Bioccular Transcerebral Iontophoresis

Bioccular transcerebral iontophoresis (BTI) is a treatment that was developed around 1915 by Georges Bourguignon, M.D., D.Sc., who was a neurologist, neurophysiologist and a member of the French Academy of Medicine. This treatment was first used to treat World War I veterans who were suffering from the sequelae of severe head injuries, such a bullet going through their heads. BTI treatments have since been used successfully with those who have affections of the brain not only following head trauma (such as pain, epilepsy, muscle contractions, muscle atrophy, paralysis, depression, fatigue, sleeplessness and vertigo) but also due to inflammation (such as multiple sclerosis), infection (encephalitis, meningitis or facial paralysis), stroke (hemiplegia, amnesia), hypoxia (spastic paralysis, cerebral palsy or due to respiratory arrest), or degenerative diseases (such as Parkinson’s disease or aphasia). Other conditions that have also been helped are sequelae from damage to the eyes (such as corneal scarring, retinitis and optic neuritis), to the spinal cord (such as following spinal cord injury, inflammation (such as transverse myelitis) or infection (such as poliomyelitis)), peripheral nerve injury (polyneuropathy), diplopia, mental retardation, Down syndrome, and retarded growth in children.

BTI has also been used very successfully to restore tissues that have been damaged following prolonged inflammation as in patients with scleroderma and may also be the only known effective treatment for people suffering from complex regional pain syndrome, formerly known as reflex sympathetic dystrophy syndrome (including the more minor vasomotor dysfunctions, such as cold and discolored limbs), which typically results from injuries to important nerve plexuses. Since this syndrome was first identified during the U.S. Civil War, it has baffled all attempts of remedial treatment, aside from BTI.

BTI has also been used in patients with some types of upper motor neuron lesions associated with weakness, spasticity, clonus, and hyperreflexia; patients with scar tissue abnormalities and keloids, Dupuytren’s contracture and post-traumatic joint ankylosis.

Dr. Joseph Saine went to Paris soon after World War II to learn this method of treatment from Professor Bourguignon and afterward supervised thousands of BTI treatments over a period of 55 years in his clinic in Montreal. In particular, he treated numberless patients with multiple sclerosis and epilepsy with marked improvement.

Principles of treatment

A tiny, painless and barely perceptible direct electrical current is transmitted from the eyes through the brain to the neck, back or extremities.

This micro-electrical current carries different ions (i.e., calcium, magnesium, or iodide) through the brain and spinal cord from one electrode to the other.

Neuronal tissue rehabilitation and function restoration are likely achieved by decreasing scar tissues in the eyes, brain, spinal cord, peripheral nerves and soft tissues and improving circulation, which helps regulate function and repair neural tissues. Biomedical researchers have also demonstrated that simple direct electrical currents can stimulate nerve cell regeneration by themselves.

Treatment description

The treatment lasts approximately 30 minutes and is initially performed once or twice a day for 5 consecutive days. The frequency of treatment is then decreased to 3 times a week, then once a week to once a month. During a BTI treatment, patients must lie quietly for the length of the treatment, and therefore, it is not always well suited for children under 5 unless the child is particularly cooperative or when the treatment is administered during sleep.

Prognosis

Positive results following BTI treatments are usually noticed within the first few treatments and are, as a rule, cumulative and lasting. Treatments are continued for as long as the patient is improving, at which time the patient takes a pause. When treatments are resumed after a pause period of usually three to four weeks, improvements become manifest again.

What improves in any individual patient is not predictable beforehand, as benefits are limited to the body’s capacity to fully heal damage to neural tissues.

Side effects

BTI treatments have been utilized on thousands of patients for more than 100 years. When given by a well-trained professional, side effects are minimal to nonexistent, with mild and short-lived skin irritations typically observed at the site of contact with the electrodes.

Case examples

Case 1 – A 48-year-old woman who had been suffering from multiple sclerosis for 16 years had lost most of the functions in her left hand and arm for at least 5 years. In 1996, she received three BTI treatments and recovered 70% of the functions in her left hand and arm. In 1998, she returned for another week of treatments and recovered another 20% of functions in her left hand and arm and 30% of functions in her left leg. In 2000, she received another series of treatments with further improvements in her left leg.

Case 2 – F.T. is a 47-year-old woman who has been affected with Bell’s palsy since 1972 and has been legally blind since the age of 2 following measles, which affected her eyes (“My retinas were burnt from playing in the sun while having measles.”). In 2000, she received eight BTI treatments within a week and recovered her sight (from 225/10 to 50/20) and 90% of her facial muscle function. She reported that for the first time in 28 years, she was able to blow out the candles on her birthday cake.

Case 3 – A 20-year-old male who, at 18, experienced a sudden cardiac arrest with loss of breathing for eight minutes. Following this incident, he was left completely paralyzed on his left side, with a loss of sensory and motor functions, as well as total loss of memory and language. After a year and a half of physical and speech therapy and special tutoring, he improved to about 50% and maintained that level for the next several months. Dramatic mood swings and insomnia that surfaced after his cardiac arrest never improved despite undergoing several different rehabilitation therapies. After the first BTI treatment, his mood swings and insomnia disappeared, and his personality returned to what it was before the cardiac arrest. On the morning before the fifth treatment, he recognized his father by saying, “Hi, Dad,” for the first time since the cardiac arrest, having completely lost the ability to recognize any face (known as facial agnosia or prosopagnosia). After one week of BTI treatments, he recovered most of his memory, speech, and motor function. He never returned for more treatments, as they lived in Israel.

Case 4 – A 56-year-old man had been suffering from intractable burning pain on one side of his body following a spinal cord injury that had occurred ten years before. He experienced, within a few BTI treatments, a 50-75% relief of pain, which lasted for at least the following three months.

Case 5 – A 31-year-old woman experienced a sudden paralysis with loss of sensory function on the left side of her body. She was diagnosed with transverse myelitis, and after 3 months of rehabilitation therapy, she was told that she would not recover the rest of the function that had been lost. Six months later, she received nine BTI treatments within one week and experienced a dramatic and lasting recovery of about 65% of her sensory and motor functions.

Case 6 – Q.D. was an ordinary baby until he experienced his first seizure at three months old. Due to an abnormal EEG, he was prescribed phenobarbital. There was no family history of seizures, no history of head trauma, or any other factors associated with epilepsy. As he continued experiencing more severe and frequent seizures, he was hospitalized and diagnosed with intractable malignant migrating seizures of infancy, a rare disorder characterized by seizures that seem to originate randomly from multiple sites within either hemisphere. Additional medications were added to the phenobarbital regimen, including Sabril, Keppra, Trileptal, Dilantin, and lorazepam (Ativan); however, the severity and frequency of the seizures continued to increase. Overall, antiepileptic drugs frequently prove ineffective, resulting in extremely poor outcomes for these infants. The combination of these medications left him limp and completely unresponsive to his surroundings. After three months in the hospital, the parents were referred to a respected surgeon in New York City who had previously separated conjoined twins to discuss a hemispherectomy (the removal of half the brain) for Q.D. I remember feeling shocked after hanging up the phone and learning about this surgical proposal. How could they suggest such a procedure, knowing the infant would lose all sensory and motor functions on the side innervated by the missing half of the brain? At that time, I had an Italian physician training in the office who heard the call and informed me that if the surgery were performed before the age of two, the remaining half of the brain would take over all sensory and motor functions of the body.

However, the parents refused surgery and decided to go home contrary to medical advice, choosing to discontinue all medications. They were informed that their son would likely pass away within 24 hours. Q.D. faced severe withdrawal symptoms during the initial two days. He gradually became more responsive, and the frequency and severity of the seizures slowly diminished. Once Q.D. was stable, his parents took him to Montreal to begin BTI treatments.

By the time Q.D. received his first BTI treatment, he was 19 months old and experienced an average of 12 grand mal seizures each day, with each lasting between 1 and 7 minutes. About once a month, he would have what his mother called a “screaming Mimi’s” seizure, which “makes your blood curdle and your hair crawl.” This type of seizure lasted approximately 8 to 9 hours and was marked by a series of sudden, continuous screams lasting 45 minutes, followed by 10 minutes of silence. They typically start around 7 or 8 PM and continue until morning. He was then taking 1.5 mg of lorazepam because it was the only medication that had any influence on the seizures. After beginning BTI treatment, he experienced only three very mild seizures, each lasting around 15 to 20 seconds over the next two and a half weeks. At this time, lorazepam was stopped, but when the seizures began to return, it was resumed, and the parents administered a few more BTI treatments at home. The seizures vanished again. In the following six months, he experienced only one mild seizure approximately every six to eight weeks. Whenever he experienced one of these seizures, he would receive a BTI treatment, and no second seizure would occur, leading the parents to exclaim that BTI was “the greatest thing in the world.” He never experienced another “screaming Mimi’s” seizure since receiving his first BTI treatment seven months earlier.

Case 7 – I will now present two of the earlier cases that Professor Georges Bourguignon treated with BTI, which he discussed in 1925 at a neurologist’s meeting in Paris. Both cases were experiencing spastic paralysis. The first is an adult with a traumatic brain injury, while the second is a case of cerebral palsy. I stated at the beginning of this paper that, after WWI, Dr. Bourguignon started applying BTI to injured soldiers.

The first of these two cases is the one of a 40-year-old veteran who was injured on September 1, 1918, by a piece of shrapnel to the right side of his head. When he emerged from the 25-day coma, he was discovered to be paralyzed on the left side of his body, exhibiting considerable spasticity. He would frequently run away and wander, experience spasmodic laughter, and have grand mal seizures once or twice a month, along with multiple petit mal or absence seizures. Dr. Bourguignon examined him six years later, in December 1924. He was missing a piece of his cranium on the right side of his head, measuring 2  X  6 cm. The left upper limb was flexed against his chest, and his left hand was clenched, unable to be opened even passively. He was unable to move his left arm at all. His left leg was also stiff, and he was unable to bend it. He walked in a typical scissor-like manner, dragging his left leg. toes, and he had lost all movement in his left foot. All tendon reflexes were exaggerated. He exhibited clonus in his left hand and a positive Babinski sign in his left foot. He presented with a spasmodic cry; however, he primarily exhibited continual spasmodic laughter. The petit mal seizures were either absences or, in his case, focal emotional seizures, characterized by intense outbursts of anger.

Treatments were started on December 8, 1924. The anode, positive or red electrode, was enrolled in a cloth that was soaked in a 10% solution of calcium chloride [at that time, Bourguignon was using a higher concentration of electrolytes] and placed over the right eye. The cathode, negative or black electrode, was placed over the right side of his head in the bare bone area. He received 15 treatments in the first month, which was followed by a month’s interruption. This sequence was repeated three more times.

He has not had a single grand or petit mal seizure since beginning treatment. The spasticity in his left arm began to release during the first month of treatment and continued to diminish progressively. The spasmodic laughter became rare, and he was now able to control it. The tantrums were much less frequent and violent. He stopped to run away and roam around, to the point that he stopped needing to be accompanied to come to his treatment. He can now lift his left arm and open his forearm and his hand partially. The hand clonus is much less. He can now flex his left leg and extend and flex his toes and foot. His gait has changed completely for the better. He doesn’t drag his left leg anymore.

Dr. Bourguignon concluded that this war veteran, who had not improved for more than six years, regained much function in his left upper and lower limbs with 60 treatments in four months. He remarked that no other treatments could have achieved similar extraordinary results.

Case 8 – The second patient presented by Bourguignon was the one of a 12-year-old girl who had cerebral palsy with paralysis of her left side. She was born with CP as a seven-month preemie. Her left arm and leg were smaller and spastic. Her left arm was flexed against her body, and her left hand was completely closed. She couldn’t move any of the fingers in her left hand. Her left foot was in an equinus position. She couldn’t move her toes. She had hyperreflexia in her left upper and lower limbs and a positive Babinski in her left foot. About twice a month, she would experience a grand mal seizure. In between seizures, she was experiencing vertigo. Her left hand and foot were always cold and red to purplish in color.

Because Bourguignon (wrongly) taught that her state was due to hereditary syphilis, he began the BTI with iodine on the negative electrode over the right eye, but he nonetheless obtained as good results as with calcium in the post-traumatic hemiplegics.

She received 30 treatments in the first six weeks, which was followed by a 10-day pause. She then got 10 treatments in 10 days, which were followed by a 6-week pause. She then received 22 treatments in 4 weeks, which were followed by a 4-week pause. Finally, she received 32 treatments in the following two months. In the first ten months, she had only one grand mal seizure, which was at the six-month point (she used to have two seizures per month). She hasn’t experienced a single spell of vertigo since she started treatment.

From the start, there were many significant changes: she can now move her arm, open her left hand, move her toes and left foot, walk better, run and ascend and descend stairs. She can flex her fingers. Her left heel can now touch the ground. The left foot and hand are less cold and less discolored.

Picture of André Saine, N.D., F.C.A.H.

André Saine, N.D., F.C.A.H.

André Saine is a 1982 graduate of the National College of Naturopathic Medicine in Portland, Oregon. He is board-certified in homeopathy (1988) by the Homeopathic Academy of Naturopathic Physicians and has been teaching and lecturing on homeopathy since 1985. He is considered one of the world’s foremost experts on the subject of homeopathy.