When fitting someone with a plaster cast to allow a broken leg to heal put electrodes on the skin and terminate the wires from the electrodes with a socket attached to the cast.

After a week or so to allow the bone to start rejoining, start putting weak electric pulses down the wires to stimulate and exercise the muscles inside the cast. As the bone heals increase the power so that leg isn't the usual withered stick that emerges from a cast and is closer to being a usable limb again.
-- st3f, Mar 08 2002

for children http://www.geocitie...llage/9021/tes.html
is this the sort of thing bliss means? [po, Mar 09 2002, last modified Oct 05 2004]

Hx for ages http://www.orthofix...nDocument&Title=BGS
[reensure, Mar 10 2002]

Plug it into the wrong receptacle and you emerge from the cast with a cooked member.
-- neelandan, Mar 08 2002


I could have used something like this when I had one leg in an immobilizer for 6 months - the other for 3. God, I miss skiing.
-- thumbwax, Mar 08 2002


this electrical stimulus is to make muscle contractions? won't the leg want to kick out against the plaster? good god, are you a sadist?
-- po, Mar 08 2002


You'd need to apply quite a long pulse to a very specific area to make a joint flex. Short generally applied pulses cause many small contractions of different muscle groups at the same time with no overall movement. It feels like a gentle tingling under the skin or, if you turn it up high, like pins and needles.
-- st3f, Mar 08 2002


I vaguely recall some evidence that the electrical stimulation might also speed the body's bone knitting.
-- quarterbaker, Mar 08 2002


How 'bout a tanning plaster cast? And one that can scratch that infuriating itch. Mmm, itch...
-- lubbit, Mar 08 2002


Reminds me of the time I lead a field trip to see the huge strip-mining electric shovels in Eastern Ohio, the Hanna Coal Company in particular. We posted notices around the Dayton area to invite the general public. We got one response--a guy with a wildly painted (a tropical scene--palm trees, parrots) van. He had his right arm in one of those strutted casts--the whole arm was in the cast, strutted at a 90-degree angle to the continuation of the cast on his chest--you follow? So he could not drive his van, but allowed its use for the group. In the van he had a car battery, which we discovered during the trip he used to trickle DC voltage into his arm to encourage the bone to knit. According to the man he had been in the cast for almost two years! His arm apparently refused to heal. Why did his arm refuse to heal? Could it be because of the fact that during his time with us on the field trip, he used every form of tobacco in existence--sometimes simultaneously. He had little cigars, he had cigarettes, he had snuff, he had chewing tobacco. If tobacco suppositories were available he probably was using them although he was couth enough not to share that with us. His voice was completely hoarse, like someone who speaks while belching. His shoes kept coming untied so we had to tie them for him. Someone had to keep fishing his wallet out of his loose-fitting jogging pants so he could buy more tobacco products when we made rest stops. Why did this man tag along to see the great electric shovels? He said he grew up on a tobacco farm on land that the coal companies bought and strip-mined.
-- entremanure, Mar 09 2002


¯po: your link is to a product that is very effective for treating patients with one of several degenerative muscular states. Similar to pulsed electromagnetic field (pemf) generators used to treat bone nonunion and bone grafts. Advice to the wary consumer: a certain range of pemf strength and duration has been shown to be effective in stimulating bone growth or osteogenesis, so I'd not recommend the methods described by ¯entremanure in the annotation above -- by the by, how'd you keep a straight face in the company of?
-- reensure, Mar 10 2002


yes exactly, reensure, st3f's original idea was to exercise the muscles, which is exactly what my link was about.
-- po, Mar 10 2002


reensure--This was the kind of person who is so unusual that you just go into overload, taking in all the conflicting information--putting you into a state of awe. He was someone you feel sorry for at the same time you want to laugh at, at the same time you want to help, at the same time you are disgusted by, at the same time you are annoyed with, at the same time you are puzzled by. Only after the encounter was it possible to laugh a little, but mostly just awed by how strange it was. Directed by David Lynch rather than by Ron Howard.
-- entremanure, Mar 10 2002


Hey, if it prevents muscle atrophy it deserves another (+)
-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, May 23 2004



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