CRANIAL ELECTROTHERAPY STIMULATION (CES)
A Safe, tested, and proven non-drug therapy for the treatment of stress and stress related disorders, including anxiety, depression, insomnia, and substance abuse.
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Welcome,
The purpose of this website is to provide information about a revolutionary approach to human wellness. It is called Cranial Electrotherapy Stimulation or CES. Other names it has gone under include electrosleep, electro acupuncture, electroanesthesia, neuro- electric therapy, NET, and transcranial or transcerebral electric stimulation and/or therapy (TCES/TCET).
CES is a simple treatment employing mild battery-powered electronic stimulation through clip-on electrodes that attach to the earlobes or by pre-gelled electrodes placed behind the ears. Current flow is limited so that the most a user will experience during the process is a brief tingling sensation. Its most immediate impact is reduction of anxiety. For most people, anxiety reduction is experienced in the course of treatment, but it also may be first seen hours, or as late as several days after. Its results leave the user alert while inducing a relaxed state. Psychologists call this an "alpha state". The effect differs from pharmaceutical treatments in that people report feeling that their bodies are lighter and more relaxed and their mind more alert and clear. The results are cumulative and lasting.
CES has major implications in a number of areas. In the war on drugs, it is a formidable new weapon in the treatment of the symptoms accompanying and detoxification and withdrawal. For those sufering from depression and anxiety, it means relief with none of the unpleasant side effects of prescription drugs. For those seeking nothing more than a good night's sleep, it is an alternative to habit-forming tranquilizers. For a public increasingly concerned with the effects of stress on physical health and emotional well being, it provides a way of addressing that stress in a safe and effective manner. CES---a treatment modality whose time has come.
CES has a proven track record as far as safety is concerned. There are no known negative side effects associated with its use. It also has a substantial body of research to support its claims. But because of the pharmaceutical bias in Western medicine, its deployment has been restricted and its use limited. It has also been difficult for people to find information on the topic .This website seeks to be the definitive site for dissemination of information on CES and by doing so, nurture an expanded dialogue on health and wellness.
----------- Charles McCusker, Ph.D.
Psychologist, Salt Lake City, UT
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Want to know more?
Check out the options : You can start off with our introduction. From there it's but a few clicks away to an excerpt from Michael Hutchison's popular best seller Mega Brain describing the author's personal experience with CES. It's then easy access to the wide variety of applications and the professional contexts in which CES might be used. A comprehensive FAQ on the topic provides you with answers to just about any question you might have. And an extensive research/studies section provides all the solid scientific documentation for the claims. To make it even easier, we have divided the research bibliography into categories that might be of specific interest to you. They include Addictions: alcoholism, opiate abuse, withdrawal, polysubstance abusers, cocaine, marijuana, methadone; Stress/anxiety: general, phobias; Depression; Learning: attention deficit disorder, suggestability, cognitive dysfunction, reduction time/vigilance; Sleep; Physical disability: Bronchial asthma, closed head injury, dental anesthesia, gastric acidity, headaches, muscle tone/ movement, pain, spinal chord injury. There are also brief sections on safety and bioelectric systems, dealing with the mechanism of CES action. .
Want to be part of an on-going dialogue on CES, join our network of friends and supporters ? Secure your own complete research bibliography and sample tape? Complete the membership form. If you still crave more, check out the CES links.
Introduction
Better living through Chemistry?
Every twenty four to thirty six hours, from 50 to 80 % of adults in the United States and the United Kingdom swallow a medically prescribed chemical. In the United States, the volume of the drug business has grown by a factor of 100 during the current century; 20,000 tons of asprin are consumed per year, almost 225 tablets per person. In England every tenth night of sleep is induced by a hypnotic drug and 19% of women and 9% of men take a prescrbed tranquilizer during any one year.
In the United States, central-nervous-system agents are the fastest growing sector of the pharmaceutical market, now making up 31% of total sales. Dependence on prescribed tranquilizers has risen by 290% since 1962, a period during which the per capita consumption of liquor rose by only 23% and the estimated consumption of illegal opiates by about 50 percent, leading Ivan Illich in Medical Nemesis, to note how that by 1975, "Medical addiction ...had outgrown all self-chosen or more festive forms of creating well-being."
Some people take the wrong drug; others get an old or contaminated batch, and others a counterfeit; others take drugs in dangerous combinations. Some drugs are addictive, others devestating emotionally and physically from their side effects. Every year a million people--that is 3 to 5 percent of all hospital admissions --are admitted primarily because of a negative reaction to drugs. The situation has become especially exacerbated by the medical profession's propensity to dole out medication like candy for the slightest sign of depression, anxiety, or insomnia, helping make drugs like prozac as chic in the suburbs as crack is in the inner city. This has led to that plague of legal drug addiction, documented so well by Peter Breggin in his definitive study of the topic in Toxic Psychiatry.
Worse yet, is the subversion of our independence. We are self-regulating beings in possession of our own pharmaceutical laboratory which our brain draws on judiciously on our behalf. An increased reliance on external drugs interferes with that self-regulatory process, reducing our ability to cope --to develop, strengthen, and effectively employ our own inner resources.
People speak today of being captive of unpleasent emotional states. The answer to this problem,however, lies not with better and more efficient drugs. Emotions are in part products of the chemical soup and the elaborate circuitry which make up the working environment of our brain. To reclaim control of our life we have but to learn how to alter that chemical composition and reorient that circuitry. CES is a tool to help us achieve that end. That may have once been the ethic guiding pharmaceutical usage, but it has long since lost its way. CES offers a unique and viable alternative.Unlike drugs, it streses personal autonomy. CES's primary goal is wellness, defined as peak emotional, mental, and physical health--a state of proper alignment --the balanced interplay of body and mind attained through personal empowerment rather than dependency.