Our clinical director, Dr. Michael Cooney, who has successfully treated hundreds of people living with CRPS since 2011 using Calmare scrambler therapy, is featured in a new book on the topic,
The book is co-written by pain management physician specialist Dr. Alaa Abd-Elsayed and Eric M. Phillips, president of the International RSD Foundation.
One of our teen patients, Austin, is featured. His parents describe his significant pain relief (and leg lesion healing) after Calmare Therapy and booster treatments:
We are grateful to Austin’s family, who volunteered to share their family’s story and Austin’s positive outcome after Calmare Therapy.
Austin did return months later for three scrambler therapy booster treatments, which may be necessary for more severe or prolonged cases of chronic nerve pain.
He shared an update from the mountains (where he was snowboarding!) in February 2019:
Austin and Dr. Michael Cooney celebrate his success after undergoing Calmare scrambler for CRPS.
“I was honored to be included in a truly comprehensive book about the challenges faced by so many courageous people around the world living with CRPS,” says Dr. Cooney.
“It is vitally important that sufferers understand that drugs and invasive procedures are not the only way to reduce pain from this disease.”
Scrambler Therapy: Drug-Free, Non-Invasive Pain Management for Chronic Nerve Pain
Dr. Michael Cooney treats people with pain with a refreshingly personal approach–he talks to you before you ever step foot into our New Jersey clinic.
Calmare Therapy, cleared by the FDA more than a decade ago, is not right for everyone suffering from CRPS or other conditions resulting in chronic nerve pain.
If you are able to travel to our clinic, located in New Jersey, USA, 15 minutes outside New York City, we invite you to complete the Consult Request form below.
Dr. Cooney will personally contact you by phone within 48 hours of receipt of your message (USA and Canada only); if you are are from outside the USA/Canada, we will be happy to pre-schedule a video chat consultation.
There is no fee for this consultation and no time limit.
The ultimate success of your Calmare Therapy depends on several variables.
In my opinion, other than being correctly pre-qualified as a patient candidate, the doctor administering the scrambler therapy will have a critical impact on your overall pain management success.
Therefore, your Calmare provider must have extensive expertise, training and clinical skill to accurately diagnose the precise location of the original pain site/s and set the MC-5A Calmare technology accurately to support pain relief.
Four key Calmare provider responsibilities:
Strategically positioning each of the scrambler therapy leads on the patient in accordance with the original injury and current pain regions
Setting, overseeing and adjusting the device settings during each of the 10 treatments
Managing and responding to ongoing patient feedback
Monitoring day-by-day pain management levels based on patient input.
I will be your Calmare provider, 100 percent of the time, from start to finish ─ no assistants, no support staff.
The placement of the leads (patches), attached to each of the algorithms, as you can see below, must be precisely positioned in order to successfully alleviate the nerve pain.
If these leads are placed in the wrong area, this lessens the overall capability of the Calmare MC-5A technology to optimally perform its job of lowering your pain and lessening any related physical symptoms.
I have also served as an expert Trainer for new doctors introducing Calmare.
This is a responsibility I take very seriously.
What to look for in your Calmare provider
Clinical Director Dr. Michael Cooney places the scrambler therapy leads on a CRPS patient.
The most experienced Calmare Therapy providers have received a careful review and on-site examination by the company’s administrators, who may or may not designate the top providers as Calmare Certified.
I strongly encourage you to seek out these providers for your therapy.
Secondly, ask the provider you are considering how many patients they have treated with your specific chronic pain condition ─ back and neck pain, post-surgical pain, RSD / CRPS / fibromyalgia, pain after chemotherapy, diabetic neuropathy, etc.
Your Calmare technology will be most successful when your chosen provider has advanced expertise in the placement of each lead.
Finally, peruse the internet and read reviews about the provider you are considering.
Get firsthand information about what scrambler therapy is really like by connecting directly with our previous patients.
Speak with Our Calmare Therapy Clients
At Calmare NJ USA, we offer an exclusive program called the Patient-2-Patient program, where you can be in contact with one of our previous patients who has a similar medical condition to your own.
Who better to share their Calmare treatment experiences than our own patients?
Anyone choosing Calmare should ensure the treatment is performed by a healthcare professional specially-trained in the diagnosis and treatment of several types of advanced neuropathy.
As a friendly reminder, I am happy to speak with people living with treatment-resistant chronic pain anytime. Feel free to call my office at (201) 933-4440 or email us at info@calmaretherapynj.com.
Megan and her mother took a chance and a plane ride from Canada for her to try Calmare after a difficult 4-year battle with CRPS.
In the video below, Megan describes the laundry list of therapies and pain medications she took before heading to the US to work with Dr. Michael Cooney, a leading provider of Calmare Therapy specializing in CRPS cases.
When she arrived in New Jersey during July 2019, Megan’s pain level was near a 10/10.
We handle pain therapy a little differently than most pain management clinics.
We take a personal approach from day one.
If you or a loved one has tried pain medications and neuropathic pain treatments without success (reduction of pain and related physical symptoms), don’t give up hope.
The majority of chronic pain patients we help have been right where you are now.
First and foremost, we’d like to learn more about your nerve pain battle.
After you’ve reviewed our website and learned how Calmare works–and what type of medical conditions are appropriate for therapy, complete the eCard below, email us privately at info@calmaretherapynj.com or call our clinic at 201.933.4440 and we’ll put you directly in touch with our clinical director, Dr. Michael Cooney, who personally speaks by phone with every potential patient.
THE FACTS
The truth of the matter is Calmare is not right for every patient who wishes to undergo scrambler therapy.
After your video or phone consultation, if Dr. Cooney does not determine scrambler therapy has a strong probability of significantly reducing or eliminating your chronic pain, he will not approve you for treatment.
But you never know until you reach out, have faith and continue your quest to win the war on pain.
We’re in the midst of a very busy week, but we always start our day by checking email and social media profiles to see how our patients are doing post-treatment.
This morning, we were delighted to receive a 5-starFacebook review from the mother of a patient from Canada who just completed her Calmare treatments with us to combat a 4-year battle against CRPS.
Dr. Cooney loves this image with Megan and we are proud to share her mother’s review:
“Dr. Cooney just gave our daughter her life back after four years of intense suffering in her right foot with CRPS.
She started her treatment with a pain level of 9/10 and seven treatments later she was at a zero!!
We cannot thank this amazing, kind wonderful man enough!!!
Dr. Cooney will forever hold a huge part of our hearts.”
Nathalie M.
Dr. Michael Cooney obtained specialized training to use the Calmare MC-5A scrambler therapy device in 2010 and began treating his medication and therapy-resistant patients with chronic nerve pain in 2011.
Today, he has helped relieve advanced neuropathy in more than 1,000 patients who travel to Rutherford, New Jersey for his personalized treatment.
We invite to you read our Patient Case Studies page to review patient experiences.
Should you wish to speak via phone or video chat directly with Dr. Cooney about your chronic pain condition, call our clinic at 201.933.4440, email us privately at info@calmaretherapynj.comor complete the card below and Dr. Cooney will reach out to you directly.
In June, to offset a recent increase in pain, she returned over the weekend to undergo two booster treatments, one Saturday and one Sunday, leaving us pain-free once again.
She and her parent headed back to Virginia immediately so she could return to school on Monday morning to complete her final exams.
Gizzelle’s family was able to lodge at the Ronald McDonald House for children and young adults under the age of 21 at a very affordable rate.
What are Calmare Booster Treatments?
Depending on the severity of the original chronic nerve pain condition–and the length of time the patient has been experiencing neuropathy–periodic booster treatments may be required to combat any return of pain after the initial protocol of 10 treatments.
The length of time between the first course of treatment and any potential need for follow-up boosters can be months or several years.
In more advanced stages of prolonged or severe neuropathy, a single or series of boosters can be extremely useful against an elevation in pain.
Booster treatments can be as few as a single session to as many as 10, which will be mutually determined after a physical examination by our clinical director, Dr. Michael Cooney, in cooperation with the patient/family if the patient is under age 18.
By Dr. Michael Cooney, Clinical Director, Calmare Therapy NJ USA
In 2010, as I obtained the professional training to use the Calmare MC-5A device, I grew more excited about using technology to deliver pain relief to my patients without the need for any prescription drugs.
Nine years later, I’d like to offer an update about the progress we have made helping people reduce or even eliminate treatment- and medication-resistant chronic pain.
Those of us who work in pain management were not surprised to see the eventual explosion of the opioid crisis. My healthcare specialty as a doctor of chiropractic requires using drug-free techniques to minimize and eliminate pain.
Calmare scrambler is a remarkable pain management therapy for several reasons, including the fact that it can be used to combat several types of chronic nerve pain (neuropathy), including chemotherapy treatments (CIPN), Shingles (PHN), diabetes, post-surgical pain and unexplained nerve pain.
How Calmare Can Lessen Severe Pain for CRPS Sufferers
What I did not foresee was the vast community of CRPS sufferers who had tried a myriad of medications, painful procedures, surgeries, treatments– and were still left with debilitating pain.
I’m often asked why scrambler therapy is one treatment that can significantly reduce CRPS pain and physical symptoms:
Allodynia
Skin lesions that will not close/heal
Hair loss
Skin discoloration
After treating more than 1,000 patients, over the past nine years, it is apparent to me that CRPS /RSD is a unique communication between local skin tissue and the pain center of the brain.
How Calmare Therapy Works
The Calmare MC-5A device scrambles this misfiring pain message/signal–which says there is pain—when, in fact, there is not.
After the technology scrambles this misfiring message over a series of daily treatments for a period of two weeks, in most cases, the brain’s misfiring message ceases and pain is eliminated.
Using several small electrodes (think EKG) carefully placed in the region of the injury, the technology sends a mild and painless “no pain” message to the brain through the electrodes.
Essentially, the scrambler machine “overrides” the brain’s confused message and corrects it to the ‘no pain here” message.
Keep in mind, the brain can send this faulty pain message to any region of the body—even a location which never sustained any kind of injury.
There is, in fact, no physiological reason for the pain.
As a comparison, phantom limb pain can result when a person who has undergone an amputation still feels significant pain in the part of the body which has been amputated.
Calmare is a ‘Provider-Dependent’ pain therapy.
Therefore, it is essential to confirm your provider’s expertise
and measurable success treatment your type of neuropathy.
Calmare Clinical Trial Success: Mayo Clinic
Dr. Charles L. Loprinzi, who was interviewed in January 2016 after leading his own successful Calmare clinical trial for the Mayo Clinic, explains,
“TENS (a self-administered tens unit) is thought to work through the gateway theory of temporary pain relief, whereby normal touch sensations blocks pain sensations.
But scrambler therapy, on the other hand, provides ‘no-pain’ electrical information via nerves which have received transmissions of chronic pain information.”
Dr. Loprinzi said that through a process called ‘plasticity,’ the brain is ‘retrained’ and will no longer register a pain sensation in the affected area.
To date, there are at least 20 published reports on scrambler therapy that included results involving close to 1,000 patients in total.
These reports include clinical practice summaries, prospective non-randomized clinical trials and randomized controlled trials, including two trials that sought to double-blind patients and investigators.
With patients’ permission, we regularly share their outcomes on our website. I’d like to share a few of our successful patient outcomes in the past year:
Peter Hinninger – New Jersey, USA
CRPS for 17 Years
For 17 long years, Peter tried every medication and every treatment, including a spinal cord stimulator (neuromodulation or SCS) to lessen his chronic pain.
Still, his pain level hovered around a consistent 7-8 on the Pain Scale.
After the completion of the standard 10-treatment therapy, we both teared up when he realized he was pain-free for the first time in more than a decade.
Peter and his long-time partner co-wrote a bookdetailing his Calmare Therapy treatment experience.
Cara adds a pin to Scotland on the Calmare patient map. (April 2018)
Cara – Scotland
Pediatric CRPS
Young teenager Cara from the UK underwent several therapies and pain management medications to lessen her neuropathy. She was still left in pain throughout much of her body.
Ultimately, her family elected to seek an alternative medicine solution and chose to cross the pond to the U.S. so that Cara could be treated by our Calmare New Jersey team.
I’m delighted to report she sustained a terrific outcome. Best of all, she left smiling with her pain level down to a 1/10.
“When my pain management doctor told me a spinal cord stimulator (SCS) was the final treatment option, I knew I had to take matters into my own hands and reach out to the chronic pain community for a less invasive option,” Tonya explains.
After her routine hand and wrist surgery, the chronic pain started in one hand and soon spread to the other. As the condition worsened, the chronic nerve pain spread to her neck, back and stomach.
Tonya tells her personal story after undergoing Calmare Therapy:
Hope, Fortitude, Tenacity, Sheer Determination
You can read or watch more of our patient stories, most of whom arrived at our clinic bearing the weight of daily pain that made work, school–even socializing or taking a walk in the park–impossible.
They courageously tried invasive pain relief procedures and side-effect-laden painkillers and opioids without success, up to the day they arrived at our clinic.
Not surprisingly, many new patients arrive at our clinic skeptical and dejected.
Who could blame them?
But they all had one key attribute that remained steadfast–regardless of all the treatment disappointments.
Hope.
And we were honored that they mustered the remarkable fortitude to try (one more time) to mitigate their pain and regain their quality of life.
Providing Pain Relief to Children, Teens, Adults and Seniors
Eight years after introducing scrambler therapy to our clinic, I have treated children, teens, parents, and grandparents, most of whom are living pain levels from 8-10 every day.
In 2019, Calmare is now the only pain relief therapy we offer here in our NJ clinic.
After 10 daily treatment sessions, lasting about 35-minutes each, more than seven in 10 patients achieve a pain-free state or a reduction in pain to the degree that enables them to resume a pleasurable quality of life.
Why do 30 percent not achieve pain relief?
Sometimes they have additional health issues which interfere with treatment, sometimes they are non-compliant after therapy, and sometimes we just don’t know why Calmare did not lessen their pain, unfortunately.
In this era of failed opioid pain relief and increasing difficulty obtaining medication for chronic pain, people in pain are seeking drug-free options to lessen pain.
Nine years since first introducing Calmare scrambler therapy, I have never felt more assured that this treatment can dramatically elevate the quality of life for people living with chronic pain.
Dr. Michael Cooney is one of seven certified Calmare providers in the U.S. His clinic is located just outside New York City. He is a professionally certified chiropractor who has been treating severe acute and chronic pain conditions for more than 35 years.
After introducing Calmare Therapy in 2011, he soon began helping people with treatment-resistant neuropathy from as far away as South America, South Africa, Australia and Europe.
Dr. Cooney offers complimentary phone or video chat consultations with people from outside the U.S. To learn more, visit www.calmaretherapynj.com email info@calmaretherapynj.com or call 201.933.4440.
Depending on the severity of the original condition, and the length of time the patient has been experiencing chronic pain, periodic booster treatments may be required to combat any return of pain.
While many patients never need further scrambler therapy, more advanced stages or prolonged or severe neuropathy, one or more boosters can be extremely useful against an elevation in pain.
What to Do if Your Neuropathic Pain Level Returns or Increases
Calmare patients who experience a recurrence of pain should document when the pain returns, subsides and what environmental issues were involved (stress, weather conditions, excessive use of the affected area) or if there was no specific cause for the elevation of pain.
We hope the lucky fellow who has the honor of taking this young lady to the dance appreciates how special she truly is!
To learn more about Calmare scrambler therapy or schedule booster treatments (even if you’re not preparing for your prom) reach out to our team by emailing us atinfo@calmaretherapynj.com or call our clinic in New Jersey at (201) 933-4440.
Leave it to the teenagers to discover Calmare scrambler therapy on YouTube!
Since we launched scrambler therapy here in New Jersey in 2011, we have used YouTube to share patient case studies with a broader audience seeking drug-free, alternative treatments for chronic nerve pain.
Emma from Montreal is a 16-year-old suffering from CRPS as a result of a fall from a bicycle.
After battling intensifying pain in her right and then left leg for the past year, her neuropathy eventually prohibited her from attending high school and seeing friends regularly.
She had undergone pain management injections and even reported to Ketamine to help lessen her pain.
All efforts were unsuccessful.
A Teenager Discovers Her Own CRPS Pain Relief Solution
She searched “CRPS” on YouTube one day, hoping to discover other young people like her who were socially isolated because of the condition.
During her search, she discovered several teenagers from around the world who had successfully undergone Calmare scrambler therapy with us and left pain-free or at significantly reduced pain levels, including:
Emma and her parents arrived here in Rutherford on February 25, 2019; her pain level hovered around 7.5/10.
Steadily, each day, she underwent her scrambler therapy treatment and most days, her pain level decreased. On the tenth and final day of therapy, she left with a 2/10 pain level, which had been sustained for a few days.
Gizzelle’s family was able to lodge at the 
Depending on the severity of the original chronic nerve pain condition–and the length of time the patient has been experiencing neuropathy–periodic booster treatments may be required to combat any return of pain after the initial protocol of 10 treatments.
