Whole Living Guide >Investigation

Irresistible Pull: The Attraction to Magnet Therapy
By Lorrie Klosterman . Illustrations by Annie Dwyer Internicola

Worn as jewelry or incorporated into shoe insoles, mattress and pillow covers, and wearable wraps for the body, magnets are believed by some to enhance well-being and improve symptoms for a variety of ailments. Is there any validity to it? Opinions are, fittingly, polarized.

In the health section of a large bookstore you will find books that say any health benefit from magnets is nonsense, alongside books on natural remedies that list a myriad of conditions for which they are helpful. Clinical trials offer divergent conclusions about the efficacy of magnets for things like reducing pain, improving sleep, treating depression, and hastening wound healing. Dr. Stephen Barrett, writing for Quackwatch (www.quackwatch.org), says, “There is no scientific basis to conclude that small, static magnets can relieve pain or influence the course of any disease. In fact, many of today’s products produce no significant magnetic field at or beneath the skin’s surface.”

Yet many people say magnets have helped them. Dana Scarano is a Rhinebeck-based massage therapist who used magnets for a recurrent hip problem when she danced professionally. “I taped them to my hip at night, and would wake up with significantly less pain, inflammation, and tightness in the joint in the morning.” Some acupuncturists are using magnets on points where they would have placed needles and say they are working as well or better. And the Internet is abuzz with testimonials that sound too good to be true—the most glowing are those presented by companies that manufacture and sell magnets.
Dr. Aruna Bakhru, an internist in Poughkeepsie, helps put this in perspective: “Magnet therapy is not a one-size-fits-all treatment, and it’s not possible to predict who will benefit and who won’t. I believe in them and have tried them myself, but they did nothing for me. I also tried them with a patient who adamantly didn’t believe in them, but whose pain [for a herniated disc] improved immediately with the magnet, and returned when the magnet was taken off.” Bakhru estimates that about one in five of her patients have good results.

a magnet of your own
Magnetite, also known as lodestone, has been used for healing and folkloric rituals around the globe for millennia (Cleopatra is said to have worn one on her forehead). Magnetite is a naturally occurring form of iron oxide whose magnetic properties are thought to be caused by some natural event, like a lightning strike, that set its electrons spinning in the same direction. Today, lodestone remains central to the treatment of ailments, maintenance of health, and for powering magic spells in a diversity of cultures, such as African-American “hoodoo,” curanderas of Latin America, and by natural healers in many countries.
The development of manmade magnets in a variety of strengths and shapes has made them even more accessible, and they are an accepted part of the health and wellness toolkit in India, China, Russia, Canada, and France. In the us, magnet use is on the rise, as people are experimenting with them on their own or with the assistance of a health practitioner experienced in “magnet therapy.”

Magnets for personal use, also known as “permanent” magnets, create a stable magnetic field and come in flexible sheets, bars, or disk-shaped pieces. They are made of iron oxide or alloys of iron’s magnetic neighbors in the periodic table, nickel, boron, and other metals. The “rare-earth” magnets, like those made of neodymium-iron-boron, can be hundreds of times stronger than the commonplace (magnetite-based) magnets. They are used as is or worn on the body as wraps (for elbows, wrists, knees and ankles, forehead, neck, and torso) or jewelry (beads, chains, and pendants).

Using a magnet properly is more complex than just slapping it on. Some magnets are constructed to have the “north” polarity on one side and “south” on the other, while others alternate both kinds in an orderly matrix. Magnetic therapy practitioners say polarity matters, as does strength of the magnet (described in gauss), with low strength (less than 1,000 gauss) being like a “nutrient,” and very high strength (over 3,000 gauss) as a very powerful tool to be used with caution. (For comparison, a refrigerator magnet is about 10 gauss.) But the gauss value of a given magnet does not necessarily reflect its strength, as some vendors imply, since size and composition also matter. And a stronger magnet isn’t always better; it depends on the condition that’s being treated.
Incidentally, magnets are to be avoided during pregnancy and can interfere with pacemakers, automatic internal defibrillators, and implanted insulin pumps. They are also unhealthy for computer disks, audio/video tapes and credit cards, which all store their information on magnetized materials.

magnetic deficiency syndrome
Dr. Kyoichi Nagawa, a leading scientist in the field of biomagnetics, thinks that humans are suffering from “magnetic deficiency syndrome.” He cites as evidence measurable reductions in the earth’s magnetic field over the past 150 years, combined with manmade structures that block the field, like steel reinforced buildings and cars. Symptoms of the syndrome include muscle stiffness, especially in the neck and back, insomnia, chest pains, headaches, and dizziness. Insufficient magnetic exposure, he says, also is to blame for chronic and degenerative diseases, poor healing ability, susceptibility to infectious organisms, and reactions to environmental toxins. These things can be alleviated by supplementing one’s magnetic field exposure. For example, sleeping on a negative (north) pole magnetic mattress pad can reduce insomnia, and some clinical trials support that.
Nickolas Crocitto, a wellness consultant in Newburgh, believes the deficiency is real and includes magnets among the wellness strategies he recommends to clients. “My tactic in using magnets is not to do something unnatural to the body, but rather to put the body into an environment in which it was meant to be in, so it can function optimally.”

Crocitto makes this analogy: “If you were to eat a very poor diet from the day you were born and then began eating a balanced diet, you might have more energy, increased vitality, maybe a better memory—just by eating properly. It’s the same thing with magnetism. Many of us have spent so many years sitting in front of a computer, sitting in steel-reinforced buildings and cars, that getting a proper magnetic exposure can help with a variety of problems, such as difficulty sleeping and pain.”

Wearing magnetic jewelry, using magnetic insoles, sleeping on a magnetic mattress cover, even drinking magnetized water are seen as a remediation for insufficient natural magnetic exposure. Even if the idea of natural magnetic deficiency doesn’t seem real, trying these products may lead to a sense of increased energy and well-being.

the other magnet: pulsed electromagnetic devices
A different type of magnet therapy altogether is transcranial magnetic stimulation (tms), also called repetitive tms (rtms). It uses an electromagnet in which pulses of electricity traveling through coils of wire generate a pulsed magnetic field that can be tens of thousands of times greater than that of the earth. Each pulse lasts for less than a millisecond. When placed near the scalp, the magnetic field travels through skin and bone and a few centimeters into brain tissue. This induces a separate, small electric current inside the brain, which activates brain cells.
About two dozen studies indicate that tms helps severely depressed patients—something that steel magnets appeared to do centuries ago in the hands of Vienna physician Franz Anton Mesmer. Mesmer eventually concluded that the magnet was irrelevant and instead credited the one-on-one interaction with the patients through a force termed “animal magnetism.” But today’s pulsed magnet therapy is effective enough that it may replace electroconvulsive therapy (ect), otherwise known as “shock treatment.”

Unlike ect, tms requires no hospitalization, anesthesia, or recovery time, and does not cause memory loss. And it can target specific regions of the brain’s cortex—a powerful research and treatment benefit. In Canada, the procedure has been approved for depression, but the fda has not yet given its nod. The National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine currently is seeking enrollees for a study to see if it’s safe and promising in severely depressed Parkinson’s patients. Breaking the grip of drug addiction is another potential application of tms, but with a different coil whose field can penetrate deep areas of the brain.

tms also is being studied by darpa, the federal government’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency for its use in improving performance in exhausted pilots and soldiers. Its study, called “Creating a Man-Portable Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation System to Improve War-Fighter Performance,” is evaluating whether “non-invasive stimulation of the brain can improve a soldier’s performance.” If so, portable devices will be designed and tested in the field.
A different type of electromagnetic device developed for in-home use is a gadget that emits frequency-modulated pulsing electro-magnetic fields. It’s basically a form of electromagnetic radiation claimed to help with chronic joint conditions, sports injuries, bone non-union, and improving athletic performance while at home. The concept is based on scientific studies that show faster repair of poorly healing bones when exposed to electromagnetic fields. These fields are claimed to be completely safe and are without side effects, but there is also evidence that electromagnetic radiation is harmful.

a vitalistic view
Beverly Rubik, PhD, is a biophysicist and leading spokesperson for health therapies that are not currently part of mainstream medicine. She has a perspective gleaned from many years of research, consultation, and writing in so-called alternative (or complementary or integrated) medicine and in bioelectromagnetics. She explained in an interview with Daniel Redwood why magnets haven’t been very prevalent in the us:

“We have a pharmaceutical industry that has grown up in the last fifty years that has been highly profitable and somewhat successful in dealing with acute diseases. So the approach has been to look for magic bullets in medicine. That approach works well with acute diseases, but it does not work for chronic degenerative disease. The [electromagnetic] bone healing device has been on the market for about twenty years, is FDA approved, and is used in only about twenty percent of the cases for which its use is indicated.” (www.therionresearch.com/learning_center_articles.html)

Rubik also reasons that doctors in our medical schools don’t learn about magnets. “They’re focusing mainly on chemistry, biochemistry, and drugs, and very little on physics, electromagnetics, and other ways of healing. So it’s simply not within the scope of the dominant biomedical paradigm. And I don’t think doctors have teams of salesmen pushing electromagnetic medical devices like they have drug salesmen knocking on their doors.”
It’s no secret that healing or health-maintaining approaches embraced in other healing traditions have been left out of medical training in this country. They are based on a something quite different from “Western” medicine’s mechanistic, molecule-and-matter concept of a living organism. For example, in Chinese medicine, living things generate an electromagnetic field of energy that is life’s vital force, called Qi. Qi is circulated within the body and can be influenced by a myriad of things, such as acupuncture needles, magnets, pressure, and electric currents applied to specific points on the body. The concept of chakras also is a system of energy centers that generates a field, and which can be influenced both physically in several ways and nonphysically through energy, thoughts, spirit, and senses. The chakra system’s axis of energy has even been likened to a magnet, which is surrounded by lines of force in which the metal fillings are drawn into a pattern and held in place in a magnetic field.

When the body is seen as an energy field itself, the influence of a magnet is not perplexing. Just as firmly as someone with a mechanistic view of life would puzzle over how an invisible energy field could interact with tissues, a person with a vitalistic view would ask, “How could it not?” And while there are some absolutely elegant, sensible, creative, and breathtakingly complex activities of living organisms that can be described in mechanistic, matter-based terms, others cannot. How a surface-applied magnet would interact with the body is one of them. Some proponents say magnets increase circulation, and that this underlies many health benefits, but opponents say the skin under a magnet doesn’t turn red—a classic sign of increased blood flow. Proponents mention magnetizing of water and blood, though biochemists say neither the water nor the iron in red blood is meaningfully altered by a nearby magnet.

Even experts in physics have fuzzy answers about it. “Only a few people understand or think they understand how a permanent magnet works,” says Tatiana Makarova, a Russian physicist working on carbon-based magnets, in an interview in Discover magazine (“More Magnets Please,” December 2002). “The magnet of everyday life is not a simple thing. It’s a quantum-mechanics thing.”

ONLINE RESOURCES
www.therionresearch.com
Information on personal magnets, testimonials, and with a wide array of magnet products.

www.ists.unibe.ch/sciam.pdf
Review of transcranial magnetic stimulation by Mark S. George in Scientific American.

BOOKS OF INTEREST
The Body Electric
By Robert Becker & Gary Selden
William Morrow, 1985

The Biomagnetic Handbook
By William Philpott & Sharon Taplin
Enviro-Tech Products, 1990

Bioelectromagnetism
By Robert Plonsey & Jaakko Malmivuo
oxford university press, 1995