[Ylide]

Yeah, Alice, you're absolutely right.  Your body generally maintains its pH balance on its own just fine.  If it didn't, you'd have bigger issues than just arthritis and fatigue.  pH is maintained by a carbonate/carbonic acid buffer system in your blood.  CO2 from respiration is generated continually, which them partially dissociates to form carbonate and bicarbonate, the other half of the buffer.  None of these substances are paramagnetic.  (i.e. they are not affected by a magnetic field)

They're claiming to catalyze biochemical reactions in the body with a little wrist magnet...I can't believe that it's even legal to make that claim.



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[neilep]

I know this is not magnetic related but it is bracelet related....I see so many people who wear those copper bracelets...apart from turning your skin green...what are they supposed to do? and do they actually do it ?

'Men are the same as women...just inside out !'

[tweener]

The copper bracelets are supposed to help with arthritis.  I've never seen any scientific evidence that they do (or don't).  Personally, I like the color of copper and sometimes wear one as jewlery.  I figure if it turns out that it helps slow down arthritis, all the better.

----
John - The Eternal Pessimist.

[Ylide]

Copper is a lot more believeable than magnets.  At the very least, you can explain it by saying elemental copper is absorbed through the skin and catalyzes biochemical reactions that slow the progress of arthritis.  Whether this is true or not is of course up for analysis, but at least it sounds plausible.  Magnet therapy is utter bollocks.



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[tweener]

If nothing else, magnetic therapy will have good placebo effect for those who believe in it, and it certainly can't hurt (unless they swallow the magnet or something).  And, who knows, maybe the weak magnetic field or something associated with it will turn out to have some real beneficial effect.

----
John - The Eternal Pessimist.

[Ylide]

My mom wore a magnetic wrist band for a while to help with carpal tunnel syndrome.  She claimed it made her wrists feel a lot better until I explained that the wristband was keeping her from bending her wrists excessively and the immobilization of the wrist to minimize pressure on the nerves in the wrist is the first line of treatment for that condition.  It was more the band than the magnet.  

I have no problem with people using things like magnets and receiving a placebo effect, but when they start buying these things to try and cure medical conditions like high blood pressure and poor circulation the link Alice posted tries to claim, it harms more than it helps.

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[neilep]

It astounds me how gullible people are sometimes...but I suppose if they don't know any diferent then ignorance can't be helped..................I notice they do offer a money back guarantee but surely they must have to say somewhere that it's a proven method....not write some silly quotes from people (probably self written anyway)

And they are not mentioning the differences in  the strengths of the magnetic fields in their bracelets against the strengths of the professional equipment as Jay has mentioned.



'Men are the same as women...just inside out !'

[bezoar]

Gullible? We had a doctor here, and I do mean MD, who was washing his patients heads in peroxide to treat for Alzheimer's.  As if the oxygen in the peroxide would penetrate the skull.  And you should have seen how they lined up for treatment.  Makes me ashamed of my profession.  Then there are the docs who use chelation therapy for everything, saying is can't hurt you.  Yes it can.  It can blow your kidneys out.  I get crazy on this kind of stuff, cause I think people don't even try to figure out what's logical and makes good sense.  Now anyone should know that you can't wash your head in peroxide and cure Alzheimer's.  OH PLEASE............

[neilep]

quote:Originally posted by bezoar

Gullible? We had a doctor here, and I do mean MD, who was washing his patients heads in peroxide to treat for Alzheimer's.  As if the oxygen in the peroxide would penetrate the skull.  And you should have seen how they lined up for treatment.  Makes me ashamed of my profession.  Then there are the docs who use chelation therapy for everything, saying is can't hurt you.  Yes it can.  It can blow your kidneys out.  I get crazy on this kind of stuff, cause I think people don't even try to figure out what's logical and makes good sense.  Now anyone should know that you can't wash your head in peroxide and cure Alzheimer's.  OH PLEASE............

Cripes !!!!..could he have been one of the patients dressed up ?....How on earth can a doctor do that ?....they must have some form of rationale to explain it eh ?

'Men are the same as women...just inside out !'

[bezoar]

Yep, it's called money.  Or -- there's a sucker born every minute.  He calls it "alternative medicine".

[Exodus]

I had never seen this magnetic therapy malarkey till i got over here to Australia, they seem to fill their morning shows with sales segments and loads of people are trying to flog them. They are selling whole bed covers now so you get their beneficial effects throughout the night. Would be interesting to know if they did actually work rather than hearing from an old sports star who has been paid to SAY that it works!

[Steven Renwick]

I hope it's not complete rubbish.

I've just started trying to sell them online after trawling through Pubmed and reading about it.

This is what I found:

newbielink:http://www.majormagnets.co.uk/evidence.html [nonactive]

-Steve

[Donnah (OP)]

Gsmollin have you spoken to any of your old Medcor colleagues yet?  I feel that magnetic therapy has potential, but we don't know how to use it effectively yet.

[gsmollin]

No, we only get together once a year, and there are less of us every year. It used to be fun, but lately I get bummed. One of the principal investigators of the magnetic therapy had a bad stroke, and hasn't been to the last 2 reunions. One of the fellows is my age, however, and I'll ask him if he knows what happened after Medcor.

[Donnah (OP)]

Jay, I wouldn't be so quick to disparage the magnetic bracelet claims.  I agree that there are a lot of greedy asses out there (that I'd love to kick) who will falsely promise the moon if you buy their product, but there could be something to magnetic bracelets that affects the energy meridians, sort of like a trickle charge on a battery.

I know from experience that when your life is torn apart by pain/illness and nothing is working, you get desperate and will try almost anything, regardless of how outlandish it seems.

Bruce tried magnetic therapy under a huge electromagnet for his hip and I lay under it with him for a while.  It felt to me like static looks on a TV screen.  It didn't help him, but he did it for only two nights.  I would have tried more like ten nights.

[Ylide]

I see your point Donnah...maybe I wasn't clear.  There's a huge difference between a little magnet on your wrist and a huge electromagnet.  The small magnets that are sold by 99% of the purveyors of such items are not going to be powerful enough to have a significant effect on the body.  There's little evidence that even a strong magnetic field does much of anything, though it may have potential.  

Think about what a magnet does:  It polarizes the electrons in a ferromagnetic material and it affects the trajectory of electrons that pass through the field.  Since there is nothing ferromagnetic in your body (iron carried in hemoglobin is ionic...iron ions are not ferromagnetic, only elemental iron) you're left with affecting electron flow.  

The only place that significant flow of electrons over any real distance occurs is in the nervous system and the electrons are bound into the nerve pathway by insulating layers around the nerves.  (there is electron flow in redox reactions but the electrons move less than a few nanometers)  The best you can do is place the magnet so that it's field is oriented in a way that the electron is accelerated along it's path.  This is a fairly precise condition not readily achieved without knowing enough about nerve anatomy and magnetic fields to place the magnet in the EXACT correct position.  Move the magnet slightly while it's being worn and you disrupt the orientation of the field.  



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[Donnah (OP)]

Wish I had known about this site when I was trying all those things to get well.  It would have shortened the financial recovery I'm still experiencing.

"Remember, if you ever need a helping hand, you will find one at the end of each of your arms." - Audrey Hepburn

[Ylide]

Live and learn.  

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[Steven Renwick]

newbielink:http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=15604181 [nonactive]
Magnetic therapy article in the British Medical Journal. These authors find that the Bioflow magnets have a significant effect on arthritis of the hip and knee.

Not proof, and no mechanism suggested, but just something to bear in mind.

Yes I do sell them, but I'm not biased just objective.[]

**************************************************************
newbielink:http://www.majormagnets.co.uk [nonactive] Bioflow - Major_Magnets

[Ylide]

I read the abstract you posted.... it really doesn't say anything more than pain scores decreased by a mean of 1.3 points for the test group and the results were not conclusive enough to contstrue anything definitive.  1.3 points is not a large margin on the pain scale and there were only 200 test subjects.   I quote the last line:  "It is uncertain whether this response is due to specific or non-specific (placebo) effects."

Not exactly a "significant" effect, as you say, but it might merit a further look.

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