Bob jolts back

IT MAY be a product of the space race but it looks just like one of those zappers all self-respecting modern-day couch potatoes use to change TV channels.

But to Bob the builder, the SCENAR is nothing short of a miracle.

SCENAR stands for Self-Controlled Energetic Neuro Adapted Regulator. According to therapist Azizah Clayton, the device was invented by scientists working on the Russian space programme, who realised it would not be practical to give sick or injured cosmonauts medicines in space.

So they came up with the SCENAR, which uses tiny little jolts of electricity to stimulate the body into producing its own healing chemicals.

It certainly seems to have worked for Bob. Builder Bob Lane wrenched his neck and shoulder while laying flagstones at his Elvington Lane home a couple of years ago. He suffered shooting pains and when he woke up the next morning he couldn't get out of bed.

It was the beginning of nearly two years of misery.

"I wasn't able to stand up straight for a good 18 months," he says, sitting in the treatment room at Azizah's home in Stockton Lane, York.

"I couldn't walk, I couldn't hold a pen because my fingers were dead. I had shooting pains, and my right arm and fingers and shoulder were useless. My quality of life just plummeted."

His doctor referred him to a physio at the hospital who brought some relief with the help of acupuncture and ultrasound. But there was only so much they could do, he says. "They relieved the pain by about 30 per cent. But after about six months, they said that was as far as we could go."

He tried everything to dull the pain, including Chinese medicine and even cannabis. Then his girlfriend heard about Azizah and he decided he had nothing to lose.

"I was desperate," he admits.

Bob initially went for five sessions with Azizah and her SCENAR. After the first 90-minute session, during which she ran the hand-held device over the surface of his injured shoulder, neck, arm and hand, he began to feel a tingling in the fingers of his right hand, which had previously felt virtually dead.

The "eureka!" moment came later when he was making a cuppa. "I was stirring my tea, and the spoon got hot in my hand," he says. "And I thought, 'bloody hell! I can feel it!'"

Now, with one of his five treatments still to go, he says he feels 90 per cent better. "It's a miracle. It really is," he says.

Azizah, a trained SCENAR practitioner as well as complementary nutritional therapist, claims to have had success with other patients, too. A teacher who had lost her voice for six months recovered it after five sessions, she says; and a woman who had suffered headaches for 18 years is now off painkillers, thanks to the SCENAR; and there are more.

So what is this mysterious gadget and how does it work?

It uses the fact that everything, including the cells in your body, has a tiny electric charge, says Azizah. The small electric jolts it sends through the skin allow the practitioner to identify where a problem is and then to stimulate the patient's nervous system to produce the body's own natural healing chemicals.

It is particularly effective, says Azizah, for chronic injuries and pains - injuries that, over time, the body has adapted to and tries to work around.

What happens with such injuries is that after a while the brain tends to isolate and then ignore them, Azizah explains, and stops sending out the natural healing chemicals produced in the body that could help the injury heal.

She says what the SCENAR does is use tiny electrical signals to 'reconnect' the injured area through the central nervous system to the brain.

"It jogs your brain," she says. "It sends a message to the brain to remind it that there is a problem there." Then the flow of natural healing chemicals to the injury should resume, and your body can get on with healing itself.

In Britain, the SCENAR is only licensed for pain relief, says Azizah. But the Russians, who invented it, claim good results for a range of conditions, and other practitioners in this country report benefits for everything from chronic back pain to arthritis, tennis elbow, eczema and even insomnia.

Best of all, Azizah adds, there are no side effects. The SCENAR should not be used with people who have pacemakers fitted, those who suffer from epilepsy, pregnant women or people who are drunk or have an acute infectious disease. Otherwise, she says, there shouldn't be any unpleasant effects from the treatment.

It certainly didn't do me any harm. There wasn't anything wrong with me except a hint of stiffness in the neck. Azizah ran the gadget over my neck and upper shoulder. It felt a bit like an electric razor, combined with an odd pin-prick sensation.

It certainly wasn't unpleasant - quite comfortable, in fact. I didn't feel any different afterwards - but then, there hadn't been anything wrong with me.

A SCENAR session with Azizah Clayton costs £25 for an hour (£40 for the first session, which includes a consultation). To find out more call 01904 425850.

Updated: 09:48 Monday, January 13, 2003