Zamora on Man vs Weird on UK TV Channel 4

The UK TV programme Man vs Weird finally aired on Channel 4 in The UK in May.
The show underwent several changes impending air dates and even a change in the title. The Daily Mail  had announced that the show would air in “probably April” with the name Miracle Hunter, its original title. Zamora's segment in in the second episode which is titled Superhuman Strength.

The show traveled around the world and searched for people who have, or claim to have, remarkable powers.

Simon Farnarby in front of The Onyx Theater in Las Vegas

The second episode featured a segment on Zamora and Zamora's Sideshow and included a live show that was filmed last July at The Onyx Theater in Las Vegas' infamous Commercial Center.
Simon Farnarby, the show's presenter had some flattering things to say such as “Zamora is a legendary entertainer who can withstand extraordinary leaves of pain and he has a bewitching power over his audience.”

Zamora freaking out Farnarby

 



After seeing the show Farnarby said “That was astonishing, bizarre, outrageous...”

fMRI of Zamora being put in pain.

There was also a section of a meeting with Simon, Zamora and Dr. Joshua Prager from the UCLA Pain Medicine Center. Dr. Prager has previously studied  the pain control abilities of Zamora, or Tim Cridland as Dr. Prager knows him in his clinic. This is detailed in a previous blog posting HERE.
Dr. Prager brought along functional MRI brains scans that had been done during a previous study of Zamora/Tim Cridland. Dr. Prager explained how the  brain scans show that the part of Zamora/Cridland's brain feels pain normally, but the part of brain that reacts to pain is made dormant. The interview was quite interesting and extensive and unfortunately time constraint only allowed a small portion of it to be aired.

Farnarby, Cridland (Zamora) and Dr. Prager

 When asked about Zamora's pain control Dr. Prager said “Clearly he has a special ability” “...what Tim can do is he can accurately turn off the suffering by getting himself into a certain state. So that even though we see that that pain information is getting right to the place where you feel it, the whole experience of the suffering, hurting, gets turned off. So he doesn't hurt, so he can take as much pain as he wants.”

Another view of a fMRI of Cridland (Zamora) taking pain in the brain.

“Tim, you might say, is the world champion of internal pain-control.”
We will attempt to copy of the unedited interview and will transcribe it and post it at a later date.

At the end of the series Farnarby put Zamora in the category of the truly puzzling saying “Some of what I've seen has totally baffled my rational mind. Like the extraordinary people born with bizarre powers.”  Of which he includes “ ...Zamora The Pain King. ...born with genuine abilities beyond the reach or the desire of most of us.”

The show Man vs Weird has been  viewable on to people in The UK on Channel 4's Video on Demand service which can be found here: http://www.channel4.com/programmes/man-vs-weird/4od Information about the series can be found here:
http://www.channel4.com/programmes/man-vs-weird

But what about the rest of the world? How can you see it.? A version has appeared on YouTube. There is no guarantee that it will remain there show watch it right now while you still can. The segment on Zamora and Tim Cridland starts about 24 minutes in. Man vs Weird Episode 2: Superhuman Strength

Contact Tim Cridland at ZamoraKing@aol.com

Tim Cridland's web site is www.astoundingshow.com

Tim Cridland and Dr. Joshua Prager Part 1

 

Testing and Verifying Tim Cridland’s Pain Control Abilities

During the many years I have been giving pain-control demonstrations I have been observed and tested by Dr. Joshua Prager. Dr. Prager specializes in pain medicine. He is the current director of California Pain Medicine Center and Center for Rehabilitation of Pain Syndromes at UCLA.

Photo of Dr. Joshua Prager taken by Denis Belliveau via Dr. Prager's Wikipedia page (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joshua_Prager_(doctor)

The first interaction between Dr. Joshua Prager and me was not in person. I had done some demonstrations for a TV show called Encounters: The Hidden Truth that aired in 1995. The producers of the TV show had show Dr. Prager the video of my demonstration and on the show he commented:

"He is able to change what he experiences. It’s not that the stimuli aren’t there, it's that the way that he [Cridland] processes them is different than you or I would. So when you say mind over matter; I believe that you cannot see pain in isolation as a physical phenomena. Pain is an experience and the mind is a major part of that experience.”

Years later, in 2003 I met Dr. Prager in person for the first time. This was when I was filmed for a TV show for a UK production company. They had filmed some of my demonstrations and wanted to see if my abilities could be tested. They brought me to Dr. Prager’s offices at California Pain Medicine Center at The UCLA Medical Center.

Dr. Prager attached me to a device that he called a “Medoc TSA II.”  This was attached to the back of my hand with a strap. The device would apply levels of cold and heat and I would respond by clicking a button, first when I was aware of the heat or cold and then again when I could no longer tolerate the stimulus.

The Medoc TSA II Pain Threshold  manufacture’s website says that it is “…is a precise, computer-controlled device capable of generating and documenting response to highly repeatable thermal and vibratory stimuli, such as warmth, cold, heat-induced pain, cold-induced pain or vibration….  The TSA-II is… used for identifying thermal pain thresholds in various clinical and research applications.

“The TSA-II thermode is placed on the patient's skin to heat or cool the skin. Patients respond to the temperature stimuli by pushing a button, and the sensory threshold is recorded and automatically compared to an age-matched normative data.”

In other words the device would measure to see if I had normal sensory response or if my pain response was impaired by nerve damage or some other disorder and would then test to see how high my tolerance to pain is.

The device showed that my nerve response was normal; that there was nothing psychically wrong with me and that I had the same nerve response as the majority of the population.

However, when I was asked to show my ability to withstand pain I the machine went as high as it could go without causing tissue damage. “You went to its limit.” He told me “You do know when there is pain there; it’s just that you don’t react to it the way a lot of our patients do.”

Prager also said:

“When I first heard about Tim I thought more likely he was an illusionist than he was actually doing what he does.”

“He had the ability to take our machine up to its maximum and down to its minimum, in terms of the temperature being generated, without withdrawing, which most people who come in here are not capable of doing. So he was able, clearly, in this setting, also in a measured situation to be able to turn off his pain.”

“It takes a special ability to be able to ignore your pain. The way that he does that demonstrates a level of mastery that probably requires some special abilities.”

 

 

Video of a TV show with Dr. Prager and Tim Crildand

I went to Prager’s offices again a few years later, in 2005 for a test that was filmed by The National Geographic Channel. This time Prager had a different device to measure pain. It was called a Neurometer CPT/C.   This device had a clip that attached to my fingertip. The clip had electrodes that pressed against the skin of my fingertip. This time I was asked to hold onto a button and keep holding on as long as I could tolerate it. As soon as the button was released the electricity would stop. He did two separate runs of this.

The sensation from the electricity was much more intense than from Prager’s previous device. It turned out that this was because that each of the two sessions were stimulating separate nerves.  The electricity could be adjusted to create very specific pain stimuli.

When I did first runs and it showed where most people would stop (level 4-6). I had stopped at level 20.

After this first run Dr. Prager said “Your score basically puts you in outer space compared to the rest of the population.”

I told him that now that I had felt what kind of pain it was I could do it again and increase my pain tolerance to the specific type of pain.

We did two more runs, once again one each of the specific electrical stimuli, and this time I showed a remarkable increase in tolerance, scoring raising my level to 27. I had managed to increase my pain tolerance tens of times with only a few minutes of practice with the specific style of pain stimuli.
Dr. Prager said “Clearly he is able to change something in his nervous system so that he can tolerate more pain.”

I met with Dr. Prager for further testing for a Japanese TV show called The Miracle of the Human Body that was broadcast on TV-Tokyo in April of 2011.  During this show I was observed by an fMRI machine while in I was put in pain. The results confirmed something that I had been telling people for a long time; that I can feel pain as a normal person does, but that I react to it differently. By changing my reaction I change the whole action of pain.

Details of what happened during the filming of the TV Tokyo show will follow in an upcoming blog post.

Tim Cridland

Some references:

Machine used for first test at Dr. Prager’s office: 
http://www.medocweb.com/medoc_en_tsaII_analyzer.aspx

Machine used in second test at Dr. Prager’s office:

 http://www.skintestequip.com/neurometer.html

Article about pain that mentions Dr. Prager and Tim Cridland:
http://abcnews.go.com/Health/PainManagement/story?id=2722954&page=1

TV Tokyo show Miracles of The Human Body:

http://www.tv-tokyo.co.jp.e.ck.hp.transer.com/contents/newtitle/83870.html

 

 

Contact Tim Cridland at ZamoraKing@aol.com

Tim Cridland's web site is www.astoundingshow.com