When the silver fabric comes over directly from the Asian manufacturer and it is then installed into our BioWraps, it has some type of not visible film in the fabric from the manufacturing process that increases its impedance. After one washing of the silver fabric (one does not have to wash the entire wrap), the impedance drops significantly.
So the one washing plus rubbing in a generous pea-size amount of Theracream into the skin is very important: when a patient uses the BioWrap, the sensation will feel very strong at a very low intensity number (e.g. 12%-18%). It also helps to prevent the patient from turning up the intensity too high. The whole system works better when the silver fabric/skin impedance combination is low (like 200 ohms). Generally we don’t want patients exceeding 50% intensity when using a BioWrap, PARTICULARLY when they have a loss of proprioception in the region being treated, like when using a foot-ankle BioWrap to treat neuropathic pain in the foot.