WHAT IS SCENAR - expanded

30 years ago a group of Russian scientists, engineers and physicians, commenced development work on the concept of scenar invented by Alexander Karasev.  They set themselves the task to design a non-invasive, portable treatment device, perhaps even suitable to accompany cosmonauts into space.  Following extensive clinical and technical trials, scenar (sometimes spelt with a “k”) in 1986 was approved by the USSR Medical Council for use both in hospitals and the home.  The model most widely known (the RITM 97.4) is powered by a 9v battery; on a quick glance it could be mistaken for a TV remote control unit.  In fact it is a highly sophisticated device designed to be an informational analogue to a living system.

The theories underlying scenar therapy draw on Functional Medicine, as well as traditional Chinese medicine, and centre on the concept that the human body is a finely tuned functional system continually maintaining itself in balance (homeostasis).  Normally the body adapts in a self-regulatory manner to the stimuli reaching it from both internal and external sources, making it a dynamic but stable system. When something disrupts this adaptive process, e.g. trauma or disease, balance is lost and the self-regulating process may need to be re-started through an external catalyst, such as scenar.

Scenar therapy is a complex form of electrotherapy which delivers specific electrical stimulation impulses to the body via in-built and/or remote electrodes in direct contact with the skin’s surface.  The impulses mimic the electrical signals produced by the patient’s nervous system so as to stimulate the organism to heal itself with optimum efficiency and safety.  By bringing the scenar device into contact with the patient’s skin, bio-feedback from the presenting pain / disease dynamics (or lack of them) will determine the appropriate impulses.  They will be specific to each patient and at any given time.  Scenar’s actions aim at both the “fast” pain-blocking A-fibres and the “slow” pain producing and peptide generating C-fibres.

Explained at its simplest, the scenar’s sophisticated circuitry “listens” to the patient’s body and then determines the most appropriate signals and dosages that, in any given instance, need to be provided to stimulate self-healing.  The body’s self-healing is effected through neuro- and other peptides, sometimes described as the body’s in-built pharmacy.  The dosed signal stream, consisting of waveform, signal strength and frequency, can be varied, either by pre-selection, by the scenar therapist, or automatically, by the control circuitry of the device.  The automatic process can be overridden by the scenar therapist with guidance from visual indicators, which can emanate from the device, either as numeric or colour-coded LED displays, or both, and as sound signals, or from direct indicators from the patient’s skin.  The experienced therapist can draw on a comprehensive range of treatment variations to deal with both acute and chronic conditions.

Scenar therapy can alleviate chronic and acute pain in a wide variety of circumstances, and is therefore approved as a pain relieving therapy in most Western countries and throughout Eastern Europe.  Russian practitioners, with a much deeper and longer experience of Scenar than any of their Western counterparts, lay claim to a much wider range of healing successes, additional to the treatment of pain.  Scenar is now an approved subject for continuing professional development (CPD) amongst some German doctors and attracts 2/3 of  one year’s CPD-points.