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More information on LENS™
LENS™ is an evolving process with potential medical and consumer applications. LENS optimizes human functioning in the areas of mood, cognition, and energy levels. It has been shown in clinical use to make relatively brief the process of therapy in physical and psychological rehabilitation. Significantly shorter rehabilitation is of great importance in terms of time, money, and patient hopes. Rather than teaching skills to people, it optimizes the capacities of the person to function effectively, learn new skills, and to use skills already learned.
What is LENS?LENS is a new form of brainwave biofeedback. Like the usual form of brainwave biofeedback, the person's brainwaves are measured and translated into some type of stimulus that is fed back to the person involved. The recorded brainwave frequencies are used to guide the rate of imperceptible flashing lights or electromagnetic pulses in a special set of glasses worn by or placed near the person being treated. The stimulation pulsates at a slightly different frequency, more or less, as the strongest brainwave being generated at any given moment. The brainwaves influence the stimulation, and the stimulation, in turn, influences the brainwaves. Unlike traditional biofeedback, LENS is a passive process and the person does not have to try to understand the feedback, or learn how to regulate his or her own brainwaves. Without the need to take time to learn how to control one's own brainwaves, the process of change begins immediately, the changes have come much more rapidly and are more significant to patients and their families.
How is LENS believed to work?It has frequently been observed that dysfunctional thinking, moods and energy levels are correlated with unusually high levels of slow brainwave activity. LENS appears to positively impact this situation by changing/reducing this slow brainwave activity. As reductions in slow brainwave activity are seen, a person's condition generally begins to improve. While the final determination on precisely how LENS works can only be proven with a great deal of research, we believe that LENS also works to break up the rigid, self-protective way the brain has of responding after physical or psychological (stress) trauma. There is evidence that during any kind of trauma (physical, infectious, toxic or emotional), the brain protects itself from seizures and overloads by releasing neurochemicals that protect it from these dangers. Unfortunately, this protective response also reduces the brain's overall functional capacity, not unlike the effect of swelling on joint articulation following a physical injury. Long after the trauma is over and the danger is past, the 'protection' may still remain. The person can, therefore, become stuck in various kinds of disabilities due to this reduced neurological flexibility. LENS, in ways we don't fully understand, appears to have an effect in helping to restore the brain's natural flexibility. From our observations, the results of this can be a significant reduction and/or elimination of some or all of the person's symptoms.
What disorders have frequently responded positively to LENS?LENS appears to shorten the treatment times required for the improvement of some serious cognitive, mood, energy, and motor control impairments. LENS also appears to offer subjects previously considered untreatable a new option for remediation of symptoms. (It is however, important to note that LENS has not been approved by the FDA to treat any specific medical or psychological condition.) LENS has been used successfully for conditions with symptoms which fall into any or all of three major domains:
The above-mentioned problems exist concurrently with EEG slowing, which consists of high amplitude, high variability, low frequency brainwave activity. Reductions of excessive slow brainwaves will often be noted within the first few minutes of the first session. Tangible clinical improvements are typically noted within 3 to 5 sessions. LENS should be seen only as a reliable, and a reasonably rapid, way to reduce brainwave slowing, and not as a treatment magically improving a wide variety of disorders and creating outcomes too good to be true.
Over 3,500 people with a wide variety of conditions have been treated with LENS. Over 97% of those treated have reported significant improvement in the conditions for which they sought treatment. Generally speaking, regardless of the diagnosis, if a condition is accompanied by brainwave imbalances, LENS can potentially be helpful in alleviating its symptoms. However, only a full evaluation in which the patient's neurological and symptomatic reactions to LENS are explored can confirm this. What are the potential risks or side effects?The unpleasant side effects of treatment discovered to date echo the unpleasant effects of any other kind of change process, whether it is hypnosis, psychotherapy, biofeedback, yoga, etc. No person has reported that LENS has harmed them or produced any new symptom, that is, one that has never been previously experienced by that subject. However, any current symptom, physical or psychological, can be temporarily exacerbated. All such reactions have been observed to be transient, generally lasting no more than 36 hours, and better than 90% lasting no longer than 30 minutes after the session. When side effects do occur, the stimulation dosage is adjusted to minimize patient discomfort. All potential users of LENS are asked to read and sign a detailed informed consent document consistent with any experimental therapy where safety and long term effects are unknown.
What type of research has been done to validate these benefits?In a pilot clinical study conducted in the early 1990's, 36 patients (head injured patients, patients suffering from post-traumatic stress, patients suffering from depression, and from stroke) were treated with LENS. No one was hurt, nine of the ten head-injured patients were back to their pre-injury emotional, energy, and fine-motor coordination states within an average of six 20-minute sessions. There were some subtle skill losses which did not clear up within the six sessions, however, the patients recovered their patience, energy, concentration, and ability to do more than one thing at a time. The post-traumatic stress patients calmed down so that they no longer had their former fears and did not lapse into temper tantrums. Improvements in efficiency, effectiveness, stamina, and fine-motor coordination were noticed in nearly everybody. Three stroke victims, five-to-seven years after their strokes, began to move again and to recover sensation after six sessions. The LENS results are unusual because all of these patients had given up hope. While there are other treatments for post-traumatic stress, each of these patients had many years of psychotherapy, peripheral biofeedback, and even other forms of brainwave biofeedback -- and there are no other effective treatments for brain injury and stroke that offer these kinds of results. One patient said that he could not have obtained the results he got in a week anywhere in the world at any price. The National Institutes of Health awarded a grant through their Office of Alternative Medicine to one of our research partners in the Washington DC area in 1996 to study and determine the efficacy of LENS on reducing cognitive deficits among people suffering from closed head injuries. The results of this study are very promising, and a report on the results has now been released and is available for public examination. In the spring of 1999, PBS aired a special TV medical report on the benefits of LENS for closed head injury. They follow a LENS subject who worked at the NIH who became fully disabled and could no longer work as a result of a Closed Head Injury. After LENS treatment she quickly regained her abilities and is now once again fully employed. The Canadian Journal of Clinical Medicine (June 1998) published a study using LENS concurrent with other therapies to treat Fibromyalgia and showed very positive outcomes. Recently, we have been awarded an invitation to use Kessler Research as a NFP (not for profit) and IRB. This not for profit status has resulted in many hundreds of thousands of dollars now pouring in to begin serious scientific studies at several major research hospitals. However, as stated previously, LENS has only been in use for 10 years and is at this point still considered experimental. Regardless of the kinds of successes we are seeing clinically and the lack of harmful side effects observed or reported, it will probably take some time for proper scientific research to understand the full potential and limitations of this promising technology. How is the LENS program structured?
The first of these sessions is used to conduct an intake interview, explain the program, and perform what is called a brain mapping procedure, which is used for the purpose of determining how the brain is functioning and which areas of the brain are relatively functional or dysfunctional. Brainwave activity from twenty-one sites on the head is recorded. The map, along with the important data it generates, acts as a kind of road map telling us which sites to target and which sites to avoid, at least initially. The next session involves a specially formatted mini-version of the treatment, and helps to determine what effects the system is or isn't having on brainwave activity. Treatment starts out exceptionally brief so as not to burden the neurological system with too much stimulation. The second session and all subsequent sessions are about 1/2 hour in length and are spent recording brainwave signals from 1 - 7 sites on the head, feeding back stimulation to the brain and discussing the impact this is having on patients and in their lives. Sessions are generally scheduled once or twice weekly. Patients must be able to sit quietly to maintain electrode contact. Since LENS is a non-psychotherapeutic procedure, it is always important for the patients to have competent, adjunctive psychotherapeutic treatment and support at a level commensurate with the nature and seriousness of their problems. What is the cost of LENS?
How many LENS sessions are required to achieve results?Each case is different. Certain conditions, such as sudden onset problems, can be adequately remediated in 6 - 10 sessions. In other cases this number may be doubled. The average tends to be 20-30 sessions. There are also some complicated cases with long and detailed histories and intergenerational genetic components that may require more than 30 sessions. Treatment effects have been observed to persist long after treatment has been discontinued (unless new trauma occurs) making maintenance or "booster" sessions typically unnecessary (although sometimes they can be helpful). Treatment results have been holding for the people who finished treatment years ago, in fact, once they have started improving again, their improvements have continued to evolve. There have also been numerous cases in which a patient would experience only modest results during the course of treatment, but later reported noticing significant improvements in their symptoms, sometimes many months after treatment had been terminated. In Summary:LENS has been clinically observed to show tremendous promise in the rapid resolution of various mood, cognitive and energy related problems and has a 10-year history of unusually high success. No one to date has been harmed or left worse off than they were before LENS treatment. It must be recognized, though, that LENS currently, because its newness has not yet been extensively researched. It is not yet approved by the FDA to treat any specific medical and/or psychological condition. Anyone seeking LENS treatment must be comfortable with this and sign an informed consent document acknowledging this. Read how your Neurotherapy Treatment Program with LENS will be structured. For more inforamtion, about LENS, please click here. Feel free to contact us for more information or to schedule an appointment. Contact me for more information. |
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