My new daughter-in-law-to-be, just home from hospital treatment for Tic Douloureux, an agonizing pain centered on the face and jaw, for which no treatment is known, quickly engaged my interest.

After some research, I noticed the similarity to migraine involving the same trigeminal nerve.  Perhaps, I reasoned, the great success of HEG (Jeff Carmen JNT in press) would work for her.  I prepared a personal HEG system for her, gave it to her while my son and I worked with her computer to download BioExplorer to expand the personal unit she was trying out. All was going well when I left for the night. In the morning she was again in the hospital with intractable pain! With such guilt, I was very reluctant to call him. It was weeks before my son would speak to me again.  

These events prompted me to do some library research on pain.  I found a decent reference in a pain paper "Brain Imaging Confirms that People feel Pain Differently" Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences. 6/24/03.   This was buttressed by a paper on the inherited gene "COMT val158 met Genotype Affected u-Opioid Neurotransmitter Responses to a Pain Stressor" Science 21 Feb. 2003. The paper showed two alleles of the COMT gene, a copy of which is supplied by each parent. Two methionine alleles (25% of population) resulted in least pain sensation, Two val alleles (25% of population resulted in highest pain sensitivity and one of each (50% of population) were in between.

I now check the sensitivity of the client to pain with a mildly heated element taped to the arm. The sensation of warmth increases with time. The client is instructed to strip the tape off when it becomes uncomfortable. The times range from 20 to 50 seconds. I then limit the exposure for sensitive people.