Do you need to be in pain for the TENS machine to work?

[SongOfHiawatha]

I'm overdue and decided to try out my TENS machine on my husband to check if it works. I got it secondhand. He said he felt absolutely nothing. No tingling. Does that mean it's not working? Or do you need to actually feel pain to feel the tingling?

Did you work your way up the levels? At the lowest level you might not feel anything. But you can certainly feel it when not in pain at the higher levels

I think you should feel a tingling whenever you touch the pads, you don't have to be in pain to feel it. Has it got levels to set it on? I usually use mine on level 3

I assume you turned it up? Have you tried it on you? Mine on the lowest setting you couldn’t feel but there was definitely a point when trying it out (not in labour and on my arm) that it was an irritant but it built up slowly. I’d say it was more like an itch than a tingling. During labour I had it quite high and didn’t even notice it though until I was pushing when it got thrown across the room because it was back to being an irritant and I suddenly couldn’t bear it on the lowest setting. I think some of it might depend on what the nerves are doing at a particular point.

Try on your arm and if nothing, try again in the morning.

We tried with the newer looking electeodes in the pack and they worked! So maybe just the older electeodes are dead

Had to go up to level 12 though...