Pure Enrichment PurePulse Duo TENS & EMS Muscle Stimulator

I purchased the Pure Enrichment Pure Pulse Duo EMS and TENS Combo Device for my mother in law because she broke her neck and is in great discomfort. I tested it to be sure it performed as I wished it to. It worked so well, I purchased a second one for my home.

My mother in law finds the TENS settings to be a relief from the constant pain. If you do not know why it is important to disrupt pain signals (aside from being comfortable), I highly recommend the book “The Brain’s Way of Healing” by Norman Doidge, M.D. No matter what, this book will be an eye opener, and he discusses pain and the neurological and actual problems of having pain in a few chapters.

[Please note that I am speaking here as a physiologist and neurology researcher at a prominent university. I do not know Dr. Doidge.]

Further, and more important, Dr. Doidge discusses how pain is a signal, where injury (or perception of injury by the body) is the thing that starts the signal. Thus, we injure a tissue and it hurts. What tells the body when to stop giving us the pain message? This is the problem for most people with chronic pain: There is nothing that tells the brain to stop. You have to ACTIVELY tell it to stop. How? Read Dr. Doidge’s book. Not a joke.

Because most of the other reviewers discuss the Pure Pulse Duo EMS and TENS Combo Device in terms of its TENS functions, I will discuss this in terms of the EMS (electrical muscle stimulation).

While I suffered a great many serious injuries in the military, and still have problems with my spine, I have used my own knowledge, training and experience to minimize my own pain, and so do not currently use the TENS settings myself. Instead, I exercise very intensely and often have quite a bit of recovery to do. Further, in my recuperation for some of my injuries, I need to provide better warm up, working, and recovery stimuli.

That is where the EMS functions come in!

Why EMS?
EMS can be used to accomplish a number of goals. The value of some may not be clear to everyone. They include, but are not limited to:
1. Pre-activity/exercise preparation – prepare muscles for activity by increasing energy, blood flow, temperature, activity state, and other parameters.
2. During training, between exertion, recovery – for instance, baseball pitchers between rounds of pitching demonstrated better recovery that resulted in higher pitch speeds using EMS. This has been validated in scientific studies.
3. Post workout Recovery – to create a muscular contraction and help enhance recovery after eccentric muscular activity. This includes increasing removal of waste byproducts and greater nutrient delivery post workout. This has been validated in scientific studies.
4. Specific muscle training – train muscle to increase muscle size and/or strength. Both have been validated in scientific studies.
5. Neural training – to improve neural signaling in order to create stronger neural activation. This has been validated in scientific studies.

What research has not validated is the use of EMS to relieve the pain that comes from training. (This is the soreness you experience from training after about 24 hours and lasting 5-7 days after activity, is known as delayed-onset muscle soreness or DOMS)

As you can tell from the information provided by the manufacturer, there are six modes that you can choose from for EMS with this device. Intensities can be set from 0 to 25 (0 to 80 milliamps per channel). Duration can be set from 5 to 60 minutes in 5-minute increments. There are two channels (each with two attachments for electrodes), and each channel can adjust only the intensity independently. Both channels adhere to the time and mode you select.

I found all of the modes were able to induce muscle contraction on any muscle I targeted. What is important is knowing how to place the electrodes so as to stimulate the muscles you wish to target. The instructions include eight examples of good placement. However, further examples and refinement are needed. For instance, I often target many muscles including my biceps, triceps, brachialis on the sides of my arms, forearm muscles, as well as my trapezius muscle, which the upper back image is not covering adequately, resulting in stimulation of other muscles.

Using the smaller electrode pads, you’re able to target muscles more carefully. You can place an electrode pad on the lower “belly” of the muscle and one on the upper “belly” of the muscle and get a nice contraction. However, for very large muscle, the small electrodes may not sufficiently cover the muscle area to cause the muscle to contract fully.

Using the larger electrode pads, it’s easier to target large muscle areas or muscle groups such as the front of the thigh, the back of the thigh, and the lower and mid back. However, you may also find you activate muscles you don’t wish to activate. For instance, if you use the large pad on the arm you may activate both the biceps muscle and well as the triceps. And on the legs, you may wish to target only the vastus medialis (teardrop muscle near the knee on inside of legs), and find that you have targeted multiple quadriceps muscles (including the rectus femoris and vastus lateralis, I find the vastus lateralis activates quickly if a pad is touching it and this can be quite a surprise, as we are not accustomed to JUST the VL contracting, except when we have cramp there.)

I am a physiologist and have a high working knowledge of anatomy and physiology. For someone not familiar with specific muscle anatomy, it is no problem. I recommend looking up the muscles in a given region that you’re going to stimulate and seeing how they are positioned and grouped. Illustrations of each muscle group will show the areas that they cover and you will often be able to feel with your hand or see where the belly of those muscles is located so that you can better place the electrode pads to stimulate specifically the muscles you wish to stimulate.

All of that said, don’t be put off, this is all very easy. Often, I have placed the electrode pads in places that I think will be good, only to find out that I’m stimulating different muscles than I wanted to stimulate. I simply turn it off, shift the electrode and start again.

I have used the electrode pads many times each and even though I’m a mildly hairy man, I have not found that they lose their stickiness easily. Clean the skin before application. You can even scrub the skin and even remove the hair for a better contact.

Always place the electrode pads back on the sheet that they came from.
They don’t need any special gel and I have not found the need to clean them yet.
Never pull on the cables, always lift up from one of the corners of the pad.
I recommend you always connect the pads to the cables while they are still on the sheet.

You can adjust the strength of the stimulus in each program, and you can adjust it separately for each set of two channels…each channel controls two small electrode pads (or one large electrode pad set.)

You can use only one channel if you wish.

The independent strength settings go from 0 to 25. When you use the mode button to set which mode you’re going to be using and the time as well as whether you’re going to use TENS or EMS, it always sets the strength to 0.

When you press channel 1 or 2, the respective signal strength setting blinks and you can then use the +/- to go up or down. However, as long as one channel is blinking, you cannot turn the device off (as “off” is also “-“!)

To switch off, be sure that neither channel nor mode selections are blinking on screen (Press “mode” to stop channels from blinking, and cycle through “mode” choices to stop them from blinking. Then press and hold the off button. To turn off

Once you have connected electrodes to pads and placed pads on your skin, you then plug in the wires to the device. Turn the device on. Press the mode button to cycle through choices: choose time, TENS/EMS, then the mode # and press up or down to select mode 1-6. Press mode again to finalize.

You then press CH1 or CH2 to select which side you want to adjust. Use the +/- to slowly increase the strength. I recommend doing that slowly so you can feel the full effect of each mode.

Some of the modes stimulate in waves (watch my video segments for all the EMS modesI), and progressively the effect of the waves on a muscle can increase. Once the muscle has been stimulated, it is more prone to higher contraction intensities after receiving additional stimuli. So, increase the intensity slowly on the programs until you’re used to how each of them affects your pad placement and muscle contractions.

I initially experimented with each of the modes. On setting each mode I slowly increased the strength of the mode. I let each mode run for a while to see how the stimuli progressed. It is always a little different based on pad placement.

NOTE: DO NOT BASE YOUR SETTINGS ON WHAT YOU FEEL! BASE THEM ON MUSCLE CONTRACTIONS.
Electrical stimulation can result in sensations for sensory neurons that have nothing to do with muscle stimulation! Increase intensity until you get good muscle contractions.

ALSO, sometimes your pad placement is going to result in odd or uncomfortable sensations if it is very close to various sensitive sensory nerve endings. Just move the electrode pad and go again.

How strong I set it depends on whether I’m trying to warm up or whether I’m trying to recover from training, or I may have previously trained intensely and wish to help speed recovery.

• Mode 1 is titled Exercise Preparation. There is no equivalent replacement for physical movement that increases heart rate, blood flow, nervous system activation, heat and metabolites throughout the body in preparation for exercise. That said, there can be big benefits to EMS stimulating the muscles prior to training, but do not think it will replace a proper warm up! The same goes for cooling down! I find this is especially useful for muscles where I am recovering from injuries past or where I tend not to get perfect or adequate warm up before very intense training. In my attached video segment for mode 1, you can see that this is waves of contraction-relaxation applied to the muscle.
• Mode 2, 3, and 4 are active recovery and produce different patterns of muscle contraction-relaxation.
o Mode 2 (see my video segment 2) is a rhythmic and continuous contraction-relaxation.
o Mode 3 (see my video segment 3) is like mode 2, except that the contraction-relaxation slows over the course of doing it.
o Mode 4 (see my video segment 4) does a short contraction then short relaxation pattern where each is a little longer.
• Mode 5 (see my video segment 5) is called Build Endurance and you will find it performs fast contraction-relaxation in waves.
• Mode 6 (see my video segment 6 and 7) is called Muscle Strengthening and in theory it trains primarily what we consider type II, (glycolytic or oxidative-glycolytic) “fast twitch” muscle. This is the “stronger” muscle fiber type, compared to the “endurance” muscle type. This mode performs a strong contraction followed by a rest, repeated for the time you set. Research tells us that if you combine this with active muscle work and also do both seperately, you benefit the most!

In my video segments, I used the small electrode pads and only one channel to demonstrate a more targeted muscle stimulation (the vastus medialis). However, this actually also stimulated a couple of other muscles in some of the modes. You can sometimes see the medialis and other muscles contract. I could have repositioned the pad after seeing the muscle contract to put it more central on the teardrop shape for more consistent and targeted effects. In video segment 7, I show activation of the brachialis (found on the outside of the biceps on the arm), which is smaller than the vastus medialis and takes less signal strength to activate.

I did not turn these up terribly high in the video segments (I used 8-11), though I could have generated stronger, longer, more complete contractions by doing so.

However, as the instructions say. always do EMS starting from a safe, seated and supported position. Muscle contractions can move you in unexpected ways. I show you the contractions moving my arm in segment 7. I could have turned it up and would nearly hit myself if I was not careful.

I find that a small belt pouch is helpful so the devise does not fall. (I have a flashlight pouch that this fits in to perfectly, also a flip phone case worked).

The device is small and I have small hands, but I have no trouble manipulating this with either hand.

There is no back light (to save power) but I have no trouble seeing the settings, even in low light.

Three AAA batteries are used (provided.) The batteries last about 15+ hours.
The device comes with four small pads and two larger pads (each enough for using all of that size when using both channels.)
There is also a set of lead wires, a pouch, batteries as I mentioned, instructions, a link to videos, and warranty info.

The device has a 3-year warranty. They support their equipment.
I should note that one of my wires was weaker than the other right out of the box and the company responded immediately to replace the wires.
You can see I had to turn up to 11 on the “bad” wire to get contractions. I get contractions earlier with the other wire.

I have not tried other brands of electrode pads, though some of the sets of electrode pads for sale have different sizes (smaller round pads) which mean more targeted application. That is compelling.

I did buy more electrode pads, in case I damaged my pads by pulling out the wire. This is something I have accidentally done in my lab work as a physiologist!

There are many units on the market which offer even more flexible EMS settings or have more channels or are wireless. I have not had the opportunity to use any of those so I can not compare. Though, I hope to try some of the other devices soon.

Great product! Buy it!

Positives:
– It is plenty powerful (at least for me)
– Standard batteries last a long time
– Intuitive controls
– Perfect size control buttons. Not too big, not too small. The unit fits nicely in your hand and you can also slip it in your pocket.
– Two sets of pads. Each set controlled individually for intensity (but not type of stim)
– The storage case was a pleasant surprise. It’s very handy to keep all of the accessories together so you don’t misplace them.

Improvements (not really negatives, just things that would improve the product):
– Add back lighting to the display. It is difficult to read in lower lighting for me even with my glasses on.
– More stim modes. You’ll find that you like certain modes and not others. More modes would give you more choices.

The price is maybe a tad high and I would enjoy more modes, otherwise, I would have given it 5 stars.