The beauty of Alpha-Stim® is that it is beneficial even at a sub-sensory level (below recognition or awareness).  That means that as long as you follow protocol, your animal won’t feel a thing – just relief.

A few simple steps will help:

1. Choose a typically quiet time of day to perform treatments. Avoid treatments immediately prior to mealtime.

2. When you turn on the Alpha-Stim, set the intensity to its lowest setting. Wet the earclip electrode pads and then clip onto the base of your pet’s ears, as close to the head as possible. Allow up to 20 seconds for acclimation to the Earclips without any current.

3. Gradually increase the intensity every 10 seconds until you have reached the desired setting. For cats, horses, and young animals, 1 to 1.5 is best. Dogs can be treated at 1.5 to 2.

4. Sit with your animal and enjoy some quality time together. You can brush or massage your pet during the 20-minute treatment.

When following protocol, it is impossible to cause harm to your animal with Alpha-Stim.  If you are attempting to treat pain in the wrong area, however, your pet will not reap any benefits. It is essential to know the location of your animal’s pain so that you can employ the correct protocol and bring relief to your pet.

The timeline for relief depends on which condition you are treating. For severe separation anxiety, for example, it may take one month to see consistent improvement – while other animals may respond in as few as 1 or 2 treatments. For a dog with severe nerve dysfunction there may be obvious improvement within 14 days, or it could take weeks.  Animals with chronic arthritis typically see better function within a week, but improvement only continues as the therapy is continued over time. The benefits of Alpha-Stim are cumulative and long lasting, so each treatment builds on the progress made in previous sessions.

We recommend eight hours between treatments to allow your animal’s cells to respond and change between successive applications. In some severe cases of pain, anxiety, or aggression, however, more treatments may be better. You can try longer treatment times or multiple sessions per day. Once you are noticing improvement, you can gradually taper down to shorter and fewer treatment sessions.

One other exception to note: for severe neck or back pain, Dr. Ava Frick suggests shaving the fur and applying A-S Trodes across the spine. She then runs continuous treatment for 24 hours a day until the pain subsides and the animal is comfortable and able to move. This may take 3 to 7 days on average.

No. They both run on a battery and use an electrical current, but aside from that they are quite different.

• TENS is run on a milliamp level which is much higher than the microamp level that Alpha-Stim uses. TENS is outside of the normal electrical levels in the body, whereas Alpha-Stim works within normal electrical ranges of the body.

• TENS is a non-specific wave, while Alpha-Stim uses a proprietary wave form that is the key to its success in treatment and is proven by more than 100 clinical studies.

• TENS is designed to only briefly alter muscle programming and nerve input signals to the brain.

• Alpha-Stim works within the body to stimulate endorphins, serotonin, cumulative pain relief, and healing. TENS does none of that, nor is it approved for use above the shoulders.

For a more in-depth explanation of how Alpha-Stim compares to other modalities, click here.