Device helps balance moods
By Susan Glairon
Longmont Times-Call
For decades, Gloria Makarevich felt irritable, suffered from insomnia and often found herself on the verge of tears.
Periodic bouts of depression starting in her 30s left her feeling hopeless, and she sought medical help through antidepressants and counseling.
Sometimes the medication worked and sometimes it didn’t, she said. In addition, side effects left her feeling foggy and other times wired. Sometimes the medications upset her stomach.
But Makarevich, 61, is feeling better, and she attributes her improvement to Alpha-Stim SCS, a small device that looks similar to an iPod and delivers neuro-electric therapy through ear clips attached to both ear lobes. The device is not widely known even though it has been around for 28 years; in the early 1990s, the FDA cleared the device for market for treatment of depression, pain, anxiety and insomnia.
“It has not left my side,” said Makarevich, who has not been on antidepressants since she got the device in April 2005.
According to product brochures, Alpha-Stim works by using “microcurrent electrical therapy,” meaning it moves tiny currents — close to the amount that naturally occurs in the body — through the body and brain at a variety of frequencies, normalizing the electrical activity of the nervous system and brain as measured by an electroencephalogram.
If Makarevich feels anxious or tense, she clips on the device for 20 minutes to an hour and takes a walk or goes driving. Sometimes she uses it before bed to help her sleep, she said.
“If I relax into it, it’s like a meditation,” she said.
She also credits the device with helping reduce fibro-myalgia pain in her upper body, neck and shoulders. In addition, little things don’t bother her anymore, such as a driver driving too slowly, she said.
“I feel like I am more in control of my emotional health,” she said. “I don’t have to depend on a drug. I know when I need it, and I can’t overdose on it.
“I don’t have the peaks and the valleys.”
The Alpha-Stim SCS (Stress Control System) device — which treats anxiety, insomnia and depression — costs $495. For more information about Alpha-Stim, visit www.TheProvenRemedy.com or call Allison Suddard, a licensed acupuncturist in Erie at 303-668-9900.
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| Gloria Makarevich who suffers from depression and fibromyalgia has been using an Alpha-Stim SCS to help treat her symptoms since 2005. Jill P. Mott/Times-Call |
