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support
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 Posted: Mon May 21, 2012 7:32 pm Post subject: Why auto-reverse polarity change can cause longer treatments |
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There are times when an auto-reverse polarity feature can cause longer Iontophoresis treatment times or, in the worst case, can prevent success from occuring....
It's quite simple and here are three cases when you do NOT want to reverse polarity during treatment:
1) For example, when you have palmar hyperhidrosis and you want to treat your hands. Most users would want to have a dry right hand as soon as possible (for handshakes). The fastest way to achieve this is to always treat your right hand with the positive eletrode (red) until you achieve dryness. Afterward, you can change the polarity for each hand as you feel necessary.
2) If you sweat unevenly and perspire more on one palm, you will need a higher current to achieve the desired success level for that hand. An auto-reversing polarity feature would not help in this case and the best thing to do is, again, simply lay the positive pole inthe tray with the sweating hand that needs more current.
3) Whenever you want to treat hands and feet simultaneously, the normal routine is to treat your feet with the stronger positive, red electrodes and treat your hands with the black electrodes. The skin is usually much thicker on your feet than on your hands and you simply need more current there for it to be effective. If you change the polarity in this case, over therapy in your hands can occur as described in the second example or, the current will be too weak for proper treatment of the feet. If this happens, you have to go back to seperate treatment modes, which prolongs the therapy time once more.
The negative effects of auto reversing polarity:
1) You may need to treat both hands and feet longer if you switch polarities during treatment and, in the case that one side needs less current than the other, this can lead to a overtherapy. Overtherapy can lead to stressed and very dry skin, which can cause cracks in your skin. If you have skin damage over a large area of your hands or feet, using petroleum jelly and continuing treatment will be almost pointless. This is the real benefit of not changing polarity. You can treat your hands and feet accordingly at proper levels and not let the device decide what you need.
2) When the polarity is switched during treatment, the current MUST go up as well, or else you will get an electric shock. Needless to say, this can also contribute to prolonged Iontophoresis treatments. In general, you do not want to go one step forward and two steps back, why do so with Iontophoresis? A good device lets you feel what you need.
Although an auto-reversing feature is easy to build in, we briefed the manufacturers from Hidrex and Idromed concerning how we felt about this and said to them "Never , ever build this feature in your Iontophoresis devices!"
The only case when using an auto-reverse polarity feature makes sense is this:
You treat only one area (feet, hands,underarms) at one time - and both sides (left/right hand, foot or underarm) have the same amount of sweating and need EXACTLY the same current levels - then, AND ONLY THEN does it makes sense to use this feature. In all other cases (around 98%) you will prolong the treatment time necessary to achieve effectiveness or may not have success with iontophoresis at all.
How a iontophoresis polarity switch is performed with the iontophoresis machines HIDREX and IDROMED
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Last edited by support on Fri Mar 15, 2013 10:44 am; edited 9 times in total |
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justinluck
Joined: 31 Jan 2013
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| Posted: Sat Feb 02, 2013 8:21 am Post subject: |
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This is an interesting subject.
For me, a polarity switch would be a welcomed, convenient feature. I'm sure an on/off setting of this feature could be designed so the user can decide if they want the polarity to switch midway during their treatments or not.
I sweat with equal intensity in my hands, underarms, and feet. If one hand is sweating, the other is sweating just as badly. And if my hands have broken out in a sweat, then my underarms and feet are sweating as well. I had assumed that most other people sweat symmetrically. Nonetheless, I see only a positive benefit of having this as an option that the user can choose to enable or not. For those of use who do sweat symmetrically it does make the daily treatments a lot more convenient.
My Idrostar has a polarity switch and I use it during every session with good results. I normally run either 5 or 10 minutes at each polarity. I use one hand and foot in the trays and then switch to the other pair. I follow this with an underarm session with the same polarity times. So total treatment time for my hands, feet, and underarms is 30 - 60 minutes depending on how much available time I have and if I am in maintenance or not. For maintenance I try to do 30 minute sessions every 3 or 7 days depending on how hot or humid the weather is.
I am a bit confused by the negative effect #2. I don't understand about the current needing to rise to prevent an electric shock. I turn the Idrostar off before I flip the polarity switch. I would think the Hidrex could be designed to automatically turn off current at the mid-way mark, switch polarities, and then increment back up again just as it does in the beginning of a session (of course only if the auto polarity switch function was enabled by the user for the particular session).
I would be interested to hear more of your thoughts on this matter as well as other iontophoresis users. |
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| Posted: Sat Feb 02, 2013 9:42 am Post subject: |
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Hi justin,
Like I said before, an autoreverse polarity switch is normally rubbish, of course we could put in this feature ,but the benefits are real mimimal, so remarkably low that the resulting confusion for the users of an Iontophoresis machine with such a feature is not worth it. Adding that and this in a Ionto machine leads to a more complicated machine and we have to be careful that a normal person must not overdose to get the machine to work. So in our eyes no one needs a polarity switch, (but maybe only you? but for a single person one it is a bit pricy to build this in...) because even if you sweat equally it is not said that both parts need the same current to get dry.
An automatic change each session (if you treat more than 1 time every two weeks) has no remarkable benefits because the time you are in the trays is too short to take effect on the polarity switch. To give you a logical idea for figuring out a senseful frequency of a polarity switch --> https://www.iontodevice.com/hyperhidrosis/how-often-do-i-have-to-change-the-polarity-t74.html
BUT with the Hidrex you don't have a problem doing both hands and feet at the same time, so you save definitely half of your treatment times. Also, Hidrex has much more potency through the benefits of pulsating current AND a much stronger current (and it does not run with batteries), so I would bet that your treatment times or frequency would go down to 20-25% compared to the time you spend now.
However, even if you would sweat the same on hands , feet AND underarms I would be surprised if they would get dry with the same settings because of these reasons:
All of the mentioned parts are different in the
- skin thickness
- the skin area in square cm
So I'm really surprised that you are the FIRST Person That I EVER HEARD OF using Iontophoresis to treat hyperhidrosis WITH THE SAME SETTINGS for 3 areas , in your case sweaty hand feet and armpits.
In this point (and only in this point) the device you have now is better than the ones we offer, in all other points, current strength , current feel, pulsating current, no electric fence effect ... --> https://www.iontodevice.com/hyperhidrosis/features-of-our-iontophoresis-devices-t113.html I would say, maybe you give the Hidrex or Idromed a trial, I am sure that you will not ship it back if you have the chance to make a comparison...
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You are welcome...
Support Staff
Rental plan for iontophoresis
Buy your own home therapy iontophoresis device!
You can reach us from 9am to 5pm !Board time!
mail: info-at-iontophoresisdevice.com
Iontophoresis: WE CARE! |
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