An interview on the use of frequency-specific microcurrent therapy in naturopathic practice. Egbert Mastall, a physiotherapist, state-registered naturopath and osteopath, runs a naturopathic practice in Löningen with his wife, Heike Mastall, who is also a naturopath.

This interview focused both on the experience that naturopath Egbert Mastall has gained – and continues to gain – with frequency-specific microcurrent therapy, as well as on areas of application that go ‘beyond the box’. Mr Mastall uses frequency-specific microcurrent therapy for conditions such as eye diseases, including macular degeneration.

Particularly when it comes to such specialised areas, it is certainly worth looking to the USA for inspiration once again. There is even literature available there on microcurrent therapy for eye diseases.

But this podcast episode also explores the concept of the systemic use of microcurrents in naturopathic and osteopathic therapy. HP Mastall treats, amongst others, professional basketball players and shares a very interesting case report here on the treatment of acute conditions. Naturally, the topic of regeneration is also given due attention in the context of professional sport.

Links to this episode:

http://www.praxis-mastall.de/

00:00:03
Patrick Walitschek: Yes. Well then, welcome, Mr Mastall, naturopath. I’m glad we’ve managed to sort out this video – or rather, this non-video call. It’s just a normal audio call, as the technology allows. I’d like to thank you in advance for taking the time, as a naturopath – that is, from the field of naturopathy – to share a little about your experiences with microcurrent therapy in naturopathic practice. Perhaps you could briefly introduce yourself again for the listeners?

00:00:32
Egbert Mastall: Yes, well, my name is Egbert Mastall. I was born in ’63 and am the father of two boys. I’m married to my wife, who also works here in the practice as a naturopath specialising in homeopathy and acupuncture. I’ve been practising osteopathy since 1999. I’ve been self-employed for almost 23 or 24 years; I used to work in physiotherapy at the practice and then discovered the LuXXaMed for my work in 2018.

00:01:08
Patrick Walitschek: Great. In general terms, what has been your experience over the years with microcurrent therapy in your practice?

00:01:18
Egbert Mastall: First of all, I’d like to say that I’ve been very sceptical about every therapeutic device that’s been offered to me over the course of my career. So, basically, nothing has really blown me away so far to the point where I can say, ‘Yes, that’s it, I must have that and I want it; I want to offer that to my patients.’ I’ve been following the topic of microcurrent for quite some time, but for me there simply wasn’t any useful information or any devices that I could actually implement in my day-to-day practice, or that wouldn’t place too great a financial burden on patients, as is the case with some products.

00:01:53
Egbert Mastall: With this device, I saw an opportunity to actually provide therapeutic treatment and, precisely because I have many chronic patients in my osteopathic practice – ranging, of course, from migraines to rheumatoid arthritis, all sorts of disc problems, spinal problems, knee joints, hip joints and so on and so forth. But I also saw potential for use with athletes, and in a trial we carried out here with a patient, the results after just one session were so impressive that even my wife – who is even more sceptical than I am – said, ‘We’ll go ahead with this; we’ll give it a go.’

00:02:30
Egbert Mastall: So we started treating very stubborn patients using the programmes that seemed logical to us. I then took that introductory course with you in Kassel. There, however, the focus was mainly on orthopaedic problems, which we initially applied to patients. It worked brilliantly for some, but less so for others.

00:02:58
Egbert Mastall: I then looked into the whole subject in a bit more depth and realised that the wide range of adjustment options, particularly in the area of the autonomic nervous system, the treatment of organs and inflammatory processes, differ from those used to support other regenerative processes; when applied correctly, the successes practically took care of themselves. This allowed me to continually refine my approach through the available applications, and this method is really catching on. We regularly have ‘junkies’ (unv.) who, because of the success they’ve had, say, ‘I’ll just come once a month now, because I don’t want to go back to where I used to be!’ And for me, that speaks for itself, really.

00:03:42
Patrick Walitschek: Brilliant. That’s exactly the sort of experience we’re talking about. I also see that, particularly when therapists are very sceptical at the start — which I think is absolutely fine, because a healthy dose of scepticism is necessary — because ultimately they, or all therapists of course, want to offer their patients the very best possible therapy, whatever form that might take. I always think scepticism is very, very good in this context. I also notice that those who are most sceptical end up developing an intrinsic motivation to really delve deeper: ‘Where can I best make the right adjustments in combination with the “tool” that is microcurrent?’

00:04:28
Patrick Walitschek: I always find that absolutely fascinating, because, as I always say, there are many roads that lead to Rome when it comes to using this sort of therapy or this sort of device. It’s particularly the initial sceptics who come up with some very interesting ways of using this therapy – as you say, some focus more on the autonomic nervous system, whilst others concentrate more on the purely orthopaedic or internal medicine fields. It’s really fascinating; I really like the way you’ve explained it – I think that’s great. When you say you’re now moving more in the direction of systemic application – let me take an example from orthopaedics – and say, ‘I’m now moving away from the symptom and actually towards the system.’

00:05:11
Egbert Mastall: Yes, absolutely. As I said, of course I also have acute patients here: in those cases, you can address the tissue directly – let’s just say the spine or something like that – but if an orthopaedic patient arrives here who’s had back problems for 10 years or even longer, there’s a good chance the problem is still located where it first started – say, a disc or whatever. //

00:05:34
Egbert Mastall: //relatively low. It’s really a matter of control: our bodies are designed and built for self-regulation, and nobody actually needs a doctor if they’ve hit their thumb with a hammer or cut themselves slightly whilst peeling potatoes. The body takes care of that all by itself, and as the saying goes: ‘A cold lasts 14 days with a doctor and two weeks without one.’ And that applies just as much to us alternative practitioners, of course.

00:05:57
Egbert Mastall: The body simply needs a certain amount of time to recover, and if it takes significantly longer than that, we’re talking about a chronic problem. This chronic problem is usually rooted in the system, and that’s when I have to identify what’s actually blocking the healing process. I’ve now gained experience in this area – and I’ve treated a few hundred patients with this issue by now. I can certainly say that I can base this on a sample of around 300 patients.

00:06:24
Egbert Mastall: I can genuinely say that if you take a systemic approach and try to identify the blockage – whether it’s a blood vessel that’s no longer functioning properly or an organ that controls this process – and if I treat the autonomic nervous system, for example, then tissue regeneration resumes. My impression and experience is that microcurrent allows me to penetrate much deeper into the systems in order to reactivate precisely those systems that need to be regenerative.

00:06:57
Patrick Walitschek: Yes. Great. That reminds me: I’ve recently started using Klubhaus. It’s the latest craze – the new social media app craze – where there are audio channels that you can create or log into. I was in one such channel just yesterday – it runs every day – and it was about flow: how to create flow in health, learning, writing and so on. Yesterday, a sports physician spoke there; he addressed the topic of regeneration, and it was interesting. I can only wholeheartedly agree with what he said, particularly on the subject of sleep, sleep and recovery, and also regarding the brain. Of course, the autonomic nervous system in general and the topic of sleep are often underestimated.

00:07:46
Patrick Walitschek: Naturally, if I have a chronic condition or chronic pain, sleep may well become difficult. I think this very topic of sleep and recovery – not just purely physical recovery, but specifically supporting this autonomic nervous system recovery as well – is an extremely cool starting point. It’s also evident in practice, in the results, that it works extremely well.

00:08:10
Egbert Mastall: Yes, that’s true. I can say it works on other levels too: I worked with a professional basketball team for a while, using the device as well. Given the current situation with Covid-19 and the financial difficulties – which are hitting many professional sports clubs, particularly those in the lower divisions, harder than the top clubs in this country – there’s actually a player there – the AT, I must say at the moment – who has actually already passed the peak of his professional career, but who is still performing very well. When you have people like that use the recovery programme, for example, the feedback we get is that they a) sleep better and b) also notice that their muscles recover much more quickly.

00:08:55
Patrick Walitschek: Yes, I’m familiar with that from other fields – from tennis, from our doctor, Dr Voracek, and from Matthias Rother, who was the therapist for the national rugby team for many years. I’ve heard similar accounts – yes, absolutely. What they also said – and I found this interesting too – is that the risk of overuse injuries among athletes, professional athletes, who have been treated regularly with the recovery programme has – statistically speaking, at least – fallen significantly; so I think that’s also a very good starting point.

00:09:28
Egbert Mastall: Yes. From that team, I’m still looking after one player who, last March, had a terrible accident during his last match before the season was cut short by the pandemic; he twisted and dislocated his left knee quite horribly: People kept saying it would be the end of his career. Thanks to the help of your father and your company, I was able to provide him with LuXXaMed during his rehabilitation phase. I gave him various programmes to follow, partly because a nerve controlling the movement of his foot had also been pinched. So pretty much everything in his knee was ruined. He had surgery in Eppendorf, Hamburg, and we then got him started on LuXXaMed relatively quickly, including a joint programme, a muscle programme, a nerve programme and a peripheral nervous system programme. He did this regularly and then went to the Medius Clinic in Schalke for rehabilitation relatively quickly, where he stayed for quite a long time, as it was a work-related accident. They couldn’t believe that, after such an injury – with all the swelling and painful irritation – he was actually experiencing virtually no symptoms. The young man is now in such good shape that there’s a real prospect that, despite all the setbacks, he’ll actually make a cautious comeback this year. I’m still treating him regularly; he still comes to see me regularly for LuXXaMed treatment, as the focus is now mainly on the nervous system, regeneration and the joint.

00:11:08
Patrick Walitschek: Yes, brilliant. I think that’s great! Do you perhaps have – quite a lot of people are listening to our podcast, and the listenership figures are particularly good at the moment – any tips on how you use it in practice? By in practice, I mean, do you combine it with osteopathic techniques or anything else like that?

00:11:32
Egbert Mastall: Yes. It’s like this: I regularly come across cases where I notice that, whilst people are being treated whilst lying on the machine – when I treat them osteopathically, for example using craniosacral techniques – You can actually see the change almost one-to-one on the recording graph when the tissue starts to adapt. We had a patient here who was in his late 50s and had a very unclear neurological diagnosis.

00:12:04
Egbert Mastall: The question was: is it a stroke? Is it not a stroke? What exactly was it? In any case, there were severe neurological deficits, coupled with (unint.) and, in some instances, also with clonus in the right leg. No one knew what it was: the MRI scan showed no abnormalities. The neurologists didn’t know what to do or how to proceed, and there were also speech difficulties involved. So it wasn’t a word-finding disorder, but rather the motor function of the tongue had been affected, and nobody knew exactly what it was. He then came to see me. I examined him. My diagnosis was also rather vague, as it wasn’t really clear-cut.

00:12:45
Egbert Mastall: So I said, let’s just focus on the central nervous system for now. The treatments were mainly in the area of the atlanto-occipital joints, to the sides of the atlanto-occipital joints, down the spine and also on (unint.) both sides, that is, the neurovegetative, orthosympathetic complexes that supply the head (unv.), and I treated him craniosacrally whilst doing so. This led to him frequently saying: ‘I can feel the warmth in my leg.’ As for speech – well, he noticed that something was happening in his mouth, though he couldn’t quite put his finger on it; but above all, the trigeminal neuralgia also showed a marked improvement. When this was done without treatment, the improvement was nowhere near as pronounced.

00:13:35
Egbert Mastall: I’ve had a number of patients with tinnitus where I’ve used this approach; when you apply such stimulation – either via the autonomic nervous system or the central nervous system – the tinnitus actually lessens the moment they say the humming, throbbing or whistling has lessened – which is actually shown graphically on this screen. So this change was tangible, because it was simply more pronounced than when you let the device work on its own.

00:14:06
Egbert Mastall: Well, I can speak for myself now, and my wife has had the same experience with acupuncture: She does Nogier ear acupuncture, and there you can really see, when she hits the right points, how the graphs change completely and the trends go in a different direction. So there’s a synergy there, and you can see that these things really do interact.

00:14:27
Patrick Walitschek: Yes, brilliant.

00:14:28
Egbert Mastall: This has led to some astonishing results in some cases, including a patient who came in with wet macular degeneration and could, in effect, see nothing in one eye and only 30 per cent in the other. I say this with the utmost caution and due respect, because I don’t want to give anyone false hope that this always works, but in this particular case – and this is a very specific case to which I’d like to refer for the time being – it really did mean that, after about 15 sessions, this woman had even regained up to 25 per cent vision in her left eye, and in her right eye, where her vision had been at 35, had 35–38 per cent, her vision had risen to almost 70 per cent.

00:15:08
Egbert Mastall: The ophthalmologist then jotted down all sorts of details from us, because he simply couldn’t believe what his equipment was telling him. But I’d like to make this very clear: I’m referring exclusively to this particular case, and I don’t want to say, ‘I can now treat macular degeneration here.’ That’s not what I’m saying.

00:15:22
Patrick Walitschek: No, that’s quite clear in general, isn’t it? I mean, these are your personal experiences – whether with equipment or therapeutic methods. Logically, of course, these do not amount to any promise of a cure, and furthermore, the statements are fundamentally never a promise of a cure. That is absolutely correct, because – and this brings us full circle, in a way – when it comes to microcurrent therapy, in my view, we’re dealing with a complex system. Not necessarily a complicated one, but a complex one – in the sense that, as we discussed earlier, it’s about finding the actual blockage, getting to the root cause and treating it. Because, whilst you might be able to get the symptom under control in the short term, let me give you an example: If I have a patient with knee pain who has been suffering for a long time, and I only treat the knee but do not examine the hip, the sacroiliac joint, the spine, or perhaps even the temporomandibular joint – taking biomechanics as an example – then I’m unlikely to be very successful, even with any microcurrent system, because it’s always part of a wider context; and so, naturally, treatment outcomes can never be generalised.

00:16:39
Egbert Mastall: It really is exactly as you’ve just said. I can speak from my own experience, and this concerned me personally: a year and a half ago – I run quite a lot – I was preparing for the Cologne Marathon and wanted to run it in a specific time. I ran a great deal and then started experiencing increasing problems in my right groin and right hip, mainly after running, not whilst running itself. It got so bad that I eventually started having problems whilst running as well. I had no idea what was happening to me; I’d never experienced anything like it before.

00:17:05
Egbert Mastall: I actually ended up developing a very complex set of symptoms that I couldn’t make head nor tail of. It was extremely painful, to the point where I could barely get out of bed. I then went to LuXXaMed – which made sense, as it’s right on the doorstep – and I worked through a joint programme, a muscle programme, and at times also worked on the central nervous and autonomic nervous systems, but nothing worked; nothing changed!

00:17:31
Egbert Mastall: I was then given an emergency MRI scan and an X-ray appointment, and it turned out that my right hip had developed a massive bone oedema, certainly around the femoral head, and my lymph nodes in my right groin were, in some cases, twice the size of a cherry – so they were really huge. Conventional medicine, as you can imagine, threw up its hands in horror; they wanted to put me under the knife straight away, but I said, I’ll try something different first, and I’ll be following a proper bone programme, and that’s why I say that I tackled it with the bone programme, and I can say that within five days, I went from being someone who could barely get up to being able to walk again with just a walking stick, and after ten days I was back on my feet completely without any walking aids. And I stuck with this programme for quite a long time. Later on, together with my GP, I discovered a few other issues, addressed them and treated them. Among other things, it turned out there was something wrong with my kidney; I actually took medication for that as well, because it was necessary at the time, so I went along with that too.

00:18:36
Egbert Mastall: Then, in addition to the bone programme, I also ran the organ programme for my kidney, and the progress was so good that I can walk again today. I don’t run as much anymore, and I’m not allowed to run as fast either, but three times a week I can easily manage my ten to twelve kilometres again without any problems.

00:18:53
Patrick Walitschek: That’s absolutely brilliant, yes. On the subject of bone oedema in particular: I think it was two or three years ago now that our doctor, Dr Voracek, also had a paper published in the OUP – the journal for orthopaedic and surgical practice – specifically on the topic of bone oedema, because he sees it relatively frequently in his own practice, particularly in classic osteoarthritis patients, where bone oedema is often the underlying cause – especially when it comes to pain – and he’s had very, very good results in this area. Brilliant!

00:19:27
Egbert Mastall: The most important thing is that I can remember his words. I met him at the seminar in Kassel. I can always picture him saying: ‘Either the machine isn’t working, or you’ve got the wrong diagnosis!’ I can remember that, and I have to remember it when I looked at my own hip MRI and said: “Now you’ve got to do a (unint.).” And lo and behold: it went away faster than you could blink! After two nights, I was already able to sleep through the night again!

00:19:54
Patrick Walitschek: Let me put it this way, that’s just the way it is. The device, or microcurrent in general, is both a blessing and a curse, because I simply can’t use it to mask or override pain – which is what conventional pain therapy actually does – but instead I have to get to the root of the problem and find the cause, and that’s the biggest challenge.(unint.)

00:20:16
Egbert Mastall: Yes, that’s true. That’s my experience, which is why I don’t treat anyone I haven’t examined first, unless it’s quite clear-cut and, above all, acute: then it’s fine. Athletes who come here – including those from our athletics department and the like – or… I’ve also sent many of your staff here when they’ve fallen off a ladder and sprained their ankle or bruised their hand: I apply the treatment and it works just as (unint.), as they say up here in the north – so, for example, we apply a Joint Programme or Joint Plus Programme to it – and really, after 48 hours, almost all of them can get back on their feet relatively pain-free, meaning they can walk again even if they’ve sprained their foot, or if they’ve twisted their knee a bit playing football: Provided there are no serious ligament or cartilage injuries, it works like a charm. If you actually do that, then acute injuries are very easy and very effective to treat – really, very, very effective!

00:21:06
Egbert Mastall: I can certainly vouch for that experience, but with chronic conditions you really have to look at the underlying system, at what’s perpetuating the root problem, don’t you? It’s just the way it is. It’s the same thing: if I don’t realise that the heart attack is causing pain in the left arm, then I might treat the osteoarthritis, and then the feet will end up becoming crooked: that won’t help at all, so I really have to get to the root of the problem. Sometimes that’s the challenge – figuring out exactly what it is.

00:21:40
Patrick Walitschek: Exactly.

00:21:41
Egbert Mastall: But then it really does work very, very well as a form of support.

00:21:47
Patrick Walitschek: Perfect. Brilliant! That was a principle. You’ve already automatically incorporated almost all the questions I’d jotted down – or the points I wanted to cover in our conversation – into your comments – perfect! I thought that was brilliant! So, from my side, I’m actually done now. I don’t know if there’s anything else you’d like to say: Please?

00:22:15
Egbert Mastall: Well, I simply think the benefits for patients are so great – even if it does cost a bit – that most people who’ve had this experience once simply come back. I think it really ought to be much more widespread, because we could prevent so, so much more with it than what it might cost one or two people in financial terms. I hope that this might one day also gain acceptance amongst the statutory health insurance funds, because, in my view, it can actually save a great deal of money in the long run.

00:22:43
Patrick Walitschek: Yes. I see it exactly the same way; many people do, but then we’re getting into the political arena a bit too easily.

00:22:54
Egbert Mastall: Yes, we’re not going there!

00:22:55
Patrick Walitschek: No. That’s going to be very, very difficult for me, but we’ll see.

00:22:59
Egbert Mastall: But I also said that the situation in osteopathy was very similar: I can remember when, several years ago, Technica was the first health insurance fund to say, ‘We’ll pay for osteopathy.’ So I asked: ‘What made you decide to start covering osteopathy now – a subsidy?’ They said it was quite simple: “If you consider – and I’m not going to quote any figures here – what it costs to fit a new hip, including preliminary examinations, all the medical histories, physiotherapy, with rehabilitation, with all the trimmings – if I weigh that up, if I send a thousand people with hip osteoarthritis to you and you can help 100 of them, then in the end a great deal of money has been saved. Recognising this benefit, and carrying out these cost-benefit analyses for the funding bodies is always a desirable goal and a blessing for the patients who can benefit from it.”

00:23:47
Patrick Walitschek: Absolutely, yes, absolutely. I’d say that’s a very, very nice closing remark. Perfect, that final sentence. Then I’d like to thank you once again; I’ve really enjoyed this. I thought it was really good, I thought it was brilliant!

00:24:01
Egbert Mastall: Thank you very much.

00:24:02
Patrick Walitschek: Also, thank you for taking the time, and I’d like to say: I wish you all the best for the future. We’re in very close contact anyway.

00:24:11
Egbert Mastall: We’re keeping in touch!

00:24:14
Patrick Walitschek: We’re keeping in touch, yes, perfect! Brilliant! Thank you very much.

00:24:18
Egbert Mastall: Right, Mr Walitschek, I wish you all the best!

00:24:20
Patrick Walitschek: Thank you. See you soon!

00:24:21
Egbert Mastall: Yes. See you later. Bye!

https://www.luxxamed.de/2021/02/02/post-covid-19-therapie-patienteninterview-mikrostrom-eine-moeglichkeit/

Interview mit Physiotherapeut Matthias Rother Teil 1/3