they have, whatever else they have, they could be helped by somebody just like you. Well, this new piece of equipment that I’m excited to talk about is senexas and I’m going to just turn it over to you because not very many clinics have this, correct?

Dr. Elliot Hirshorn
Yeah. It’s taking off now, but we’ve been doing it for about a year. The senexas is a machine that we use as a part of a combination therapy called combined electric chemical treatment or CET for short, and basically combines the electrical stimulation and activation of the nerves and the muscles with targeted and local injections of nutrients to help with the healing and repair of the nerves. So a lot of our patients that benefit from it have chronic pain or arthritis and then neuropathy as well. So that kind of fits right in with cancer for those patients that are undergoing chemotherapy, oftentimes we’ll get the neuropathy and this treatment is safe to do alongside of chemotherapy for those patients that might be experiencing neuropathy.

Dr. Conners
I understand it’s an FDA approved approach. So it’s covered by most insurances and Medicare, is that right?

Dr. Elliot Hirshorn
It is, yeah. So the machine is cleared by the FDA to treat all acute and chronic pain. So therefore most insurances will pick it up and pay for it when you do the combination of the electrical treatment with the nutrient injections. And they are really both vitally important parts of the treatment and they kind of work synergistically together for the healing process. But yeah, it’s cleared by the FDA, the equipment, and it is covered by most insurances, including Medicare.

Dr. Conners
So let’s walk through, let’s say I have a patient with severe neuropathy from chemotherapy. So, let’s say it’s at both their lower legs below the knee, what would you do for them?

Dr. Elliot Hirshorn
So we would have them come in, they’d meet with one of our case managers initially to see what’s going on. If it’s a good fit, if our office is gonna be most appropriate for them. And then they meet with one of our medical providers, it’s usually our nurse practitioner who will do an exam, kind of determine what the severity of the neuropathy is, what the prognosis will look like in terms of if the treatment is going to be appropriate for them. We also have some other types of treatment that we may add on to that in addition to the CET, but that’s kind of the foundation, especially for the neuropathy treatment. And then we’ll start them on a series of treatments. They’ll come in typically two to three times a week for that treatment, and each time they come in they’ll do the electrical stimulation that’s preceded, however, by the nutrient injections.

I don’t know who named it CET, but that’s just kind of how it’s described in literature. But the chemical part is not so much chemicals as it is the nutrients. So there’s a bunch of B vitamins and antioxidants and minerals and nutrients that really help with the healing and repair of the nerves. And the way I describe it to the patients is, just like a woman who’s pregnant has to take prenatal vitamins in order for proper development of the baby’s brain, it’s the same thing if we want to get healing and repair of the nerves in your feet and legs, we have to deliver those nutrients directly into the site that we’re trying to get your repair to occur. So that’s what we do with the nutrients. And then the electrical stimulation, it by itself, helps to activate the neurons, which is important as you know, from a functional neurology standpoint to get healing to occur. It also stimulates the muscles to kind of help rehab those. But then just from a kind of an effective standpoint with the nutrients, that actually helps to drive those nutrients that iontophoresis affected down into the deeper tissues to where they need to go, to do their work as well. So it really is synergistic.

Dr. Conners
Now you’ve been doing this for how long?

Dr. Elliot Hirshorn
We started doing it in December of 2018. So just over a year.

Dr. Conners
Could you give me some case stories of what kind of results that you’ve had?

Dr. Elliot Hirshorn
Yeah. So one comes to mind is a patient that had foot drop. So she had a foot drop to the extent that she could not drive anymore. So it significantly limited her ability to just function independently. And so she came in and was evaluated, she went through the treatment program. And by the end, not only was her pain gone, which is important for quality of life issues, but she was able to drive by the time she was done working with us. So a significant improvement in function and obviously symptoms for her.

Dr. Conners
What was that over the course of 12 weeks? 18 weeks?

Dr. Elliot Hirshorn
I think hers was about 12 weeks. It’s typically 8 to 12 weeks as the initial treatment period that we start with depending upon the severity.

Dr. Conners
Wow. That’s fascinating. So how about with people with knee pain or hip pain? I think of some older patients that are thinking about getting hip surgery and replacement, can this push that out into the distance a little bit?

Dr. Elliot Hirshorn
Yeah, absolutely. So the machine itself, because it’s also indicated by the FDA or cleared by the FDA for neuromuscular re-education. And that’s just a fancy word to say that it can help re-educate or retrain the muscles. So it kind of acts like a passive or almost a replacement for active rehab of joints. So you can put it around the joint knee, or a hip, and help to re-educate those muscles, get them to function more appropriately. If at the same time it’s helping to reduce pain, reduce inflammation, increase blood flow to the area. So we can definitely see improvement in pain, range of motion, function in joints as well. Now we’ll often couple that with regenerative medicine injections, if we’re talking about a joint, and of course, if somebody’s got active cancer, we’re not going to do that, but that becomes a really good alternative for someone who can’t do or doesn’t want to do surgery, can’t do regenerative medicine because they have active cancer, but really want to get some relief on their joints. This is a really good option for that.

Dr. Conners
Okay. How about it? Is it a painful process?

Dr. Elliot Hirshorn
No. So, the most pain that people are going to experience is with the injection part. So a lot of times, though, if they have neuropathy, their feet are numb and they don’t feel it anyway. So when they start feeling it, that’s actually a good indication that is working, and we have different topical anesthetic-type things that we’ll do if patients prefer, so that it’s more comfortable. That just takes a couple of seconds to do that right before the machine is hooked up. But the machine itself is not painful. It feels like a light tingling or vibration sensation, and it’s actually very relaxing and comfortable for the patient. So, that lasts up to 30 minutes. So, it’s good that that part’s not painful. It’s just a comfortable kind of tingling or vibration feeling.

Dr. Conners
Now you said that contrary indication would be, you’re not doing it over any active cancer, but are there other contrary indications, anybody with a pacemaker or other health conditions that can’t really use this?

Dr. Elliot Hirshorn
Yeah. So we can do the electric treatment to combine a CET on people that have cancer. It was the regenerative medicine I was talking about that we can’t do on active cancer. But for the CET, you do have to be careful with any electrical devices that are implanted. So if they have a pacemaker, especially a pacemaker defibrillator, it is cause for concern, but we will often, or we will always, get approval from cardiology. So it’s not a hard and fast rule out in terms of a pacemaker. So as long as their cardiologist will approve the treatments, then we can proceed with that. We’ve actually had representatives from the device company come to the office to monitor the patient on their first treatment to make sure everything was going well, and then we got the final approval after that. So as long as their cardiologist is willing to invest a little bit of time to make sure that it’s appropriate and not just completely write it off, then it sometimes can be beneficial. Even if people have a pacemaker.

Dr. Conners
Yeah. I know in the past, we did a lot more electrical stim, as long as you’re doing it on the lower extremities, you were safe, with a defibrillator. Anything else you can tell me, any other super things that you’ve seen happen with it? It’s an exciting therapy, and we just have a lot of patients with those kind of conditions, and I just know the world is filled with people with pain and neuropathy. And I think I read somewhere that falling is the number one cause of death to people over a certain age. And it’s because they can’t feel their feet.

Dr. Elliot Hirshorn
Right. Yeah. So, obviously our goal is to help people avoid medications and surgery. And, and you’re right, in our older population, their falls are one of the leading cause of death and disability. So if we can help them avoid medication and surgery and help them avoid injury by getting those nerves back online, it’s a huge win obviously for the patients. But it does improve balance too. So we do, kind of backing up a little bit in terms of the initial workup with the patient, we have a balanced platform. So we measured their balance at baseline quantitatively, so it gives us a number in terms of their fall risk. And then we reassess that as we move forward. So we do see improvement in their balance and stability, which is good, and then one of the other things that’s been most beneficial for us, talking about this with other medical providers, is that we actually do a before and after biopsy of their small fiber nerves.

So it’s a little punch biopsy. They take a little piece of the skin and in a couple of places on their leg, it goes off to a lab, they measure how many small fiber nerves there are, which are the ones that are associated with the pain and the temperature and those types of things. It’s different from the NCV, a lot of our patients have had that nerve conduction velocity test where they stick all the needles in, but that only measure large fibers. So often times they’ve never had small fibers measured. So anyway, we send this biopsy, we get it back and it gives us their score of small fiber density and function compared to a standard. And it tells us, do they actually have small fiber neuropathy, but then that serves as a baseline cause we’ll repeat the test afterwards. And this is really the most fascinating thing from a clinical perspective for me and for sharing with other providers is that we’ve actually demonstrated nerve regrowth with the therapy in almost all of the patients that we’ve done this on. So, whereas in the beginning they may have one or two nerves in this site, then afterwards they could have 10 or 12 nerves and we’ve demonstrated up to 600% increase in nerve density with this treatment.

Dr. Conners
Talk about really being able to define healing through laboratory testing. That’s just fantastic. So a lot of people must be encouraged through that.

Dr. Elliot Hirshorn
Yeah, absolutely. And that’s what makes it kind of real-world for the traditional medical physicians when we go into their office and say, “hey, we want to help your patients with neuropathy because really their only tools are Gabapentin”, but then they’re like, “well, where’s the research?” And we just show them, “look, here’s a, before a biopsy, here’s an after one.” And there’s nothing, you can’t refute that. So these are real results. Not only is the patient feeling better and functioning better, but there’s actually nerves that have regrown.

Dr. Conners
Well, Dr. Elliott, how can people find you? We were going to put your website up and I want you to say it.

Dr. Elliot Hirshorn
So, our website is NewLifeMedicalCenters.com. So they can go there, learn a little bit more about the treatments. They can also go see some testimonials on there. You can also go to GreenvilleNeuropathyCare.com. And that has a little bit more information about the specific CET treatment that we’ve talked about as well.

Dr. Conners
Okay. We’ll get it up on the video so everybody could see that because we want people to take advantage of these new therapies and we’re all into therapies and we could change the way a person lives through therapy instead of having to be on medication with all these side effects that do not work very well. Well, I appreciate you, and I appreciate your care for people and you’re sharing the information and this all came about because I actually had a patient that asked on our patient Facebook page, “can I do this senexas?” And I said, “well, I know the person who does it.” So I’ve got to get a little podcast going with Dr. Elliot. So I appreciate that. We’ll have you back talking about some other subjects and thanks again.

Dr. Elliot Hirshorn
Thank you. Take care.

Dr. Conners
All right. Bye-bye.