There are a number of reasons for employing a device which uses high frequency combined with specific modulated frequencies and microcurrent. The first reason is patient compliance. The best response to any appropriately prescribed course of electronic or medical therapy is obtained by the patient who actually fulfills the orders of the practitioner.

There are four primary factors which create that outcome;
1. ease of application,
2. patient comfort,
3. speed of response and
4. effectiveness of the therapy.

Many patients have difficulty managing multiple parameters when using an electronic stimulator at home. A well designed device will have as few controls as possible for the patient to manage. To use the MicroStim Personal Stimulators effectively, the patient has to manipulate only two controls - frequency and current level. Any patient can learn to use it correctly and effectively in only a few minutes. Microcurrent therapy generally requires much shorter treatments that the millicurrent devices. Often five to twenty minute treatments give relief for hours to days. One to three short daily applications are generally sufficient. Finally, patient comfort is assured because microcurrent devices seem to function best subliminally, that is, below the level of the patient's threshold of sensation.

Even more important than comfort and compliance is effectiveness. A double blind study by Paul Meyer, MD used microcurrent stimulation on 40 patients with low back pain for a total of 16 treatments each. Follow-up eight weeks after the completion of therapy showed a 75% reduction in pain in the treatment group as compared to only a 6% improvement in the placebo group. The extraordinary effectiveness of microcurrent seems to be explained, at least in part, by a 1982 study by Ngok Cheng MD on the effects of electrical stimulation on adenosine triphosphate (ATP) concentrations and protein syntheses in mammalian skin.

ATP deficiencies are common in areas of chronic pain, and sufficient ATP is essential to power the processes of cell respiration. ATP supplies the energy to the sodium pump, the active transport mechanism that removes metabolic waste from the cell's interior and imports metabolic substrates (food) from the bloodstream into the cells. In Cheng's study, he demonstrated that the ATP concentrations were increased by as much as 300 to 400 percent in cells stimulated with currents between 25 microamps and 1000 microamps (the microamp range).

The following is an explanation for some of the electronic phenomena involved with the reduction of pain and the relationship to the healing process as it related to ATP concentrations in the cells. It appears that;
1.) The electrical resistance of tissue with chronic pathology is higher than that of the immediately surrounding normal or less pathological tissue. Acute injuries generally have a combination of abnormally high and abnormally low resistance, and
2.) Regeneration is a series of endothermic electrochemical reactions. This means that electricity is used in miniscule quantities by cells to provide the energy to fuel the regenerative process.