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Hello. Hello. Thank you so much for tuning in today. I am very excited for this specific episode because I've been keeping a list for quite some time on products that my Missing Link members and my social media followers are sending me in my DMs saying, what do you think about this? And to be honest, there are a ton. And so I'm going to have a couple of different podcast episodes where I outline anywhere between four and six different products so that we don't have one episode that's like five hours long.
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The big question is, how does someone with Ms. Actually improve their mobility, strength, energy independence? The list goes on. My name is Dr. Gretchen Holley, physical therapist and multiple sclerosis specialist. Welcome to the Missing Link podcast. Tune in as I share the top strategies and exercises to help you gain control over your life with Ms. Using research driven insights and advice from top industry experts. Whether you're newly diagnosed or have had Ms. For over 30 years, whether you have relapsing Ms. Or progressive MS, this podcast is for you. You're sure to feel empowered and inspired after each episode.
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Ready?
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Let's dive in.
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Today I have five products that we are going to review. We're going to talk about what actually works, what likely doesn't work, and this is all based on evidence based research and what I was able to find when looking up these products. I have used some of them, but not all of them. But I'll get into the specifics. The five products that we're going to be reviewing today are vibration plates, bioness, L300 and other functional electrical stimulation devices, red light therapy, the pulse device, and something called restoral. So I'm going to review what each one advertises that they help with as well as what the research shows and also what my take, because a lot of you guys are just asking, what do I think? As a physical therapist who is also an Ms. Certified specialist specialist, what is my thoughts? Like, do I agree with it? Do I not? Do I recommend it? Do I not? And again, I have tried some of these. I've worked in person with patients who have Ms. Using some of these, but I've not tried or used all of them. So for the ones that I haven't personally used, I just took a deep dive into the research of what does it do? Does that make sense? Is it FDA approved, things of that sort? What I want to start off with is just awareness. So. So something that I have realized is that a lot of the times that people are coming to me saying what do you think or does this work? And they think that it either does or doesn't work. A lot of the times it really boils down to what you think it's supposed to do. If you think a device works in a specific way, but that's not actually what it does, then you're going to be disappointed because it's not going to feel that way or result in those things. So I'm going to share with you how each of these therapies and products work, because that's really where it all starts. For example, we'll get to one in a bit here that a lot of people think think is electrical stimulation, but it's not. And so if you think it's going to feel like electrical stimulation or you think it's going to activate your muscles in the same way that electrical stimulation does, you're going to be very disappointed and say, well, this doesn't work, this is false advertising. When in reality it's not electrical stimulation. And the company doesn't ever say that, it just looks like it. So you might be assuming. So I think it's really important for all of us to understand how each of these things are supposed to work and then go from there.
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By the way, I have some questions for you. Do you want to be able to walk stairs better, walk longer distances with less fatigue or scuff your foot less when walking? If so, the Missing Links online program was literally made for you. Inside the program, my members are learning at Ms. Specific exercises and strategies to get stronger, improve their balance and you guessed it, walk better. Our members report real life improvements like shopping without holding onto the shopping cart, safely climbing stairs and gardening with ease. With two weekly exercise classes and expert trainings, you'll get over 10 hours of Ms. Session specific physical therapy guidance each month. Interested? Check the show notes to learn more about the Missing Link online program to
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see if it's a good fit for
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you and your goals.
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So the first one I want to talk about is Vibration Plates. There's so many different companies, we're not necessarily getting into that right now, but more so just the therapy of vibration. So Therapy Plates is a whole body vibration platform. So it's something that you can stand on and it vibrates or you can sit in a chair and put your feet on it, you can sit on it, you can do exercise on it. There's so many different ways that vibration plates can be used, but in general it's vibration and they vibrate at specific frequencies. They also vibrate in different directions so they can move Forward and backwards, they can move side to side, they can move up and down, they can swivel, and each one is good for different things. There is research showing that if you have Ms. And you have a goal of improving your walking and standing based mobility, that the best vibration direction for you is going to be the up and down, sometimes called vertical vibration or linear vibration. There have been tons of different studies, clinical trials with multiple sclerosis and vibration plates, and just to name a few, there was a three week study that saw significant improvements in muscle strength, not necessarily functionality, so meaning their muscle strength improved from using it, but their walking didn't necessarily improve. Again, it was only three weeks. So that's not to say that after the three weeks their walking did improve, but that was a three week study. There was an eight week study that combined resistance training and vibration in multiple sclerosis and they found notable improvements in strength and functional capacity. There was a 12 week study that found improvements in balance, mobility and walking endurance. And there are general known benefits from vibration therapy, specifically with vibration plates, such as improved circulation, better muscle spasms or reduced muscle spasms, better sleep, enhanced sensation in the feet. And I actually have quite a few missing link members who use vibration therapy, vibration plates, and they've also mentioned these benefits as well as reduced spasticity and improved balance. My take on vibration plates is that there is solid research not only for vibration therapy, but specifically vibration therapy as it relates to multiple sclerosis. So that is a green flag for me. There are lots of multiple sclerosis studies that are showing benefits. The price range for this, they can be quite high. It really depends on how many features you want. There's Bluetooth if you want it, but from what I found, they range from about $200 to about 5,000, if not more. They are best used again just from the research that I found, as well as from what my missing link members have shared. Best used about two to three times a week for 10 to 30 minutes. But I will say a lot of my missing link members use it for one minute a day, or up to five minutes or 10 minutes, just really low doses. And they are noticing improvements as well. But this is not a miracle cure by any means. It is something that would be used in conjunction with your exercise routine. These improvements are likely not going to be seen just on their own. But if you're doing additional things, it can help enhance or perhaps even speed up the timeline of when you might see improvements. But again, vibration therapy does show a legitimate therapeutic benefit. The next device or product that we're going to talk about is the bioness L300. So this is kind of a, an old school one, at least it is for me. This has been around for quite some time. It seems to be making a comeback there. I've been getting quite a few questions about this one more recently, which tells me people are starting to talk about this more. But it is a functional electrical stimulation device and there are others out there. Now there's differences between all of them and we're not really getting into that in this episode, but examples might be the newbie or the psionic neural slide sleeve. But in general these are functional electrical stimulation devices and I'm going to record an upcoming podcast that breaks down what it is, how it works, all the good stuff. But for this, these specific products, these are FDA cleared medical devices and the way that they work is they stimulate the peroneal nerve, or sometimes called the fibular nerve, which is the nerve that needs to be stimulated or activated to lift your foot during the swing phase of walking or honestly at any time to reduce foot drop. So the research shows that when the device is on your leg and turned on, it has an orthotic effect which can have immediate improvement. So you turn it on and it immediately helps you lift your leg. Now I don't want to get down too many rabbit holes here, but functional electrical stimulation does not work for everyone. So this is assuming you are an ideal candidate for this. And usually with functional electrical stimulation you need to have some level of strength. If you have, if you can't lift your ankle at all, this likely is not going to help you. But if you can lift at least a little bit, then more likely than not, when these devices are on and in the right location for your body, then you can see immediate improvements because it's stimulating the nerve. There is some evidence in research of the training effect, which means that improvements can persist even when the device is off. However, the research that showed that was not specifically for multiple scores sclerosis, it was more so for stroke. And I also want to mention here that There was a 42 week study where responders so people who were in the trial that responded well to functional electrical stimulation, specifically the Bioness L300, they showed an improvement in walking speed and it was a minimal improvement, but it was still clinically meaningful, meaning it did actually show an improvement. Not just oh, no one else would be able to tell that that walking speed improved Benefits of using functional electrical stimulation can be improved gait speed, reduced falls, reduced tripping and increased walking confidence. And one thing that's really, really important to note here, because this is not true for a different product that we're going to talk about in a bit here, is that functional electrical stimulation causes involuntary muscle contraction, meaning it moves the muscle for you. So there's another product we'll talk about that's the pulse device that is not functional electrical stimulation. That's really important to understand because again, functional electrical stimulation moves the muscle for you. So you could just be sitting, you have it turned on and you know they have training modes where every couple of seconds it, it turns on and stimulates the nerve. You could just be sitting and relaxing and it stimulates your nerve and your foot lifts and you didn't even intend for it to. That would never happen with the pulse device because the pulse device is not electrical stimulation. It doesn't activate the muscle and make the muscle move in that way. So just an important distinction and differentiation there. The pulse device provides a sensory input that helps you activate your own muscles naturally. But we'll get into that in a bit here. My overall take on the bioness L300 and just in general functional electrical stimulation devices is that these are the gold standard for foot drop management and they are FDA cleared. Your insurance company may cover them or there are Ms. Organizations that can give you some funding that can be put towards devices like this. And there's, there's strong evidence base here indicating that these can be helpful. The downsides is that they typically are very, very expensive. It can be anywhere from the $5,000 to $20,000, if not more. If you are working specifically through a multiple sclerosis clinic or your physical therapist specifically with a device like the WalkAid or the Bioness L300, then they often have trial phases. I believe it might be two weeks. You do have to pay for it for two weeks, but if you end up not liking it, you can return it. If you do like it, then whatever you paid so far would get deducted from the total amount. These do often require clinical fitting and the training effect is again less robust in Ms. There are some studies in multiple sclerosis, but a lot of the studies out there were in stroke. So I would like to see more studies specifically in MS, but I have seen over the last 1112 years lots of people with Ms. Use these and have success. Again, one thing we don't know about functional electrical stimulation devices is how well they work long term once they are not physically on you. What I would love to see is a long study showing if you've used one of these along with an exercise routine, then does that mean that in five years from now you won't need to use this anymore because your muscles and neural pathways are strong enough now to do it on their own? There is no research showing that. So one possible downside to functional electrical stimulation devices or FES devices, is that you likely will need to wear them for the long haul. But I will go further into FES devices in a different podcast episode. The next product that I get asked about all the time is Red Light Therapy. And I do already have two podcast episodes on Red Light Therapy. The first is episode number 165, which goes over how it works and also the main benefits. And then a more recent episode number 243, which talks about how red light therapy specifically can help people with Ms. So if you are further interested in red light therapy beyond what my take is, I highly encourage that you listen to those episodes. But red light therapy can be one of two things. It can truly just be red light therapy. It's literally just red light. Red light travels at 620-720nm and. Or it could be red light and near infrared light, which travels at 750 to 1100 nanometers. The reason that's important is because the speed at which they travel allows for different therapeutic levels. So long story short, and definitely listen to those episodes I've referenced. But if you're truly looking for a therapeutic effect that leads to the benefits that we're about to discuss, it appears to me from my research that it really should include near infrared as well as red, but not just red light therapy. The way that this works, red light therapy, is that it affects our cellular energy, AKA our mitochondria. It can decrease inflammation, reduce pain, and possibly support nerve regeneration. We talk about that more in missing link, episode 243. So moving on to the research that is Ms. Specific, there's not a whole lot let me start off by saying that. But There was a 2024 animal study that showed 50% improvement in sensory motor coordination and decreased neuro inflammation. And then there were human studies, I believe this one was done in 2025 that had 20 to 24 sessions of red light therapy two to three times a week. And they found decreased inflammation, improved muscle force and decreased disability scores. And the reason that these improvements exist again is because it's affecting the mitochondrial function, it's improving our cellular function, it reduces oxidative stress and it decreases neuroinflammation. Red Light therapy. While it's been around for quite some time, it is newer. At least it appears to me to be newer. Meaning within the last five years or so people are starting to talk a lot more about it. Which is great because the more people are talking about it, the more likely we can get some clinical trials up and running. So to my knowledge, what you want to be on the lookout for, if you're interested in red light therapy, is a device that is both red and near infrared wavelengths. You ideally would want LED based red light therapy for home use, not just a laser red light therapy that you'd have to go to a clinic to get. For the intensity, you'd want to look for about 20 to 40 milliwatts per centimeter squared. And just a heads up that reputable brands typically range between 200 to $500. I do have a specific brand that I like called Fringe, and they have a lot of different types of products and wraps. So it depends what size you get. There's another one I think called Lumebox. I've never used theirs before, but overall my take on red light therapy is that I'm pro red light therapy. There is emerging evidence specifically for multiple sclerosis. So far that evidence seems to be positive, but I do expect expect more research coming out within the next few years. Red light therapy seems to target the root pathology, so again, think more, more cellular. It goes deep into our our skin and our system, so it affects our mitochondria, inflammation, internal inflammation, oxidative stress. And more importantly because accessibility matters, is that it can be done at home. Again, research is still early, but promising. The heat sensitivity, I get questions around. Is it hot or would it exacerbate any symptoms? If I have heat intolerance, the heat, at least for the company that I use, Fringe, it produces almost zero heat and so it would not increase heat intolerance. However, if you're very, very sensitive to heat intolerance, I know some people who are even sun intolerant and just even if it's a cold day, if they feel the sun on them, that makes their heat intolerance worse. So if you're highly susceptible to changes, then it might affect you. So that's something to keep in mind. But overall I think this is a great adjunct therapy. Not a standalone treatment by any means, but again, something that you could do along with exercise to help improve your symptoms. The next device is the one that I've mentioned a few times because in my opinion it has the most misunderstanding. And I say that Because I misunderstood personally for quite a while as well. So the pulse device is a localized vibration therapy device. So kind of similar, if you will, to the vibration plates in that it somewhat works the same. It activates our muscles through vibration, but with this, it's localized vibration, meaning it provides the vibration therapy or proprioceptive feedback to a very specific muscle or muscle group. It looks more like electrical stimulation, which is why at first, before I even looked into it, I even personally assumed that this was electrical stimulation. Because you put it on your body, wherever you want the vibration to go, and you strap it on. And that looks very similar to some of the functional electrical stimulation devices that sits on your leg and is strapped on, but it is not. This is different from electrical stimulation. You put it on the muscle or muscle group that you want to assist with, and you turn it on and. And it vibrates that specific muscle or muscle group. And what that vibration does is it stimulates something called mechanoreceptors in our skin and muscle. And basically what that does is it helps our brain pay attention to specific body parts. So, and this is actually, might sound a little crazy if you've never heard of it before, but it is actually studied and very common concept and theory out there where if you are trying to, let's say, straighten your knee, the muscle that you need to activate to do that are your quadricep muscles on the top of your thigh. So if you're sitting and you look down the tops of your thighs, those muscles are the ones that need to activate to straighten your knee. And there's research showing that if you have some type of feedback or cueing, tactile cueing, like touch to those muscles, that those body parts, these quadricep muscles, are likely more likely to activate. And one way we can do that is through vibration. So if you even just tap your skin really fast on the quadricep muscles, you're basically telling your brain, okay, brain work. These specific muscles, turn these muscles on. But that can get really exhausting and not always feasible for you to be able to tap and touch the right area. So the pulse device allows you to put the device on that muscle or body part to tell your brain, hey, pay attention here. This is the muscle I want to work right now. So it can help with muscle activation. It can help relieve stiffness, relieve pain. It can help with motor function, meaning movement. Again, I think the most important thing to understand here is that it is not electrical stimulation. It does not make your muscles move. You have to do that yourself. This just Helps create more awareness and it helps you activate the muscles naturally through this sensory input. My take on this device is that I am Pro Pulse. Again, it's a different mechanism, it's complementary, it's not competitive. It's not that you have to choose one over the other. There's a few different models that you can get. It depends what you're getting. It tends to be a bit more affordable. And what I mean by that is around the $200 mark, $200 to $400. Whereas some of these others that we're talking about, you know, it's 20000 plus, they're portable, very easy to use. There's a 30 day money back guarantee. So it makes it low risk to try again. Some yellow flags here, just less Ms. Specific research compared to vibration plates or functional electrical stimulation. And at this point, from what I've seen, it's more anecdotal evidence. But I do believe the company is coming out with more research to my knowledge, specifically for people with ms, so, so that we can have more actual data of what the evidence is showing versus anecdotal evidence. But I do think this is something worth trying again. It's not gonna be for everyone. If you have zero strength in a specific muscle, this is not going to make it work for you. It's something that is more so designed. If you have use, it doesn't have to be great use, but you, you can use the muscle in some way, shape or form, then you could be a good candidate for this. The fifth product I wanted to talk about, and this is the biggest red flag that I have around a product is something called Restoril. It's something that I personally haven't seen until I would say within the last six to nine months or so. And what this company is claiming is that this is a foot pad that fixes or cures neurological foot drop in 12 days. And let's even take the 12 days out of this. There are so many red flags even just in that first line. Anything that can fix or cure a neurological foot drop, especially as it relates to multiple sclerosis, that is just screaming that this is over, promising, likely not true, but it does mark it to multiple sclerosis, stroke and Parkinson's communities. My problems with the restoral, and this is one that I have not personally tried, but just from what I've seen online and the research that I've been doing to try to find more information on it, is that the foot pad, so it kind of looks like a vibration Plate, if you will. It's something that you put your feet on. And as a physical therapist, one thing that I'm thinking is, okay, if you're the bottom of your foot is on the pad, how might that be working to improve, even just improve, not fix or cure, just improve foot drop. The muscles that we need to improve or strengthen for reduced foot drop are muscles that are on the top of our foot and ankle, called our ankle dorsiflexors. And the specific muscle is the tibialis anterior or the anterior tibialis. But again that's on top of our foot with the foot pad, it's on the bottom of your foot. And so that alone you're not going to be able to activate the muscles on the top of your foot if the part that is activated by the foot pad is the bottom of your foot. And I'm on the website right now and again it's just talking about rebuilding your strength, lifting your feet without pain, restoring control over foot drop. And just from my perspective as a physical therapist with standing on this device, it wouldn't do those things in that way because it's not touching or activating the specific muscles needed. Now one thought is it could possibly help with foot drop if it's improving sensation in your feet. Because if we can't feel our feet, that can cause walking limitations usually not foot drop. I'm really going out on a limb here trying to find something positive about this device. But even then again, sensation can improve our walking, but not specifically foot drop. So just some problems I see here. I don't believe, at least at this time, that I'm recording this, that it's FDA approved and as a medical device and they explicitly state this on their website. To my knowledge there is no peer reviewed research, even though they do claim that there's clinical trials on it. I wasn't personally able to find any clinical trials. I was able to find some Better Business Bureau complaints and scam reports against this product. And it does say that, that this product, Restoral EMS is for a long term fix. And you know, again just using that term fixing usually is over promising and a bit predatory. Especially with something like multiple sclerosis. This is very unlikely going to cure or fix neurological foot drop, electrical muscular stimulation or electromuscular stimulation, ems, it can temporarily activate muscles, but it doesn't fix nerve damage or to our knowledge at this point help with nerve repair. So it can, you might notice temporary improvements while using it, but my guess is that you either won't even notice that or you'll never necessarily see improvements in foot drop. Or if you do, as soon as you're not standing on it, it's not going to carry over. So my take on this one, again I haven't tried it, but just from what I've seen is I would skip this one. It seems to be, and I don't like using this term often, but it seems to be a bit predatory marketing that's just targeting vulnerable populations that are really looking for something to help with foot drop. Better options, especially as it relates to something like this where it's electrical stimulation exist. You know the ones we talked about earlier, Bioness L300, the walk aid, AFO braces. I have a different podcast episode on that Physical therapy Psionic newbie. You know there's, there's several others that would be worth trying before this one. So just to close out here and you can see why now that we're only doing up to five or six per episode, these can get pretty lengthy because it's really important that you understand what they are, how they work, if it's something that would work for you specifically versus someone else with Ms. Because again some of these do require that you have to have some strength on your own even without the device on, in order to even see any types of improvement. So in closing, I guess what I would like to share with you is when you personally are evaluating any product, things to look for would be is it FDA cleared or approved? Does it have peer reviewed research? Does it promise cures or fixes or realistic improvements? Are their testimonials verifiable? Does it look like they're using stock photos or true photos, which these days it can be pretty hard with AI. But also looking at is the company transparent about limitations? Does your neurologist or physical therapist recommend it? Just keeping these things in mind, I do also have a podcast episode that recently launched talking all about how to spot AI generated research versus true research. So I'll put the link to that in the show notes as well. But my final thoughts are vibration plates, Strong evidence, bioness L300 and functional electrical stimulation devices. I approve. They're typically gold standard for foot drop red light therapy. Again, I approve. There's promising emerging evidence. The pulse device I approve. Worth trying, especially with a money back guarantee and restoral would be my hard pass. As always though hopefully this goes without saying. Consult with your healthcare team and providers before investing in any of these to see if you are a good fit for what these therapies are promising. Or what they are delivering with their technology. And last but not least, none of these are going to show improvements likely on their own. Nine times out of 10, especially these positive testimonials that you might see or feedback, it's when they are combining them with an exercise routine or a physical therapy routine that that can also work on strengthening your muscles and stretching your muscles in the right way. So very rarely is it just improvements from just this one thing. But again, see which ones feel like they might be a good fit for you. Talk to your healthcare team and take it from there. Thank you for listening to today's show. I am so grateful grateful to have you as a listener.
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If you'd like extra resources such as a video of one of my seated exercise classes, my favorite core exercises, and the opportunity to ask me your questions, head to missinglink.com insider.
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That link will be shared in the
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show notes along with links to my social media handles. If you love this episode and think of friend or family member with Ms. Would benefit from listening, please go ahead and text or email this podcast to them right now. Sharing this podcast will help me educate and empower as many Ms. Warriors as possible. Thanks again for joining and be sure to tune in next week for another episode of the Missing Link podcast.