Science Questions

Do magnets have healing properties?

Why do magnets have healing properties? - If they do, that is... William

The answer is they don’t.  It’s basically good old-fashioned quackery as far as we know.  There’s this idea that if you wear copper bracelets or magnetic bracelets in some way, it can help with things like arthritis.  Research has shown that this is absolute bunkem  There isn’t really any truth in there.  There’s some recent results published in October where they did a rigorously controlled trial looking at magnetic or copper bracelets compared to plastic bracelets so people didn’t know what it had, and really they found that it was just a placebo effect if you tell someone they’ve got a magnetic bracelet they think it’s doing them some good but there’s actually there’s no science supporting it.  But it’s a multimillion-pound industry so, you know, maybe worth it, if you’re making them.

November 2009