Magnets and health

Magnetic therapy bracelets for fibromyalgia?

Recently I met up with an old friend I hadn’t seen for maybe fifteen years, she’s the same age as me (37 years young!) married with a young son and was working as a barrister for some fancy law firm in London, until seven years ago when she was struck down with a mystery illness…skip forward seven years and she has finally been diagnosed with fibromyalgia. The journey she has been on from the first sign of illness to diagnosis hasn’t been easy, it resulted in her having to resign from her job, and being bedridden for long periods of time, she’s missed out on many important milestones in her son’s life as she has just been unable to function. Sadly she’s part of an ever growing group of sufferers including a few famous faces, Lady Gaga being the most recent to bring this hidden condition to the limelight in her Netflix documentary Gaga Five Foot Two.

Over the years she has tried many different types of treatment some with success and some without, one of the things she has found most helpful was a magnetic therapy bracelet which was recommended to her at a support group for sufferers of Fibromyalgia. More information on support groups can be found on the Fibromyalgia Action UK site.

What is Fibromyalgia?
Firstly, let’s find out a bit more about it and the causes of it, Fibromyalgia is a long-term condition that causes pain all over the body, extreme sensitivity to pain or hyperalgesia and allodynia, it can also cause extreme fatigue which in turn can result in poor sleep quality and muscle stiffness. It has long been referred to an invisible illness as it can be so difficult to diagnose, many patients suffering with it can go from doctor to doctor without getting a clear diagnosis and it is often misdiagnosed.

The symptoms can vary from person to person, but main symptom is widespread pain. It is also a condition with which the symptoms can get better or worse depending on stress, the weather, and how physically active you are. 

There is no clear reason why people suffer from fibromyalgia but one of the main theories is that a change in the central nervous system results in a change in the way pain messages are conveyed around the body, this could be due to a chemical imbalance, but no one really knows, some research has shown low levels of some hormones in people suffering with fibromyalgia, other research suggests genetics may play a part.

People who suffer from fibromyalgia often find they feel a mixture of frustration and relief when they finally receive a diagnosis but unfortunately there is no cure. This is why there has been a surge in sufferers searching for alternative and holistic approaches. 

While there is no specific evidence to support magnetic therapy, many people find they do help for a wide range of symptoms and illnesses and when they are easily obtainable and an option for every pocket. 

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There are more answers than questions

Last time around we discussed the question of what are the benefits of magnetic bracelets. We even have expanded this to a full blown page in our Knowledge Centre.

We didn't reach any definitive answer because the question has so many dimensions. There are an awful lot of different areas to cover. For example, do magnetic bracelets really help with pain?

Now of course, if you ask a hundred people, you'll get a hundred answers. So for example, if you ask a doctor or medical researcher, what helps arthritis pain, he'll probably tell you that painkilling drugs can reduce the pain but nothing can cure the underlying ailment. That is the view of conventional medicine and it is only natural- and proper - that it should take a lot to change it.

There are of course exceptions like Albert Roy Davis a doctor (PhD not medical doctor) who studied the effects of both charged electricity and magnetism on human cells and organs in the 1970's. He concluded that magnetic energy could even go as far as to kill malignant cells, as well as the lesser - but medically relevant - effect of alleviating arthritis pain. Even suggested that such therapies could be use to treat infertility. Needless to say he was in a minority.

But what about arthritis sufferers? In at least some cases, they tell a very different story. Quite a few of them wear magnetic arthritis bracelets‎ and most of these will tell you that magnetic bracelets 'ease aches'. This view was in fact supported by a study by Dr. Tim Harlow of  Penninsula Medical School  published in the British Medical Journal in 2004. The study involved some 194 patients suffering from osteoarthritis over a 12 week period. To screen out the placebo effect they used a mixture of strong magnets, weak magnets and non-magnetic bracelets. They found that the weak and non-magnetic bracelets produced the same results, but that the strong bracelets produced a statistically significant reduction in pain as scored by the patients themselves, using a recognized scale of pain self-measurement.

So magnetic bracelets DO work, say researchers. But naturally, not all researchers and orthodox doctors would accept these results as conclusive. 

However, even the most hard-headed healthcare professionals must conceded one thing and that is that magnetic bracelets cannot do any harm. Obviously, an exception to this is that they can do indirect harm if people with illnesses believe in such alternative therapies to such an extent that they fail to seek treatment where necessary.  But aside from that obvious and indirect exception if there is any upside to things at all, there is no direct down side.

So what are the health benefits of magnetic bracelets - safe alternative medicine is only useful if it is really medicine. That is, it must actually work. Safety is the minimum standard for offering it to human patients, not the maximum for signing off on it as an effective treatment. And this applies to any ailment and indeed any type of treatment, be it curative or palliative.

But what about other ailments, besides arthritis? Do magnetic bracelets work for headaches? Certainly a study by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) concluded that there was enough evidence to approve the use of Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation to Migraine sufferers. But this treatment involves high strength magnetic pulses from a machine, not an item of jewellery that is merely worn. The study showed that the treatment was not a cure for migraines, but it did reduce the severity and duration of the attacks. So if you ask does magnetic therapy work, the answer could well be yes. But it does not follow that magnetic bracelets also work.

And then there is copper. Copper has also been considered by some to have healing properties going back thousands of years. Indeed that might even have been the inspiration for fashioning copper into jewellery. But what are the health benefits of copper? Perhaps that question is best asked of those who have experience - in other words those who wear copper bracelets. If that is you, maybe you'd like to write in and tell us. Why do you wear copper bracelets? That at least is a question that can be answered by ordinary people, not on the basis of some scientific study, but backed only by personal experience.

But that still leaves us with the broader and deeper questions of what is a healing bracelet?

As we said before, if you ask a hundred different people, they'll each have their own answer. Like we said before, there are more answers than questions. The hard part is knowing which answers are right.

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Magnetic bracelets do they work

The question one hears quite a lot in discussing magnetic therapy from jewellery is how do magnetic bracelets work? The issue was raised a few years ago by Karen Hellesvig-Gaskell and her answers are well worth considering. She noted the somewhat broad range of ailments which proponents claim magnets can cure. But then, she more or less put the damper on the whole thing by stating that "the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) says magnets have no medicinal value."

Strictly speaking this is not true. The FDA does not and cannot state that magnets lack medicinal value. The most they can state - and what they actually do claim - is that there is no conclusive evidence that such objects have therapeutic or palliative value. The reality is that millions of people wear these bracelets and many of those individuals take a different position to that of the FDA. But the question that won't go away is do the magnetic bracelets really work at all?

This might seem like a step back from the earlier, bolder question about magnetic bracelets - how do they work? The answer most commonly given to the more specific inquiry, is that the magnets affect the iron (hemoglobin) in the red blood cells. But this suggestion has been scoffed at by physicists as well as physicians. The scientists point out that even the stronger magnets in the best bracelets are too weak to do this. Indeed if it were otherwise, then MRI scanners would be dangerous - as would going to the North Pole. Because the magnetic forces involved in these examples are even stronger. The "field" would (presumably) do some terrible things to our blood!

But in practice, it is often the case that medicines are identified as working, without the actual mechanism being understood. Aspirin, for example, was first created in 1853 and first used medically in 1899. Yet it wasn't until 1971, the underlying mechanism of how it works was discovered, by British Pharmacologist John Robert Vane. At the time, he worked for the prestigious Royal College of Surgeons. Moreover, it wasn't until eleven years later that his achievement was recognized and he shared the Nobel Prize for Physiology and Medicine with two others.

So maybe it will yet be a while before we understand the mechanism behind magnetic therapy. So if we were to boldly disregard the skeptics and provisionally treat magnetic therapy as having a scientific basis - albeit an unknown one - then the question we would then focus on is "what do magnetic bracelets help with?"

Over the course of human history, different users have offered different answers. But if we adopt a cautious approach regarding claims of curative properties, that still allows us to ask boldly and plainly: Do magnets really help with pain? For if indeed magnetic bracelets ease aches - even if they cannot cure the underlying illness - then they surely have some value in the real world, to ordinary human beings who need them.

And if they work as palliative medicine, then let us not forget that one of the ailments that subjects many people to chronic pain is arthritis. If you doubt this, you need only do some market research into the sales figures for arthritis bracelets.

But do magnetic bracelets work for arthritis? For that matter, should we even limit the question to bracelets. After all a bracelet is simply an item of jewellery worn on the wrist. But arthritis itself can strike at other parts of the body, like the neck or even lower limbs. And alternative therapists (including inquisitive doctors) have tried magnetic therapy targeted at each and every one of these areas. So, perhaps instead we should ask, more generally, do magnets work for arthritis?

Furthermore, as we'e writing about alternative health here, why stop at magnets only? Why not copper? After all, copper is also said by some to have therapeutic properties. Such beliefs were held even in ancient times. And if a belief has been held since time immemorial, then it is surely perfectly legitimate to ask the question "do copper bracelets really work?" It may offend medical purists to raise the issue. But raise it we must. Scientific inquiry is all about asking questions.

We cannot say that the answer is in the affirmative, for we are not medically qualified. But  some people think it does and so we might then well ask why does copper help arthritis? What are the causal factors? Is it something to do with atoms migrating through the skin? We know that harmful chemicals can migrate through the pores of the epidermis. So why not helpful ones?

But how can copper help the body? Is it a chemical reaction or - as the skeptics would argue - a psychological one? Whatever the answer may be, we can be sure that what helps arthritis pain will be a boon to millions of people who suffer from the disease all over the world.

In the meantime, these are nagging questions that won't go away. Attempts by mainstream medicine to shut down the discussion have failed. What we have instead is a lively, vibrant debate, but one with more questions than answers.

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