DIY Shockwave Therapy Machine

Ok more serious now.

So you are hoping to promote healing /growth by bombarding tissue with ultrasonic sound waves?

The medical profession use ultra sound to scan soft tissue, Ultrasound Scan, as on pregnant women, that must be proved to be harmless and not promote anything.

Next it is used at high energy levels to break up gall stones or calcium nodules, I think that works like hitting a stone with a hammer. The stone shatters, but hit a tyre it has no effect, well maybe just vibrates it a bit.

I’ll keep reading up on this.

Now if you can induce cavitation in or on molecules with high frequency vibration I can see that causing damage, but I suspect it will be very target specific (a very small area) your thoughts.

Just found this

What Does Ultrasound Do?

Therapeutic ultrasound is used primarily for two different effects: the deep heating treatment and non-thermal uses.

Deep Heating Effects: Ultrasound is often used to provide deep heating to soft tissue structures in the body. Deep heating tendons, muscles or ligaments increases circulation to those tissues, which is thought to help the healing process. Increasing tissue temperature with ultrasound is also used to help decrease pain.

Deep heating can be used to increase the “stretchiness” of muscles and tendons that may be tight. If you have shoulder pain and have been diagnosed with a frozen shoulder, your physical therapist may use ultrasound to help improve the extensibility of the tissues around your shoulder prior to performing range of motion exercises. This may help improve the ability of your shoulder to stretch.

Non-Thermal Effects (Cavitation): Ultrasound introduces energy into the body. This energy causes microscopic gas bubbles around your tissues to expand and contract rapidly, a process called cavitation. It is theorized that the expansion and contraction of these bubbles help speed cellular processes and improves healing of injured tissue.

Two types of cavitation include stable and unstable cavitation. Stable cavitation is desired when your physical therapist is applying ultrasound to your body. Unstable cavitation can be dangerous to your body’s tissues, and your physical therapist will ensure that this does not occur during the application of ultrasound.
How Does Ultrasound Work?

Inside your PT’s ultrasound unit is a small crystal. When an electrical charge is applied to this crystal, it vibrates rapidly, creating piezoelectric waves. These waves are emitted from the ultrasound sound head as ultrasound waves. The ultrasound wave then enters into your injured tissues during application of the modality. This increases blood flow and cavitation, leading to the theorized benefits of the treatment.
How Is Ultrasound Applied?

Ultrasound is performed with a machine that has an ultrasound transducer (sound head). A small amount of gel is applied to the particular body part; then your physical therapist slowly moves the sound head in a small circular direction on your body. The therapist may change various settings of the ultrasound unit to control the depth of penetration of the ultrasound waves or change the intensity of the ultrasound. Different settings are used in various stages of healing.

Alternative methods of ultrasound application are available if the body part is boney and bumpy, or if there’s an open wound. (The ultrasound gel and sound head may harbor bacteria that can enter the wound.)

Your physical therapist may use ultrasound gel combined with a topical medication to help treat inflammation around soft tissue in the body. This process is called phonophoresis. While there is some evidence that ultrasound waves help deliver the medicated gel to the injured tissues, most published studies indicate that this treatment may be ineffective.
What Ultrasound Feels Like

While you are receiving an ultrasound treatment, you will most likely not feel anything happening, except perhaps a slight warming sensation or tingling around the area being treated. If the ultrasound sound head is left in place on your skin and not moved in a circular direction, you may experience pain. If this occurs, tell your physical therapist right away.

It continues
Research Does Not Show Benefits

If you are going to physical therapy and are getting an ultrasound, you should know that many studies have found that ultrasound offers little benefit to the overall outcome of physical therapy. For example, if you have low back pain, ultrasound treatments have been shown to offer very little benefit. In fact, ultrasound received a grade of “C” (no benefit demonstrated) for knee pain, low back pain and neck pain in a series of papers published in Physical Therapy Journal in 2001. The evidence leads many to wonder if ultrasound really helps you in physical therapy.

A 2014 study in the American Journal of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation examined the effect of ultrasound on pain and function in patients with knee osteoarthritis. The researchers found no difference in knee function and pain with rehab using ultrasound, no ultrasound, and sham (fake) ultrasound. So if your PT is providing ultrasound for you, one must question if it is really necessary as part of your overall rehab program.

Many people argue that ultrasound can have a negative effect on your physical therapy by needlessly prolonging your care. Ultrasound is a passive treatment. In other words, you can’t provide the treatment yourself; you are simply a passive receiver of the ultrasound. If your PT uses ultrasound during your to treatment, make sure you are engaged in an active exercise program to help improve your functional mobility. Exercise and active involvement should always be the main components of your rehab program.
A Word from Verywell

Your physical therapist may use ultrasound to help improve your condition. If so, be sure to ask about the need for ultrasound. Also, be sure that you are also performing an active self-care exercise program in the PT clinic and at home. If you are actively engaged in your rehabilitation, you can ensure that you have a safe and rapid recovery back to normal function.

I’m sorry, but that’s just not true. These machines operate in the 1-3MHz range, and the transducers listed in their respective datasheets are 1-3MHz-rated piezos. 1-3KHz isn’t even within the ultrasonic range.
What are you referring to?

Hey thanks for your input. I probably have been susceptible to a slight confirmation bias in which studies I’ve been selecting from to look at.
But I do think you ought to look at the studies I cited earlier in this thread (linked below). The research I’m looking at was specifically concerned with tracking the feasibility of ultrasonic shock wave therapy for erectile dysfunction, and more specifically tracking the therapy’s perceived impact on angiogenesis as opposed to its use as a pain relief agent.
I’m definitely glad to have somebody tempering my interest with some scholarly and rigorous skepticism! I certainly don’t want to put very much or any energy into this if it turns out to be largely discredited by a larger or more reliable body of research, and I should certainly cast more of a skeptical eye on the credibility of the sources I’ve been choosing from.
If you do find some critical studies that are specifically geared towards analyzing or discrediting USWT’s feasibility in angiogenesis or ED, I’m definitely more keenly interested in those, and if you’d link to them, that’d be very helpful.
That being said, I’m hoping this thread will more serve to flesh out the practical feasibility of actually DIY building one of these machines rather than analyzing whether the overarching theory is sound, since there are already a few other threads more distinctly focused on the soundness of the theory/technique overall. Thanks!

Extracorporeal Shock Wave Therapy in Musculoskeletal Disorders: A Review - PMC
Low-Intensity Shock Wave Therapy and Its Application to Erectile Dysfunction - PMC

Good point! And as a matter of fact, while most of the studies I’ve looked at have been in the 1-3MHz range, I’ve found a couple that were conducted at 16-20 MHz.
With such a wide range of frequencies being represented by these machines, I am a little suspicious that they do much more than the old wooden spoon. Not to knock chinese or ayurvedic medicine, because the tapping might honestly be something we could benefit from! I’ll probably not make DIY-ing this machine a priority until some of the others logging their experience on the forum with their schockwave machines have shown some more conclusive results.

If somebody does end up wanting to DIY this, I do think the rough concept I’ve pieced together is sound.

A 1-3MHz piezo, being voltage controlled by a 1-3MHz square wave oscillator, which in turn is modulated by a 10-200Hz square wave oscillator for the “pulse rate,” which in turn could probably be voltage controlled for the pulse duration.

First an apology, I started with very superficial view of the subject, so I am sorry that I made light of what you were trying to discuss.

I have an open mind as to the value of any treatment that involves, shall we say immeasurable methods, and ultrasound seems to have many opt-outs, i.e. the frequency needs be specific, no stated duration’s of treatments etc but I am researching more now.

Just one observation from the first post you link to, the writer has very little understanding of cavitation, using an analagy of “bubbles” I personally would Illustrate cavitation to my pupils using water boiling in a glass kettle, the bubbles rise and disappear before reaching the surface, this is not cavitation but a way of explaining its behavior, there is no such thing as a cavitation “bubble” its an area of vacuum rapidly formed and collapsing sometimes tearing molecules of adjoining matter away as it forms or collapses. I hope I’m not stating the obvious here, I hope I am helping you educate me.

Hey no apology necessary! Truly! This is entirely new to me, and your skeptical input is appreciated.
Re: the cavitation bubbles, I do suspect the author there is using “bubbles” in the loose sort of colloquial way that cavitation cavities are sometimes talked about. Whether or not the author there has any clear argument as to the relationship between ultrasonic shockwaves and cellular-level cavitation or between cellular-level cavitation and stimulating angiogensis…I’m not sure. NCBI I guess is more of an uncoordinated collection of studies than a reliable peer-reviewed journal, so I ought to keep that firmly in mind.

I have tried to delve deeper into this and now realise it goes way beyond my capacity for understanding, its professional research at the cutting edge, and technology in its infancy, so I shall bow out now and wish you good luck, because I think fame and fortune awaits you if you can succeed in achieving results

Um, please be careful. I think you said the peak pressure level is around 30-100 MPa. One atmosphere is about 0.1 MPa, so we’re talking about 300-1,000 atmospheres of pressure. It would be sad if you made your dick explode.

To be honest I’m having a bit of trouble understanding how atmospheric pressure is involved in ultrasonic waves, but I imagine it’s a function of the waveform itself in some way(?). At any rate we’re not remotely talking about inserting the penis into any kind of device which would be creating atmospheric pressure of any kind. These devices send a momentary acoustic shockwave through the penis, essentially just a short, very specific very high-frequency vibration, to trigger a physiological tissue growth response. Imagine a suped-up smart vibrator against your penis and you’re not far off.
At any rate, these therapies are extremely extremely safe, done in outpatient clinics everywhere. I’m more worried that they’re a waste of time stupid fad than I am of the risk involved.

Based on your previous link, I’ve attached the 4 devices being used, which one are you referring to?

The Ultrasound Device.

Goldinger,

Is there a setting on the shockwave machine you’d like me to check.

The lady doing it is nice and would likely indulge my curiosity.