The patients are usually all too eager to tell you how much better they feel after the first diathermy treatment. Discretion must be used in these cases, however, for the objective is to use just enough heat to stimulate the circulation of the organ involved. If one overstimulates, one may aggravate the disorder, though this should never occur in competent hands because it takes a considerable degree of over treatment to cause trouble. Sine Wave Therapy S ine wave has been used therapeutically even longer than diathermy. While simple in make-up and low in cost, it is nevertheless invaluable in natural healing.
Sine wave is an alternating electrical current used to produce muscle contractions.
The current that comes from your house receptacle is a 60-cycle sine wave and although it is too low in frequency and too great in amplitude to be useful medically, it also acts as a muscle stimulant. Anyone who has ever gotten a good jolt from a house outlet won't forget the way the muscles contracted. This muscle stimulation is the only known effect of most sine wave machines on the body. Therefore in order to make sine wave therapeutically useful, it is necessary to vary the character of this contractibility so that this energy can be used for a variety of physical therapeutic purposes. If we turn the sine wave current on and off, we produce surging sine, the muscle will contract, then relax, contract, relax, and so on.