The technological development history and current significance of the “physical BEMER® vascular therapy” in medicine

The history of BEMER technology, whose preliminary highlight is the development of the signal configuration that is currently used in therapeutic systems to apply the “physical BEMER® vascular therapy”, began in 1998. The basis for this was the development of a specific base signal, which differed from all signal forms used in nonspecific electromagnetic field therapy until that time due to a particular mathematical formula and the physical signal form resulting from it. However, the initial considerations on the development of this special signal were still dominated by the idea that the transfer of electromagnetic energy – in a way like a catalyst – could be used to intervene in, and activate, certain biomolecular processes in an organism. Today we can say that, in light of the small amount of energy transferred, this fact is not the decisive determinant of effectiveness. Instead, it is particularly the rhythm of the signal configuration, that is, the selection of repetitions (frequencies) and vascular-specific allocation, that is of greater importance. Initial scientific studies on the fundamentals of the working mechanism in and after 2004 done at the Institute of Microcirculation in Berlin by means of intravital microscopy (a technically complex process to represent and measure microcirculatory processes) revealed that the use of this special physical signal produced in healthy, younger test subjects who were disposed to stress and infections positive changes in microcirculatory characteristics, such as vasomotion, capillary blood distribution, venular outflow and oxygen utilization, of such magnitude as had never been achieved before in the numerous studies of the Institute by means of any of the drugs administered. This fact piqued the interest of researchers, and was the start of new, targeted research and development efforts with respect to this technology. It also marked the definitive departure from the conventional, non-specific “magnetic field therapy” or “electromagnetic field therapy”. In the process of this scientific work, some essential processes were discovered regarding the particularly important regulatory mechanism of blood distribution with respect to precapillary and postcapillary microcirculation. This also included observation of different repetition rates of vascular vasomotion depending on the caliber of vessels. Minuscule precapillary arterioles, as well as postcapillary venules, were characterized by around 3–5 vasomotions per minute under regular circumstances. The vascular sections upstream and downstream, which are only slightly bigger, had only one vasomotion per minute. These vasomotions essentially determine the distribution of the blood and its components in the capillary network according to the respective requirements of the tissue and cells that depend on this network. The researchers also discovered that the more rapid vasomotion of the smallest vessels was autorhythmic, while the slower vasomotion of the slightly bigger vessels was subject to central, humoral or neural control. The clear objective of further development was, therefore, to optimize the effect through more precise addressing and frequency-based differentiation in the signal configuration, thus creating effect-relevant synergy in the different vasomotions of the various vascular sections. The autorhythmically controlled vasomotions of the smallest precapillary and postcapillary vessels, discovered first, with a repetition rate of around three times per minute were the reason why, in the first development step of the signal configuration, 5 pulses with a flux density about a third higher than in the rest of the pulse sequence were inserted into the signal sequence at the time at 20 s apart. This 2007 signal configuration came to be known as the “plus” signal. It already produced a first, significant increase in the characteristic changes of microcirculation. The researchers also found that the frequency of vasomotion decreased relative to age and/or severity of an illness. Thus, in seriously ill, older patients, only one vasomotion per 10 min was detected in the precapillary and postcapillary vascular sections. Such vasomotion frequency is absolutely inadequate for adjusted blood distribution in the capillaries, that is, the sufficient circulation of the dependent cellular tissue. Even if this is not