Tens Handheld Electronic Pulse Massager Unit – Excellent Muscle Stimulator for Electrotherapy Pain Management

Half stars aren't allowed. :-/Anyway. I bought this in early January, and started off tentatively. I was very concerned at first about using it more than 15 minutes per day, or using it while using electronics. There is still something in the back of my mind that doesn't like violating these preset notions, but I have been anyway.The first time I used back-to-back cycles (30 minutes total), I felt icky afterward. Slightly sick, slightly dizzy, slightly headachy, and nothing quite like I'd ever felt before. It made me SO nervous. However, I was also super tired, so I have come to believe that had a lot to do with it. Since then, I've eventually begun to use it more than once a day, and one night I was in so much pain, I just kept moving the pads to a new location every 15 minutes and starting a new cycle. I used it for a couple of hours with no ill effects.What I LOVE: I have such excruciating pain in my mid-back that I sometimes want to vomit from the pain. This has helped SO MUCH with that. I am grateful. If it never helps for another thing, it was $30 very well spent just for my mid-back.I have tried it with mixed results in many other places:*Sometimes on the back of my neck, it's very pleasant and tingly, and other times it's sharp and stabby.*I get really tense shoulders, and though I REEEEALLY want this to work for them, and keep trying in the hopes that it will, it is counterproductive. It stimulates the muscle in such a way that the muscle totally tenses up. By the time you have it pulsed high enough that it feels good, it also is tensing the muscle too much. Thus, it hasn't helped my tense shoulders at all.*I get really bad tension headaches, and I was so hopeful that this would help. But it doesn't seem to matter where along my neck or shoulders, or even back, I place the pads, my headache remains. I'm super bummed about that. (Note: some reports actually advise using this ON your head. I would be very interested in trying that, but the directions specifically say not to, and not to apply to your jugular vein either (not that I would), so I have not tried them right on my head. I CAN say that hair really impedes their ability to stick/stay in place. Even just the wispy hairs on the back of my hairline keep them from sticking well on my neck, even when I carefully move all the hair out of the way first.)*I have put this all over my painful bunion area, and it has neither seemed to help or hurt it.*I tried this on my abdomen for menstrual cramps, and not only did it seem to help, but it tensed up my muscles in a super good way. Like, I could maybe use this instead of doing crunches! ;)*I have tried this repeatedly on my sciatic area, and unfortunately it actually seems to aggravate the nerve, not relieve it. However, putting it on the middle of my butt-cheek helped a lot.*Lastly, I tried this ONCE on my forearms to combat some numbness in my hands that I've had for years, and it made it much worse. For days afterward my hands were even more numb than usual. HOWEVER, several months later, I was desperate for a solution to my hand numbness, so I tried again. This time, I put the electrodes on the back of my hand (you have to place them strategically, because they will really tense up the muscles. I'll attach photos of how I place them for best use), laid my hand palm down on the top of my lower thigh/upper knee area, and ran it for 15 minutes on the highest level I could stand without it turning my hand into a claw. I could feel the "life" returning to my hand right away. The next morning I awoke for the first time in ages without a numb hand. So now I do this treatment periodically.One of my favorite features is the ability to turn one side up to one level of intensity, and the other side up to a different level. That is very nice. ALSO, that the increase and decrease is very gradual, and you can do it EXACTLY how you want it, even in-between two levels. HOWEVER, this isn't nearly intense enough. Though my first few uses were at a lower level, I got used to it very quickly, and now I dial it all the way up to 10 almost as soon as I turn it on. Because of this, I went and bought a different brand that claimed to be ultra powerful, but I have had several issues with it, so I toggle between the two.If you're in pain, I see no reason whatsoever not to spend $30 to try this. And if you don't like it, rather than returning it, I think it's just plain good to have on-hand. I have let everyone I know try it since I bought it, and most of them have loved it.Lastly, as soon as I realized I was going to be using this a lot, I bought extra-large pads to replace the tiny ones that come with it. There is a lot of me to go around, so the bigger size is very useful! I wish they came standard.If you have any questions, please ask and I'll try to answer. I always check my messages.