Duration of iontophoresis therapy sessions
How long should a sensible iontophoresis session last?
Many iontophoresis users wonder how long their iontophoresis sessions should or can be.
This question cannot be answered definitively, since the therapy time depends on personal factors.
As long as you are still conducting your initial therapy, it is best to stick to the proven iontophoresis therapy plan for beginners.
As a rule of thumb, the maintenance therapy usually consists of one or two 10-15 minute sessions per week.
If the frequency or the duration of your treatment exceeds the above values, perhaps it might make sense to optimize your therapy.
When does an exception make sense?
To answer this question, we draw a line between new and advanced iontophoresis users.
For experienced users: You have optimized all therapy details, but you still need to perform daily treatments? In your case, it is possible that the treatment duration can be accumulated to avoid having to prepare your iontophoresis set-up every day.
For beginners: You have been using iontophoresis for a while (three weeks of initial therapy) and you have no success or only minimal results? Try to shorten the new initial therapy following a parameter change (water quality, water level, water additives, body resistance) by increasing the treatment time and exposing the skin to a new initial iontophoresis threshold.
In both cases, it is important that your skin is in good shape and can handle the adjustments.
Accumulating the treatment time
As an explanation, we offer the following practical example: instead of a daily 15-minute session performed for a duration of 21 days, the treatment could be reduced to seven daily 45-minute sessions.
You might be wondering: should I always do one-hour sessions during initial therapy?
No! Definitely not! You could risk what we call an iontophoresis overtherapy.
Explained with a practical example: instead of treating 15 minutes initially for 21 days, one could reduce the same dose to seven days by treating 45 minutes daily.
So should one treat for an hour at once in the initial therapy?
No! Definitely not. One risks a so-called iontophoresis overtherapy.
When an advanced user is doing maintenance therapy with a long-lasting consistent result, but wants to reduce the number of treatment sessions, including the set-up and cleaning of the equipment:
Refer to the point above: instead of doing four 15-minute sessions per week, you could try to perform one 1-hour session per week (make sure you have warm water at hand, since the treatment water will grow cold).
So, should you always perform only one 1-hour treatment session during maintenance therapy?
No - this might have a negative effect on your treatment success. Rather, we advise everyone to adjust the treatment time gradually. The goal is only having to perform one or two treatments per week.
Advanced users who have lost their treatment success and are performing a subsequent re-initial maintenance therapy:
You are an experienced iontophoresis users who has lost success and wants to regain it as soon as possible? In your case, it may well make sense to extend your therapy times.
Theoretically, the only limit to the duration of the therapy is your personal preference and the time you have available. However, by the time you have winkled, soggy skin from the water, there is probably not much of a point in lengthening the treatment duration even further.
If you don't manage to regain your success in time, please refer to our tips on regaining your iontophoresis success.
All considered, what is the maximum treatment duration?
Always keep in mind: any treatment that exceeds one hour usually does not result in a higher success!
It is the nature of iontophoresis that every user reacts differently to extended treatment times. The same calculation does not apply to everyone.
For many users, a simple addition of the treatment durations works fine.
A cautious trial-and-error approach is advisable to work your way around excessive treatment times and frequencies.
Experience shows that a reasonable treatment period is one week. You can try to add up all treatments you usually carry out within this one week and combine them into one long treatment session. This treatment time is then further divided into reasonable time units of less than one hour.
In this manner, it is possible to reduce the treatment time of one entire week to 1-2 sessions.