Using PEMF Therapy In An Integrative Health Clinic

Riz Lakhani, L. Ac., M. Ac

Hi, this is Dr. Riz from DrPawluk.com and I’m here today with Lisa Krzyzewski. And Lisa is a health entrepreneur and the founder of Aeon Future Health. Aeon is a health optimization and longevity clinic located in Alberta, Canada. And using the latest in longevity medicine and hormone optimization, Lisa and her team of doctors, naturopaths, nutritionists, and health coaches are on a mission to measurably reverse your biological clock so that you can look, feel, and perform at your best now and into the future. And that all sounds really, really great. Who doesn’t want that? That’s really wonderful. And I love how you’ve incorporated the concept of future into your clinic name there, because we all want to live well in the present and also have a great, wonderful future as well. And for those of you who don’t know me, I’ve been working with the DrPawluk.com team for the last year or so, and I’m a acupuncture practitioner who also uses a lot of PEMF therapy in my clinic. And so this is gonna be a great conversation between colleagues, talking about how we use PEMF therapy to help people out. And so, Lisa, thank you so much for sitting down to do this interview with us. We appreciate your time and willingness and helping others learn about this stuff.

Lisa Krzyzewski

Yeah, you’re welcome, looking forward to it.

Riz Lakhani, L. Ac., M. Ac

So I was curious about, could you tell me how you learned about PEMF therapy, where’d you first hear about it, and how’d you get involved with it?

Lisa Krzyzewski

Absolutely, yeah, so I actually learned about PEMF before I brought it into the clinic, because my husband and I are avid skiers, mountain bikers, mountain climbers. So we have been extremely hard on our joints. And unfortunately for him, he’s a little bit older than I am, he’s in his 50s now and his knees, after our ski trip a few years ago, just went. It was January, which is supposed to be prime ski time, and he couldn’t move, he was done. And so we looked into all kinds of options. He started PRP into his knees. He was doing cortisone shots into the knees. And we were looking at stem cell therapy at that point, ’cause we just felt like we were out of options. And I had heard about PEMF and we actually decided to buy a unit that allowed us to have a consult with the doctor once you purchase the unit. And when we called, it was Dr. Pawluk. So when he talked to us, he said, “You know what? Try this machine, it’s a high intensity PEMF, for three months. If you need to go for other therapies after that, at least you’ve provided a nice hospitable environment for those therapies, especially for injections, to go into the knee.” And if not, who knows what this could do? ‘Cause I mean, he’s doing a long distance check on us. He doesn’t know how severe the osteoarthritis, which is what it was, was. So my husband faithfully did his PEMF for the three months. I would say he was getting probably 38 minutes to an hour and we did at least five days a week ’cause he was that committed. This was such a big stress for him. And by the end of those three months, we canceled our stem cell appointments and he saw such a dramatic change. And he’s been using it ever since. He has our osteoarthritis, so he needs it for maintenance, but it’s been pretty amazing for him. And his level of activity is back up, if not higher, than it used to be. And between that and some rolling, keeping the muscles in good shape, it was lifer saver for us.

Riz Lakhani, L. Ac., M. Ac

That’s wonderful. So I mean, you learned about this in your quest to find solutions for your own health issues.

Lisa Krzyzewski

Absolutely.

Riz Lakhani, L. Ac., M. Ac

And before you ever even used it with patients, sounds like your husband was able to use it himself and benefit from it. And one thing you said that was really important is that you had the consultation with an expert before purchasing your machine, because a lot of equipment is available out there for people to just go and get, but then they don’t always know what might be right for them or which system is gonna be ideal for their particular needs. So being able to have a consultation with Dr. Pawluk is definitely great, so he can really point you in the right direction and save you time. ‘Cause a lot of people who get started with this stuff, they don’t really know where to start from. So that is-

Lisa Krzyzewski

Yeah, absolutely. I mean he had a great table on his website that we found just through Googling. We hadn’t really connected the dots completely on where all the stuff was coming from, but we found this great table that explained the different PEMF units, right? Low intensity, high intensity, what do you want? So in our case, we actually had already taken a leap and bought a really expensive PEMF unit, which, thank goodness, was the right one ’cause we based it on this table, and then had gotten a free treatment consult. So I think that’s the other key point is, get some help in purchasing a unit for sure, because there are so many different intensities out there, and depending on how much time you wanna commit to this, you might need something pretty powerful, or maybe you’re okay with walking around with one attached to you for a while. So that’s the first bit. And then the second bit is, what should your protocol be? So there’s somebody to really help. He helped us set expectations that it was because of the level of injury, it wasn’t gonna be a quick fix. So it was nice to know going in so that my husband could stay committed to the process.

Riz Lakhani, L. Ac., M. Ac

Right.

Lisa Krzyzewski

‘Cause I feel like if he bailed out after a month, lhe would’ve missed out on so much benefit that we’re seeing today, so.

Riz Lakhani, L. Ac., M. Ac

Yeah, absolutely, that’s very interesting. And especially for people like you and I that are running a clinic or a wellness center, and we might be seeing folks several times per week and delivering treatments, but there is a difference when you’re able to do treatments much more regularly. And so setting that expectation from the beginning definitely goes a long way. So that’s really, really wonderful that he had this great experience. And then did you afterwards decide that you were gonna start using this at Aeon Future Health?

Lisa Krzyzewski

Yeah, I really felt like it needed to be part of our suite of health technologies that we brought in. So we’re being a longevity and optimization focus clinic. We knew we were definitely gonna use therapies like infrared sauna or lymphatic drainage through a suit like a Balancer Pro. We had red light therapy and a few other key modalities in addition to your traditional hormone replacement therapies, drugs, IVs, those sorts of things. And where I went with the PEMF was because with chronic injuries, it takes a lot of time and commitment, I thought, well, I have a red light bed, which is really great for some immediate relief when people have a lot of inflammation. What do I have that’s gonna work specifically on joints and bones and maybe on some acute areas of pain? So people come in with a specific problem with their neck or a shoulder injury. If you’re doing an entire bed that’s supporting cellular health, you’re not… It’s great, it’s really good, but sometimes you just wanna be able to target a location of pain, and so that’s where I felt like the PEMF was the right tool for us. And so we primarily use high intensity, a high intensity unit here and it allows us to target specific joints or areas of injury for people, which has been really effective, so. We’re also membership-based. So I do have my chronic care patients that just come regularly and use it consistently, and that’s where they see the most benefit. But I have really found that people that get some acute injuries so that they throw their back out. That’s the common one, right? There’s always a time of year when you throw your back out or you throw your neck out, those people tend to feel the PEMF right away and get in for a good, maybe like a week, two weeks of a bit more intense sessions and they’re happy.

Riz Lakhani, L. Ac., M. Ac

You’re right. And so part of what you’re saying is that you’re able to treat at a different level, ’cause a lot of times in my world when I’m doing acupuncture treatment, we’re working on the acupuncture channel system and there’s a particular level of the body that you’re working at. But when somebody’s got pain, then they have tissues that are in distress and there’s inflammation and cells are injured and not operating properly. And so PEMF therapy works at that deeper cellular level to help encourage the healing and reduce the inflammation. And I can’t really think of many more things that work at that level, deeply going through the body and encouraging a lot of change along the way. So I was definitely pretty excited myself when I learned about PEMF therapy years ago, and I kind of took a similar route to you, where I experimented with using it myself. And at that time, I didn’t really have any particular health problems. I just kind of saw the potential of what it could do, but once I started doing it, I was hooked. And along the way in the last few years, I’ve had definitely a lot of memorable experiences with using the therapy. And part of it is when you do the full body treatments and you’re able to have these magnetic fields go through your entire body, but then the other part of it is when you’re doing those local treatments on problem areas and you can really feel the specific part of the tissue that’s injured, I think that’s really amazing how the therapy really hones in on that for many folks. And we certainly, I have a lot of folks, that after shoveling snow and clearing their driveways, that kind of thing, they’ll come in with the back pain and they do really well with just adding some energy back to them. So I really love how PEMF therapy works synergistically with what I do and with what you do. And I have to say that when I first learned about you from Dr. Pawluk, and I went to your website, I was really impressed by all the cool stuff that you have. It’s a very unique offering, and to have things like the functional medicine piece and the infusions and the ARX machine, which I think is really, really cool for muscles and strength, and layering it in with PEMF therapy, you have all this great stimulation going on that really encourages longevity. So I think that’s amazing that we have this ability to help people in a different way.

Lisa Krzyzewski

Absolutely. And it’s really interesting because, like how you mentioned, having the treatment work at the cellular level and there’s really obvious ways where it helps. So like I mentioned with the back or with joints especially, but even people who have come in with injury where something like red light where you need to actually have exposed skin potentially, if someone’s had a surgery or has an incision, there’s bodily fluid that could be exposed. It’s nice to have another option like PEMF where goes right through your clothes, it goes right through your dressings. So that was a good option for us. But I know you’re mentioning all the different things we have in our facility. And I have a few people that come, like most people are coming for specific treatments, but there’s a few, let’s just call them biohackers, that come because they just wanna stay as healthy as possible for as long as possible, and they’re gonna use whatever tools are available to them to do it. And I had a fellow that was doing a lot of ARX, a lot of fitness stuff, and it hadn’t even occurred to me to share the PEMF with him. One day, he said, “What is this? Can I give it a try?” I said, “Sure.” And he put one of our coils, so a pretty big coil, about this big, on his midsection, just laid it on there. And at the end, he’s like, “That was the best experience I’ve had.” He’s like, “I just got…” It actually seemed like it put him into a parasympathetic state. So out of fight or flight, he said he completely relaxed and just had this wonderful sensation go through his body, of calm. And I think I checked in with, it might have been Dr. Pawluk after afterwards, “Is this possible?” It’s like, yeah, especially if someone’s in that really hyped up state of fight or flight, just adding a more of a systemic PEMF signal can really change that person’s state of being, so.

Riz Lakhani, L. Ac., M. Ac

And then I’m sure you see other subsequent effects from that, right? I mean, they may have improved sleep. Their digestion might be better because they’re operating from a more relaxed place in their nervous system and their mood might be better. And so you have these multiple effects that occur, which, it’s really nice, where it’s not just you’re laser focused on one area. Of course, a lot of times people wanna work on a specific ailment, but you get all these other benefits from it as well. So I definitely see a lot of relaxation occur. It’s pretty funny because you’ll walk in the room sometimes and there’s all this clicking and clacking going on, but the patient is fast asleep because they’re just so relaxed. And I often even see patients who, they might be there for pain or for some sort of distress, but they will come back and say, “Man, I had the best night of sleep that I’ve ever had in my life.” And that wasn’t something that we were necessarily wanting to achieve, but it happened and it supports everything else. So talk about this amazing way to help people in more than just one way, we’re really talking about whole health.

Lisa Krzyzewski

Mhh-hmm. Absolutely, I love those stories.

Riz Lakhani, L. Ac., M. Ac

Do you have any other interesting stories or experiences with the PEMF machines at all?

Lisa Krzyzewski

Yeah, I mean, there’s two other things that come to mind for me. One is, because I brought up biohack just now, I think that, well, I don’t use the term as much, but I think we all are trying to do some form of biohacking in the perspective. We live these stressful lives, we have the lifestyle we want, and actually don’t have a ton of leeway usually to make massive adjustments around stress or around workload. So it’s, how do you find ways to keep up the life that you want, but still stay healthy, still stay grounded? And so one of our member’s busy lifestyle, owns a business, loves to work out. So he’s an older fellow in his 50s, but he’s probably been a body, closer to that bodybuilder style working out for quite a long time, and just the joints and the tendonitis starts up. And I would say, you just need a bit more recovery. Can you back off a bit? Nope, can’t back off, I’ve got golf, I’ve got keep weightlifting. And so he was doing regular chiropractic visits. And so we decided to pair him with the PEMF machine for some of his tendonitis that he was getting from all that lifetime of weightlifting and some of these other activities. And between having the joints worked on and aligned at the chiropractor and then coming in and getting the PEMF, I think he was doing twice a week at the time. He was able to not change a thing, just recover, right? So I think those are cool stories too, because not everyone wants to make a big lifestyle change and sometimes we can get around it by doing something else.

Riz Lakhani, L. Ac., M. Ac

Right, yeah, as long as they’re not ruining their health. And I mean, one thing I always hear Dr. Pawluk say and I often repeat is that life is a process of breaking down and building back up and breaking down and building back up. And so there’s all the wear and tear like you talked about and some of the degeneration that happens in the tissues. And so sometimes if you just provide some of the energy that we need, we can fix those issues and get people back on track. And if they’re getting joy out of playing golf and doing all these sports and being busy and productive, then that’s probably gonna be good for their health to continue it. So what a nice way for us to be able to support in that building back up process.

Lisa Krzyzewski

Yes. Yeah, and so tell me, I mean, you’ve seen a lot of patients too. I’d love to hear what some of your memorable experiences have been.

Riz Lakhani, L. Ac., M. Ac

So there’s been definitely a lot of interesting things that we’ve seen. More recently, I remember we had a guy come in last week, who had sciatic pains and a lot of gluteal issues, hip problems going down into the leg. And we were gonna start acupuncture were with him, but I didn’t have the opportunity, I didn’t have time that day, but I was able to get him to use our PEMF therapy while I was doing some other stuff with another patient. And after about 20 minutes or so, he got up and felt pain-free for the first time in years. And that never gets old and that, of course, doesn’t always happen because much of the time, you make incremental progress and people need time, right? Like you mentioned in the beginning, you gotta have that realistic expectation of needing the right amount of treatment and the right amount of exposure and intensity to do the job. But in this case, years of discomfort was cleared up in one treatment. And, of course, I would not wanna stop there. 

I’d want to keep working with this patient to make sure that we have a good state of his body and a good terrain for him to continue doing what he needs to do. But that was pretty amazing, that stands out. And I’ve had other situations. So sometimes you’ll be doing full body treatment, or, for instance, if you have that square pad, like the half body pad and you apply it to the body, and it’s high intensity, so you’re seeing muscle contractions, but oftentimes I’ll only see it on one side of the body, even though we have the pad treating both sides, right? So if I have both hips covered, I might only see movement in the quads of the right leg. And that’s always fascinating because the stimulation’s going everywhere, but one part of the body is responding differently because the tissues in that body are differently. So it’s very interesting to see how sometimes, you see this very specific reactions to the treatment, even though you’re treating broadly, but the area that’s the problem is what’s going to light up or become more noticeable. So that happens pretty routinely. I even to videos of it sometimes, I’ve got a guy’s… I’ve got pads under his calf and you see one calf just fluttering along and the other one’s barely moving. And, of course, he had a big problem in his leg from a biking accident, this gentleman. So just being able to see some of that stuff is really, really cool.

Lisa Krzyzewski

Yeah, I hear you. And I always tell any of our patients that use the PEMF. I’m just gonna set it where I think should be a good starting point. You need to move the paddle or the coil around yourself because you know when you’ve hit the right spot.

Riz Lakhani, L. Ac., M. Ac

Right.

Lisa Krzyzewski

It’s like the energy seems to go to the area where there’s the most damage or the most need for the energy. And I think patients always respond really well to that. ‘Cause it’s not very often you can go for a treatment and really tangibly feel, okay, I’ve got it. This is in the right spot, this is gonna help me.

Riz Lakhani, L. Ac., M. Ac

Right. There was another patient actually, this was even more recent. She had… Basically, she was dealing with long haul COVID symptoms and really low energy, and it was difficult for her to take full breath. It seemed like it was some kind of inflammation of the rib muscles maybe. And that’s an area where you can’t really do acupuncture because it’s close to the lungs, right? So what do we do? We did PEMF therapy on her and she came back the following week and she was like, “Oh my God, I was pain-free for the first time in a month.” And it was just nice to know that there’s something that could provide some relief, you know?

Lisa Krzyzewski

Yes.

Riz Lakhani, L. Ac., M. Ac

And like you said, being able to move the equipment around to the right places, it’s empowering. The patient’s not just relying on us to be there doing the whole thing. They can actually take part in it and find the hot spots and hold the treatment there for as long as it’s necessary. So it is a little bit interactive in that sense. And it never gets old hearing people’s reactions.

Lisa Krzyzewski

No, I agree. And I mean, I do, I have found in our clinic, those quick recoveries are probably less common, because PEMF works the best, I have found, when you can get on the injury right away.

Riz Lakhani, L. Ac., M. Ac

Yeah, absolutely.

Lisa Krzyzewski

If someone’s come in right after they’ve done something, usually we see quite quick, rapid results. I get a lot of people with chronic, oh, I’ve had this for 10 years. Well, you’ve had it for 10 years. It’s probably not gonna undo itself in two treatments. I don’t think there’s any practitioners that would have that experience, but I’m curious what you have found to be the typical length of time for people to see results.

Riz Lakhani, L. Ac., M. Ac

I would definitely agree with you. If they come earlier in the injury or disease process, then they respond much more quickly. Also it depends on their state of health prior to beginning treatment. So if it’s somebody who’s generally pretty healthy already and they don’t have a lot of issues with digestion or health problems, then they tend to respond much more quickly. Whereas the chronic folks, sometimes you really need a lot more treatment time because they’ve been distressed for so long and then the body adapts and it’s not functioning properly, but the body is so smart and wise and it can come up with ways for us to keep living our life, but that involves maladaptation. And so for the chronic cases, depending on how long the person’s been dealing with their pretty particular ailment, it might take upwards of a dozen or even 20 treatments for longstanding changes to persist. One thing I find is when people get treatments closer together, then that tends to help and it creates a little bit of momentum. So if they’re coming twice a week, they’re almost always gonna be doing better than if they come once a week. And then I also find that to be the case for acupuncture. So you get a little bit momentum with regularity, and that also makes a difference as well. The two main things I’ve learned from Dr. Pawluk about PEMF therapy is that there’s two important variables. One is the intensity, so how strong is the magnetic field, because the stronger it is, the more deeply it works in the body. And if you have a deep issue, like a issue in your organs or deep muscles of the body, then you need a strong magnetic field to get there. So the intensity, and then the exposure time, how much treatment are you getting. Regularly for 20, 30 minutes, twice a day routinely, I hear Dr. Pawluk recommend that for chronic conditions is you wanna try and get multiple treatments if possible. And that’s where we really see people start to improve. And lastly, I’ll say that when people combine therapies, a lot like what you’re doing in your clinic, where you’re offering all these different things, when you add PEMF therapy into the mix with other therapies, that’s really what seems to make a big difference as well.

Lisa Krzyzewski

Absolutely, yeah. And we even have done PEMF at the same time as some other IV treatments, so this is not…

Riz Lakhani, L. Ac., M. Ac

Yeah.

Lisa Krzyzewski

So just maximizing someone’s time in clinic, but also really approaching things from a number of different avenues. And I think it’s really interesting ’cause we all intuitively understand nutrition. So whether that’s through a nutritional IV, having supplements, eating right, we all understand our cells need good nutrition to function well. And so then what I explain, they also need energy to function, right? There’s energy inherently in our cell. Sometimes people will connect the dots a little bit and go, okay, yeah, it’s not just when I’m eating, it’s the energy fields that I’m surrounding myself with. It’s why we say don’t stand in front of the microwave. Those may be some bad ones. And so I love… I 100% agree with you, just to maximize some of the effects in combining modalities. I’m a huge believer in chiro with a lot of what we do, ’cause a lot of our treatments don’t actually work on realigning bone structures. It works on muscles or works on cells.

Riz Lakhani, L. Ac., M. Ac

Right.

Lisa Krzyzewski

So, there’s always… Our body is a big system. And so if you think that there’s a silver bullet out there or a magic pill that’s gonna fix everything with one type of treatment, I just… I don’t think that works. I’ve never seen that work.

Riz Lakhani, L. Ac., M. Ac

Right, agreed, agreed. Well, I think that really covers a lot of good ground. Do you have anything else that you’d like to add as far as how you use PEMF in your clinic or in your personal life at all?

Lisa Krzyzewski

The only other thing I’ve personally tried, I’ve tried and used in the clinic is PEMF for headaches. And it’s largely because I’m a migraine sufferer, I have chronic migraine. And so it’s something that I’ve tried. And what I found personally was that, it’s challenging for my true migraines ’cause you have to catch them so early to have the PEMF effective. But as I was experimenting, I started with some friends and my husband who’d get, call it normal headaches. And it was mind-blowing to see the results. 10 minutes on the PEMF and most of my friends, we’ve got… I had people in the clinic, if they’re here for something else, then, “Oh, I got a headache starting,” I’m very quick ’cause it’s my personal experiment. “Can you just try the PEMF out?” And it’s been super, super effective for these, what I would call regular headache sufferers. So I’m really curious, if you you’ve had any experience there, I’d love to know more, but that’s been my own personal pet-project

Riz Lakhani, L. Ac., M. Ac

Yeah.

Lisa Krzyzewski

to find out how it works.

Riz Lakhani, L. Ac., M. Ac

I definitely have, and I know Dr. Pawluk has written a lot about this as well. So we definitely like to use PEMF for headaches. And a lot of times we’ll also do treatment of the neck and cervical spine or maybe even the upper trapezius, which sometimes contributes to migraines. So yeah, we’ve definitely seen a lot of people improve with using that. And some folks are not necessarily going to want to be poked with a lot of needles and that sort of thing. So when you have an alternate option for them, I think that really helps a lot. And that’s interesting, you say that you use it for yourself in that way, your husband uses it for his body. I use PEMF on myself all the time. My assistant in the clinic is in the back right now doing PEMF on himself. And so when patients come and they see that we are actually using these for ourselves, I think that really anchors the value of it. ‘Cause I don’t wanna go without my PEMF therapy ’cause it helps me so much.

Lisa Krzyzewski

Absolutely.

Riz Lakhani, L. Ac., M. Ac

What’s funny is when I first got started with acupuncture, my dad used to never come into the clinic that much. Once in a while, he’d show up. As soon as I got the PEMF, he would be hitting me up several times a week, “Are you busy this morning? Can I come in?” So I mean, I think people really start to do well with the value they get from it. And it shows in the fact that they ask for it and want more.

Lisa Krzyzewski

Absolutely.

Riz Lakhani, L. Ac., M. Ac

All right, well, any parting thoughts at all, Lisa?

Lisa Krzyzewski

No, it’s been a great conversation and thanks for sharing with me some of your experiences as well. I mean, I love PEMF as a therapy. It’s one of the ones I actually recommend to a lot of patients to get for home use. We have a lot of things in the clinic that you really could never buy and bring home. They’re just too price or too complex to use. And so PEMF is a really nice option for people who maybe have, say osteoarthritis, and need some ongoing support, and there’s lots of great PEMF options for home use.

Riz Lakhani, L. Ac., M. Ac

And once you have one, the whole house can use it. So it’s not limited to one person, and even animals can use it.

Lisa Krzyzewski

Yes.

Riz Lakhani, L. Ac., M. Ac

Now there’s so many ways to incorporate it. Well, I wanna thank you so much for your time because I know you’re very, very busy and you’re running your amazing clinic, which is full of so many cool things. I actually can’t wait to maybe visit one day ’cause I really got excited when I saw all the cool stuff you’ve got online. Thank you so much for your time and your expertise and keep up the great, great work, and I hope you have a great rest of your day.

Lisa Krzyzewski

Great, thanks so much for having me. Take care, Riz.

Riz Lakhani, L. Ac., M. Ac

All right, you too.

Lisa Krzyzewski

Bye.