FROM THE ARCHIVES.
Whilst having a clean up at the ARC Offices, we came across this article from 08/04/2015. We thought we would put it up as a blast from the past and to see how far we have come.
The ArcEquine unit was this month chosen as one of the best 20 inventions and innovations in the UK for the Gadget Show Live British Inventors’ Project. Eleanor Jones met the man behind the ‘miracle’ microcurrent machine.
IAN Thirkell is a former Met Police copper, who has never ridden in his life.
But the 66-year-old from Hawkhurst has made a difference to the lives of thousands of horses, other animals and people with his ArcEquine unit, causing significant improvement to conditions from broken legs to bullet wounds and from allergies to asthma.
The technology behind the Arc is simple, but its effects are fantastic. The unit generates minute sequences of electrical current which replicate exactly that produced by every cell in the body.
By doing so, it appears to promote and speed up healing, reduce pain, both mental and psychological, remove scar tissue, regenerate and, as Ian describes it, “completely re- boot and rebalance the body”.
“I’ve devoted 13 years to exploring the boundaries of the clinical applications of this technology”, says Ian. “I haven’t found them yet.”
The former Skinners’ pupil has seen more than 3,000 subjects, from cows with prolapsed uteruses to amputees with phantom limb pain, and the Arc has helped all of them.
But when he first heard of microcurrent technology, when his wife was offered the chance to study the subject for a PhD, Ian, who had recently retired from the Met, was deeply sceptical.
“My wife explained how it worked and I was totally scathing”, he remembers. “For someone with my evidence-based police background, it was completely illogical – but I kept an open mind.”
Ian read books associated with his wife’s course, grew intrigued with this technology and its ‘incredible’ results and eventually, using a basic prototype delivery system, started some trials of his own.
“Someone told me the physiology of horses is very similar to that of people so the effects must be the same”, he says. “So I set up a company as a vehicle to test it. I quickly found that no one would send me a horse which the vets had said might come right. The ones I was sent were far worse than that – they’d had life-changing, career- threatening injuries and their other option was being retired or shot.”
Between 2002 and 2004, Ian was sent 16 racehorses, with injuries such as completely ruptured tendons which should have meant they were never ridden again, let alone raced. But the average time from the start of treatment to the first race back was 30 weeks. And although he has not yet created a unit specifically for human use, riders who have used it on their mounts have been so impressed with its effects, they have used it to treat themselves, with comparable results. Ian has also worked with sportsmen and women competing at international level.
So how does it work?
“The unit replicates the current which exists in the body at cellular level”, he explains. “It affects everything that goes in and out of each cell and therefore the proper function of the body, which is entirely made up of cells.
“If there’s damage or trauma to a group of cells, it’s like a broken electric circuit, it doesn’t work properly. In layman’s terms, we introduce this same current from an external source and it re-boots the body. It’s like a defibrillator almost in that it shocks the system into working again but not only that, it works at an enhanced level. It’s like a set of jump leads, which kick-start and supercharge the body.”
The unit does not appear particularly ground-breaking at first sight. A small black box and a strap, designed to fit on a horse’s leg but just as comfortable on a human arm.
The user selects the programme he or she wants – there are two different sequences of current, each delivered in two different ways, which therefore have slightly different effects – applies gel to the rubber electrode pads, straps it on and leaves it for three hours.
And although intermittent or occasional use has been known to have beneficial effect, the key is to allow the treatment time to work. “The two most important words are compliance and patience”, says Ian.
“The microcurrent seems to have a cumulative effect, it slowly builds. This isn’t a silver bullet, it doesn’t work overnight – although I have seen that happen, it isn’t normal. We recommend that to give it the best chance of working properly, you give it six weeks.
“This isn’t a miracle cure, nothing is, but it will work if you give it a chance.”
Although it may seem illogical, the unit does not have to be strapped to the affected part of the body – far from it. In fact if a horse has an injured leg, the Arc is rotated between the other three limbs, yet the injured one heals.
“This isn’t one cell talking to one other cell, it’s one talking to lots of others”, Ian explains.
“If you stub your toe, you pull it away immediately. The signal has gone up to your brain and back down again instantly.
“It works systemically so it doesn’t matter where you introduce the current, it always goes to the right place, it seems to seek out whatever’s out of place.”
“I first found out about that when I dealt with a woman in Ashford, who had an ankle problem. She put the unit on her leg and when I saw her six months later, she said the ankle was better but that she had even more to be grateful about. She said her hay fever had gone and that while her hair had been sparse and she’d had a bald patch the size of a 50p, her hair was thick and lustrous and the bald patch had gone. The unit had only ever been on her leg.”
Ian tells of other subjects who used the Arc to treat a specific condition but had also noticed sensations in other places.
“I always asked if they’d injured that place and the answer was always yes. My theory is that the current’s done its job, gone looking for other things to repair, found scar tissue and eliminated it.”
As well as removing old scar tissue, Ian says, another remarkable thing about the ArcEquine is that it heals by regenerating cells. So while a torn tendon would naturally repair itself with scar tissue – which has different elastic qualities to the original fibres and attaches at two points so there is more risk of re-injury – the Arc induces regeneration of the original fibres. “It creates a different type of collagen”, Ian explains. “We don’t know why, but it does.”
“I’m not scientific, the last 13 years have been trial and error, that’s one reason it’s taken so long to get where we are now.”
“Relatively early on, about 2004, it became apparent that this was a very significant way of treating many, many conditions. This was
exciting but a double-edged sword as dyed-in-the-wool clinicians and vets couldn’t accept that a tiny electric current could do that.”
“I made a conscious decision early on to go slowly. If I’d stood up and made all sorts of claims, I’d have been attacked by other agencies, including pharmaceutical companies, and the technology could have been discredited very easily. I wasn’t prepared to risk it as this is too important to be rushed, but now I’ve built a wealth of anecdotal evidence so people will look at it carefully, with clinical trials.”
“We have to go through regulatory hoops, to get approval, for the human version. We’ll have double- blind clinical trials, using it on people after knee replacements, trying to show that using it before and after the operation influences the return to normality. This could be so significant for the NHS.”
“I’ve been doing this for 13 years and it’s cost me a fortune but I’ve yet to take a penny from it. Yes, I’d like to make money but that’s not the driving force. That’s to have acceptance of the Arc as a mainstream alternative to drug dependency and drug use.”
“We’re at a tipping point now, it’s quite emotional and very exciting. I haven’t a clue where it’ll be this time next year – not a clue.”
MY VIEW: Physiotherapist Lena Pearson-Wood ‘takes her hat off’ to ArcEquine creator
ANIMAL and human physiotherapist and livery yard owner Lena Pearson-Wood has been working with Ian since 2006.
She said: “Ian arrived in my yard looking for somewhere to keep his broken horses and I was hugely cynical, especially as when the bandage came off the first horse, its fetlock hit the ground. “Six weeks later, that horse jumped out of my stable yard over a wall at least five feet high and galloped around completely sound and I thought ‘Oh. Maybe miracles happen’.
“But the next one was similar. We started putting it on complete no-hope situations, humans and animals. You name it, ligaments, tendons, fractures, I can’t think of a case where it’s been used properly and hasn’t worked. “Whereas most ways of promoting healing do so by increasing circulation, this is a step away from that. We’ve had horses treated for tendon injuries and they’ve healed but also, their temperaments have improved, their feet have got better or their tails have really grown. “I could go on and on, it’s an astounding piece of kit. I take my hat off to Ian, he walks into the room and tells everyone about it, whether it’s a professor or a local man with chronic pain.
“He’s passionate about it and so am I.”
For more information, visit www.arcequine.com
