The Application of Electrotherapy in Fat Reduction Procedures

This report delves into the application of electrotherapy for fat reduction, a treatment involving the use of electric pulses to stimulate specific body areas. It explores various modalities like electric muscle stimulation (EMS), interferential waveform (IFT), and others, highlighting their mechanisms in reducing fat, strengthening muscles, and improving body composition. The report discusses how EMS induces muscle contractions, enhances blood flow, and potentially influences histological changes. It also examines the biochemical and clinical aspects of fat reduction, including the importance of maintaining calcium intake, blood sugar, and liver function. References to studies support the efficacy of electrotherapy, particularly in the context of reducing subcutaneous fat and improving muscle tone. The report emphasizes the therapeutic effects of electrotherapy, such as pain relief and improved autonomic nervous system responses. Overall, it provides a comprehensive overview of electrotherapy's role in fat reduction procedures.

Applied Electrotherapy
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Electrotherapy
Electrotherapy is a treatment that is applied to a particular area in the body of an
individual by invading electric pulses. There are different types of modalities available
that uses electrical energy for fat reduction, tissue repair, muscle strengthening,
progression of bone growth, promoting physical fitness and circulation.
Electrotherapy procedure is also used for reducing excess fat present in the body along
with other procedures like liposuction, ultrasound, radiofrequency, cryolipolysis,
mesotherapy and abdominoplasty. All these procedures were aimed to reduce fat
stored in the body. There are several electrotherapy related modalities used for fat
reduction procedures as advised by clinicians and they claim that fat reduction is faster
and amount of fat reduced in the body is greater with electric muscle stimulation. There
are number of waveforms present in electric stimulation and they include Microcurrent,
Interferential, Biphasic, Russian and Transcutaneous (Ahmad & Hasbullah,2015). Each
of these waveforms exhibit therapeutic application. Let us discuss about fat reduction
condition and application of electrotherapy on reducing fats present in the body.
Fats are considered as a vital part of healthy diet which serves as taste and energy
source. It is important to cells and tissues present in the body and also absorbs
vitamins. Mono and polyunsaturated fats are considered as beneficial for health in
comparison with trans fats. So it is important to reduce fat present in the body by either
natural workouts or using treatment procedures like electric muscle stimulation and its
modalities.
Electric muscle stimulation generally works by attaching equipment to the skin and
through this electric signals are transferred to the muscle and it results in
contraction.Thus it gives relief from pain,excess fat is reduced and fiber associated with
muscle is repaired and muscle gets strengthened.Electric muscle stimulation is useful to
study and evaluate the histological changes of waist circumference, fat present in
abdomen,subcutaneous layer of fat,skin cells (Choudhary, Trivedi & Sinha, 2017).
Electric stimulation influence all cells and tissue and type of response will depend on the
type of tissue,characteristics and nature of electric current that is applied. Using
electrodes the impulses were generated on the skin which further stimulates the muscle
and contraction occurs, thus allows natural movement of muscle. This further increases
muscle strength and also make free from imbalances.
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Interferential waveform (IFT) can stimulate tissues present in deeper region,muscle
fibers and also increase flow of blood by stimulating parasympathetic nerve fibers.
Interferential waveform utilizes low frequency effects of upto 250pps and this will affect
the individual due to frequency which is inversely proportional to impedance of skin
(Youn, Lee & Lee,2016). For this reason high frequency is preferred as it penetrates
through the skin to the tissue present in depth without any discomfort to the individual.
Since interferential opposes to normal stimulation and the stimulation of peripheral
nerves is carried out by adjusting the frequency that helps to stimulate
muscle(Giangregorio et.al,2012). As it helps muscle contraction by sending electric
pulses it enables to reduce the fat present in the tissue region.
During fat reduction it is important that the biochemical features include calcium intake,
blood sugar level, urea and creatinine, electrolytes and functioning of liver should be
maintained normal. Electric muscle stimulation breaks the fat surrounding the muscle
and enhances the flow of blood to muscles. This will help to tone the muscle and
regains its original shape. Toning helps to provide required strength to muscle present
in the abdomen and helps to break fats by contraction(Kemmeler & Stengel, 2013).
Histological staining methods like immunochemistry and dyes like toluidine blue will help
in reducing fat in the subcutaneous layer in combination with electrotherapy waveforms
like interferential and ultrasound.
The clinical features related to fat reduction mainly include decrease in food intake, less
absorption of nutrients, increase in requirements related with metabolism mainly due to
increase in metabolic rate and motor activity followed by nutrient loss is increased. This
is mainly due to hormonal effects on metabolic pathways. Deficiency of nutrients and fat
reduction are resulted to change in molecular mechanism.
Electric muscle stimulation is applied to reduce fat in quick period of time. The
mechanism of action includes generating action potential using source as electric
energy. This results in providing therapeutically effective physiological responses like
strength of muscle increases, effective responses from autonomic nervous system,
relief from pain and stimulate flow of blood(Sharma & Verma, 2011).
Electric muscle stimulation with the help of electric impulses will elicit contraction of
muscle which enables stimulation of motor neurons. The stimulation will enable muscle
contraction frequently for a long or contractions will occur for very small period of time.
The muscle contraction caused by electric muscle stimulation is found to be intense,
deep and complete that is resulted without activating the central nervous system.
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References:
Ahmad, M.F., & Hasbullah, A.H. (2015). The effects of electrical muscle stimulation
(EMS) towards male skeletal muscle mass. Int J Med Health Biomed Bioeng
Pharm Eng.,9,860–869.
Choudhary, N., Trivedi, V. & Sinha, A.G.K.(2017). Effect of multi-muscle transcutaneous
electric stimulation on body composition of overweight females. Int J Health Sci
Res.,7(1):138-145.
Giangregorio, L., Craven, C., Richards, K., Kapadia, N., Hitiz, S.L., Masani, K. and
Popovic, M.R. (2012). A randomized trial of functional electrical stimulation for
walking in incomplete spinal cord injury: Effects on body composition. The
Journal of Spinal Cord Medicine, 35(5),351-360.
Kemmeler, W. & Stengel, S. (2013). Whole body EMS as a means to impact muscle
mass and abdominal fat in lean, sedentary and older female adult: sub analysis
of the test-3 trial. Clinical Interventions in Aging,8,1353-1364.
Sharma, P.A. & Verma, S.K. (2011). Effect of electrical stimulation on reducing fat from
the body. Journal of Exercise Science and Physiotherapy, 7,24-48.
Youn, J.I., Lee, H.S., & Lee, S.(2016). Determination of effective treatment duration of
interferential current therapy using electromyography. J Phys Ther Sci, 28, 2400–
2403.
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