Neural Therapy
Neural therapy is a healing technique for attempting to deal with chronic pain and other longstanding illnesses and conditions. It involves injecting local anesthetics into autonomic ganglia (nerve cell bodies), peripheral nerves, scars, glands, acupuncture points, trigger points (points that produce a sharp pain when pressed), and other tissues and anatomical sites. Though unfamiliar to most American practitioners--and therefore part of alternative medicine--neural therapy is apparently quite widely used in Europe, especially for the treatment of chronic pain. According to its advocates, such as the American Academy of Neural Therapy, this "gentle healing technique" can instantly and lastingly resolve chronic problems when correctly applied (Klinghardt, 1991). The history of neural therapy began with the discovery of local anesthetics in the late 19th century. In 1883, the Russian physiologist Ivan Petrov (1849-1936) laid the basis for the entire field when he hypothesized that the nervous system exercises a coordinating influence over all organic functions. Before he developed psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud ~(1856-1939) discovered the anesthetic effect of cocaine on mucous membranes. In 1890, abdominal surgery was first performed using a 0.2-percent solution of cocaine. In 1903, a French surgeon first employed cocaine as an epidural anesthetic. One obvious problem with cocaine, however, was its potential to be addictive. In 1904, Alfred Einhorn discovered procaine (novocaine), still widely used in medicine. In 1906, G. Spiess observed that wounds and inflammations subsided with fewer complications if they were first injected with novocaine. In 1925, a French surgeon, René Leriche, used this compound for treating chronic intractable arm pain. He called novocaine "the surgeon's bloodless knife." In the same year, two German physicians described another local effect, claiming that an intravenous injection of novocaine could abolish migraine headaches (Dorman and Raven, 1991; Dosch, 1984). A key development came in 1940, when Ferdinand Huneke discovered an instant healing reaction--what is now called the "lightning reaction" or the "Huneke phenomenon." First, Huneke injected novocaine into the shoulder joint of a woman with a severely painful, frozen ~right shoulder, but without any beneficial local effect. Instead, unexpectedly, the woman developed severe itching in a seemingly unrelated and relatively distant scar on her lower left leg. On a hunch, Huneke then injected novocaine into the itching scar, and within seconds the woman obtained full and painless range of motion in her right shoulder. The woman's scar dated from an operation on an infected tibia (shin bone). Although the leg operation was a "success," the woman soon afterward developed the frozen shoulder on the opposite side of her body. The initial scar had become, in neural therapy terminology, an interference field (Huneke, F., 1950; Huneke, W., 1952). By combining the use of local anesthetics with the treatment of such (inferred) interference fields, Huneke and colleagues created an entirely new healing system they called neural therapy (Dosch, 1985). Neural therapy is said to be widely used for pain control in Europe, Russia, and Latin America and by 35 percent of all Western German physicians. At first sight, it seems improbable that a scar on the left leg could cause a pain in the right shoulder or be resolved by an injection of local anesthetic into a scar at a site so distant from ~the shoulder. Dietrich Klinghardt offers several possible explanations for this phenomenon (Klinghardt, 1991), including one that he calls the "nervous system theory." Klinghardt's teacher, A. Fleckenstein, demonstrated that normal body cells and cells in scar tissue have a different electric potential across the cell membrane. In cells that have lost normal potential, the ion flux across the membrane stops (Fleckenstein, 1950). This means that toxic substances and abnormal minerals build up inside the cell. In turn, the cell becomes unable to heal itself and resume normal functioning. Treatment with local anesthetic may help restore ion flux for 1 to 2 hours, which could be enough time for the cell to partially repair itself and resume normal activity. Another theory is that scar tissue can become, in effect, a "battery" of about 1.5 volts in the body. This scar "battery" sends forth abnormal electrical signals that disturb the autonomic nerve fibers (which lack the protective myelin coating possessed by most other nerve cells in the body). This electrical abnormality can disturb the overall autonomic nervous system, leading to systemic, and often severe, bodily dysfunction. ~Also proposed is what Klinghardt calls the "fascial continuity theory." According to this theory, the fascia, or sheaths of connective tissues, are all interconnected. If scar tissue is present anywhere in this system, fascial movement can become impaired. Klinghardt claims that back pain, for instance, can sometimes be completely resolved by injecting a local anesthetic (novocaine or lidocaine without epinephrine) into a scar, such as that from an appendectomy or gallbladder operation. In addition to its antipain functions, neural therapy has been used to treat allergies, chronic bowel problems, kidney disease, prostate and female urogenital problems, infertility, and tinnitus (Brand, 1983), as well as other problems (Pischinger, 1991). Klinghardt contends that although many diseases and conditions can be successfully treated by a variety of healing techniques, some conditions can be treated successfully only with neural therapy. If it is an effective method, why is neural therapy not more widely accepted in the United States? One explanation may be that it does not lend itself to a double-blind study. According to Klinghardt, "each patient with low back pain needs to be treated in a different ~way." In addition, neural therapy also requires a meticulous injection technique and detailed history taking, both of which are time-consuming.