Yes, Kyrpa and I have had much discussion and theorizing over private massage for the last several months trying to settle on the most overall efficient PE methods. I don’t intend on maintaining a full detailed journal of my tests on a public forum the way that Kyrpa has, but I told him that I would share the info with him.
This is a very difficult task because we don’t have access to a couple hundred volunteers for a controlled trial. Where we are at now is that Kyrpa and others have demonstrated the heating method so that we don’t presently need to re-invent that aspect. As mentioned before, I still think that contactless RF would be optimal, but it doesn’t really matter because it has now been well demonstrated that 1.5-2.0w/cm2 US @1Mhz is an effective means for bringing the internal tissue temps to 41-42C within an optimal timeframe and holding it there throughout treatment.
There are several things that Kyrpa and I are in full alignment. Critical tissue temp is 40<Tc<43. A maintained target of 41c is the optimal balance between safety, comfort, and efficacy. We also agree on stress relaxation being preferable to creep during the core protocol. We also agree that the tissue should not be heated above 39c in a relaxed state and that strain should be applied during cooling to finish the treatment. We agree that intentional injury is counterproductive to PE and that optimal results are obtained via viscosity within collagenous tissues rather than traditional PE methods of rapidly loading the cold TA with intense loads to the point that it stiffens and behaves more like a ductile material.
A short discussion on creep vs SR… notably, with ductile material there isn’t a whole lot of difference between creep and SR. Over time, the material experiences a substantially similar strain with regard to the total force applied. IMO, this is not true of a heated viscoelastic living tissue. The TA and ligs are predisposed to stiffening under continuous, and even more particularly under heavy loads. So in a creep protocol, you still need to very gradually increase the load to prevent this, and then keep the load relatively low under constant heat. You will notice a pulsing of tension within the tissues if your device is sensitive enough as when constant load is applied, the tissue cycles through a series of stiffening and softening phases as greater strain is achieved. The optimal rate of strain is around 0.5%/minute to maintain optimal tissue health and avoid a stiffening and micro-tearing. IMO, this is much more easily controlled in a device designed for SR.
When utilising SR, we introduce the very beneficial phenomena associated with cyclical loading. The literature consistently supports the idea that a series of load-deload cycles produces strains far in excess and at much lower loads than can be achieved through a single constant stretch.
In my protocol it seems to make sense to utilize creep during the warmup SET 1as the load is still very low and we are trying to ensure that all initial tissue contraction within the normal physiological range is exhausted to provide a good measurement baseline. With an SR approach we would risk slightly overshooting or under shooting that point during SET 1. Kyrpa seems to prefer manuals during the final cooldown that present more of a creep function (i.e. quantified load vs quantified strain). I have no problem with that. I believe there is some potential value in quantifying the behavior of the tissue during cooldown, and my SR device is well suited to log that behavior. It seems probable to me that the load elevation during cooldown will have direct correlation to how close we are to maximum allowable strain under heat. For example, if I lock the strain and remove the load and the subsequent load increase is unusually low, the tissue should still be capable of another strain cycle. If load accelerates rapidly, we are likely nearing the current biological limit and the tissue needs to disorganize.
Now to the question of why my approach around volume and frequency differs from Kyrpa. He has well demonstrated what to expect in terms of timeline and effort required to exhaust the current strain potential in a single phase. Other than substantiating his claims, it wouldn’t provide much value to repeat his process. There are too few test subjects on here capable of running a controlled trial to waste my efforts on substantiating something that he has already documented. I simply must take his word for it and trust that he is competent because my goal is to build upon his research. My approach might achieve better or worse results than his, but either way it adds value.
Kyrpa’s results already suggest that there is little reason to pursue greater loads, frequency, or volume. I’m then left with lesser loads, frequency, or volume. And within that realm, one hypothesis remains debatable. Is there a way to prevent the seemingly inevitable plateau. My hypothesis is that the plateau might be a function of the tissue becoming conditioned to the loads and that this might be avoided by somewhat lesser intensity. Lower frequency and not necessarily pushing each cycle and each phase all the way to the biological limit. IOW, giving up short term results in favor of a more steady and hopefully less limited long term. I suspect that in pushing for those last couple millimeters during a phase, we inevitably push over into the physiological response of toughening the tissue. My protocol intends to discover if that is the case.
Admittedly, there is a high probability that it is those last few millimeters that are most valuable in straining the tissue into an inelastic state that results in maximum lengthening over time. We shall see.