Trigeminal Neuralgia — A Nine-Year Follow-Up
Patient: Simon W, Police Constable, Thames Valley Police Symptom onset: December 2016 First treatment: 23rd January 2017 Second treatment: Shortly after January 2017 Testimonial written by patient: 3rd May 2023 Telephone follow-up: 7th May 2026 Total follow-up period: Nine years and four months
The Presentation — December 2016
In December 2016, Simon W, a serving Police Constable with Thames Valley Police, contracted Covid followed by sinusitis and a secondary chest infection. As his infection resolved, the pain in his head did not. His right eyebrow began to droop. The area around his right eye, the top and right side of his head above his ear became tender to the touch, described as feeling like sunburn. Standard pain relief had no effect. He was unable to complete a shift. He went on long-term sick leave on 27th December 2016.
His GP, Dr Susan T, confirmed the diagnosis of Trigeminal Neuralgia and commenced Carbamazepine. The dose required to manage the pain was 800mg daily. At this dose Simon was profoundly drowsy. Simple domestic tasks required an hour of rest to recover from. Car journeys of over thirty minutes left him nauseated and exhausted, requiring eighteen hours of subsequent sleep. He was unable to return to frontline duties. He was unable to function effectively as a father. His mental health deteriorated significantly.
His GP was explicit: there is no cure for Trigeminal Neuralgia. Requests for neurological referral, scanning, and pain clinic review were all declined. He had attempted to reduce his dose to 600mg on several occasions and been unable to sustain it, the pain returned each time, forcing him back to 800mg.
By the time he attended for treatment in January 2017, Alex had been off work for over two months and was actively considering whether he had a future in frontline policing.
In his own words, written six years later:
“I was deeply sceptical at first, but willing to try anything that may help with my issue so I could get back to work. And with my wife’s recommendation too, I felt I didn’t have anything to lose.”
The Treatment — January 2017
On 23rd January 2017, Alex attended for assessment and treatment. Copper braid pads were applied according to the diamagnetic field and cranial base release protocol described in the accompanying article. Full informed consent was obtained prior to treatment. The session was recorded on Simon’s own phone at his request.
A second appointment followed shortly after. The follow-up produced less dramatic change, because the primary autonomic shift had already occurred at the first session. The body had found a new parasympathetic equilibrium. The second session consolidated rather than transformed.
The Outcome — Nine Years On
Within approximately one week of the first treatment, Simon was able to begin reducing his Carbamazepine. Over the following two weeks he reduced from 800mg to 400mg daily, a fifty percent reduction, and sustained it. He returned to frontline police work. He has remained in active frontline service for nine years continuously since.
In his testimonial, written six years after treatment, he recorded:
“I honestly believe that the therapy I received from Hector that day has had a positive impact on my recovery from TN, and my mental health, because I feel like I am moving forward with my recovery when I was told it was unknown.”
On 7th May 2026, nine years and four months after his first treatment Simon was contacted by telephone. He has not experienced a Trigeminal Neuralgia attack since treatment. He continues to take Carbamazepine daily at a reduced dose out of caution, a fear of the pain returning that anyone who has experienced TN will understand entirely. The only circumstances in which he becomes aware of any sensation in the Trigeminal territory is during the extreme physical exertion of restraining and arresting violent members of the public. Even then, it is an awareness rather than an attack.
In the nine years since treatment, Alex has also navigated a divorce and a traumatic incident at work significant enough to require extensive professional counselling, events well documented as powerful triggers for sympathetic nervous system dysregulation and TN relapse. Despite these sustained life stressors, his TN has not returned.
He remains a serving frontline Police Constable for Thames Valley Police.
Clinical Commentary
Trigeminal Neuralgia is consistently described as a chronic, relapsing condition for which there is no cure. The standard treatment, Carbamazepine, carries a significant sedative side effect burden. The condition can be profoundly disabling, affecting employment, family function, and mental health simultaneously, as Simon’s account makes clear.
Simon’s outcome sits well outside what conventional management predicts is achievable. A single primary treatment session producing a fifty percent medication reduction within two weeks, sustained continuously for nine years, through a divorce, a traumatic occupational incident, and nine years of demanding frontline police work including the repeated high adrenergic stress of physically restraining violent offenders.
The treatment used copper braid pads. In the author’s subsequent clinical experience, water pads have proven superior — producing a gentler but more penetrating release of autonomic tension. A further observation of clinical significance: when copper pads are placed between the body and water pads, no additional release is produced. When water pads are placed beneath and copper above, the release can be further increased. This asymmetry suggests water and copper are not simply equivalent diamagnetic materials. Water has a quality, almost certainly related to its dipolar and EZ water properties, that copper cannot replicate and that copper actively interferes with when interposed between the body and the water. This observation warrants formal investigation.
The proposed mechanism is that diamagnetic field application combined with cranial base release in the region of the jugular foramen reduced the chronic sympathetic over-activation that both drives and perpetuates Trigeminal neuralgia. By addressing the autonomic substrate of the condition rather than suppressing its symptomatic output pharmacologically, the technique appears to have produced a durable shift in the patient’s baseline autonomic state, maintained through nine years of the kind of life events specifically predicted to challenge it.
This is a single documented case. It is not a clinical trial. But it is a precisely timestamped, independently corroborated, nine-year follow-up of a condition that mainstream medicine describes as incurable, in a patient whose occupation subjects him regularly to the highest adrenergic stress available outside of combat.
The result has held. It deserves to be part of the formal record.
Simon Ws written testimonial is dated 3rd May 2023 and held on file. The follow-up telephone conversation was conducted on 7th May 2026. Simon W, has given his consent for this account to be published. Treatment records are dated 23rd January 2017.
Hector Wells BSc (Hons) DO is a registered osteopath with 35 years of clinical practice.
