Areas of Magnetic Field Research

Evidence shows that Magnetic Fields may have a role to play in treating a variety of conditions

Applications for magnetic Field therapy are still being discovered and more research into their efficacy is being carried out as manufactures of devices that produce these fields seeking to justify their claims for the products they sell. The following is just some of the research showing promising results.

Metabolic changes in Cancer

In normal cell respiration,oxygen is vital for the synthesis of the energy molecule ATP. But if the electron transport pathway is blocked

( and most carcinogens can do this). ATP is not Synthesised. In such cases cells revert to a less efficient way of making ATP, called

Glycolysis, which does not require oxygen.

Glycolysis requires large amounts of glucose, so the cell either stops making Glycoproteins on its plasma membrane surfaces, or it

starts resorbing them to obtain its vital sugar.

But most of these Glycoproteins are the cell's means of information reception. Without them the cell is "Blind" to regulatory growth

control signals from the brain, so it divides out of control and no longer responds to contact inhibition ( where it stops dividing when in

contact with other cells of the same body ). All these signs are seen in cancer cells.

Cancer Treatment

The 1960's saw the first research into the use of magnetic fields in treating cancer in animals. This found that static magnetic fields

appeared to reduce solid tumours. In the study in 1964, Vernon Reno and Leo Nutini from the institute of Divi Thomae, Cincinnati, Ohio

exposed the cancer cells of Sarcoma 37 tumours to various field strengths between 80 and 7300 gauss.

They found that with the highest field level, the uptake of oxygen in cancer cells was reduced by 50%. It seems likely that this lowered

cell's already impoverished adenosine triphosphate(ATP) synthesis, so that some cells did not survive.

This reduced oxygen intake contrasts with the increased oxygen intake in normal cells under a static magnetic influence and seems to

confirm the views of 1931 Nobel prize winner Otto Warburg, that cancer arises from a metabolic change leading to faulty cell

respiration.

His explanation has been refined by further research at Coghill Research Laboratories.

Bone Fractures.

Art Prilla and the late Andy Bassett, working in Columbia University, New York in the 1970's, developed the use of pulsed

electromagnetic fields to repair non-union bone fractures - where the two parts of broken bone refuse to knit together.

The electromagnetic fields they applied to the fracture mimicked the body's own endogenous fields and stimulated repair. The US 

Federal Drug administration (FDA) has approved a least one such device, but it may be only be used for non-unions - where the bone

has refused to join sometimes for several years - and not for fresh fractures.

According to Dr Pilla, his approach has saved some 10,000 patients from amputation over the years.

The Electro Biology devices (EBI) that emerged from this research are widely used in the US today, and the approach is being studied

in British hospitals.

Pain Relief

As early as 1938, Scandinavian Karen M Hansen reported that magnet fields alleviated disorders such as sciatica, lumbago, and joint

pain.

Her 1944 paper in the medical journal "Acta Medica Scandinacica" aimed to prove objectively that magnetic fields influence the body.

Measuring air intake and output in a total of 130 people with normal metabolism, and a similar number of controls, she showed that

oxygen absorption increased when a magnet was placed  3cm (1.2in) from the left temple.

The field strength was not stated. Increased oxygen absorption make more oxygen available in the blood, which in turn helps muscle

pain.

In more recent trails in 1988 at Vanderbilt University, Nashville Tennessee a painful stimulant derived from peppers was injected under

volunteer's skin.

All the volunteers found that the four neodymium magnets applied reduced the subsequent pain levels significantly.

Reduction in pain was among the benefits reported by Sasa Molslavac, whose team worked at the war rehabilitation centre at

Varazdinske, Toplice, treating victims of the 1992 Croatian war.

Between 1992 and 1995 they used static magnets on over 1200 patients, mostly suffering war wounds and fractures with subsequently

low mobility.

According to their records, over 88 per cent of their cases refused to interrupt the magnetic field treatment because it was so effective

in reducing pain and improving limb mobility.

Transcranial Magnetic stimulation in Psychiatry  

"[Medicine is] entering an era when new methods will be available for the

modification of brain circuitry and function of normal or disordered types

by means of painless extracranial techniques that seem to be without obvious

detriment to neuronal populations ..."

- R. G. Bickford, 1987.

The brain is elusive: its most interesting qualities appear when it is tucked inside its shell of bone, reading the world through senses

and driving the body through the wide range of human behaviour. Anatomists can describe its structure in incredible detail;

physiologists can tease out the complex chemistry of its cells, and neuropsychologists have pieced together a broad but incomplete

picture of how its functions work together. Despite this enormous body of knowledge, the day-to-day running of the brain's activities -

and how to help when they go wrong - is still difficult to comprehend. Our knowledge is based on accidental damage, comparisons

made at autopsy, and some difficult imaging techniques, rather than through direct interaction with the brain working inside its

enclosure.

Historically, interventions made on the brain have been fairly drastic - from holes bored in the skull by primitive healers, through to the

drugs, electrical treatments and psychosurgery of more recent times. Psychiatry, surgery and pharmacology have combined to

alleviate or prevent many conditions which were once a death sentence, or meant a life of misery for the sufferer. However, their

techniques have often carried enormous risk, or drastic side effects, due to the severity of the interventions used.

One very promising avenue for influencing the living brain has emerged in the last decade, based on the use of pulsed magnetic fields.

The skull is a good insulator, and past efforts to alter the electrical activity happening inside it have required high voltages, with little

opportunity for fine control or focus of the effects. Consider instead how easily a magnet under a wooden tabletop can move a pin on

the surface - magnetic fields pass almost unaffected through insulators, including the skull.

It is easy in principle to get a magnetic field to produce electrical effects: simply change the field over time, and any charge-carriers

(like the ions in the cells of the brain) will be influenced to flow, creating an induced current. However, affecting neurons inside the

head requires a lot of magnetic force to be changed very quickly, and the technology to do this has only been around for about a

decade. The first trans-cranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) machines, capable of delivering a pulse every three seconds, were

developed as diagnostic aids for neurologists. For instance, the motor part of the brain can be stimulated, inducing a twitch of the

thumb, which tells a neurologist that the intervening nerve pathways are intact. Machines are now available which can give up to 50

stimuli per second (rapid-rate TMS, or rTMS) and their effects are more interesting. Among a wide range of possibilities, it is believed

that rTMS may have a place in the treatment of some mental illnesses. It is a non-invasive technique, apparently free of serious

side-effects, capable of modifying the activity of specific brain areas.

The magnetic fields used in TMS are produced by passing current through a hand-held coil, whose shape determines the properties

and size of the field. The coil is driven by a machine which switches the large current necessary in a very precise and controlled way,

at rates up to 50 cycles per second in rTMS. The coil is held on the scalp - no actual contact is necessary - and the magnetic field

passes through the skull and into the brain. Small induced currents can then make brain areas below the coil more or less active,

depending on the settings used.

In practice, TMS and rTMS are able to influence many brain functions, including movement, visual perception, memory, reaction time,

speech and mood. The effects produced are genuine but temporary, lasting only a short time after actual stimulation has stopped.

Generally, TMS appears to be free from harmful effects. Research using animals and human volunteers has showed little effect on the

body in general as a result of stimulation, and examination of brain tissue submitted to thousands of TMS pulses has shown no

detectable structural changes. It is possible in unusual circumstances to trigger a seizure in normal patients, but a set of guidelines

which virtually eliminate this risk are available. Research continues, but TMS is certainly free of obvious side-effects like those of

electro-convulsive therapy (ECT), which still makes quite an impact on patients despite refinements in technique.

Many mental illnesses can be demonstrated to stem from the abnormal behaviour of particular brain regions, in much the same way

that diabetes is the result of malfunctioning cells in the pancreas. It is believed that some mental disorders are the result of nerve cells

being over- or under-excitable (in other words, it is too easy or too difficult for them to "fire" and work properly). In this context,

successful psychiatric treatment is achieved by modifying these cells' behaviour. The range of effects produced by TMS are a clear

indication of its potential to work in this way.

Of course, TMS could only be used to treat diseases whose functional causes are understood. Recent progress in understanding the

mechanisms behind depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and neurological diseases like Parkinson's and Huntington's, offers

some hope in these areas. It must be stressed that most of the excitement about TMS is based on potential rather than proven

effectiveness, but research is being conducted around the world. For instance, there is reason to believe that rTMS could replace

some ECT treatments currently used for severely depressed patients. Groups in Germany, the United States and Israel have reported

positive results from using TMS and rTMS to treat depressed patients. The prospect of replacing ECT with a near-painless treatment,

which does not require anaesthesia, would change these people's lives remarkably.

The authors of this article have just begun a research project, covering the use of rTMS in depression and some of the physiology of

its workings, through the Royal Hobart Hospital and the University of Tasmania.

Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) is a procedure in which electrical activity in the brain is influenced by a pulsed magnetic field.

The field is generated by passing current pulses through a conducting coil, held close to the scalp so that the field is focussed in the

cortex, passing through the skull. Magnetic induction dictates that the changing field acts on charges in the tissue it passes through,

causing small local currents to flow. When this stimulation is delivered at regular intervals, it is termed repetitive TMS, or rTMS.

Recently, improvements in electronics (especially capacitors) have enabled machines capable of alternating these strong magnetic

fields at physiologically interesting rates (up to 25 Hz), called high frequency rTMS.

The early clinical uses of TMS were restricted to the field of neurology, where it was used to examine conduction in the central and

peripheral nervous system by stimulating neurons. More recently, TMS and rTMS have been used to investigate aspects of cortical

processing, including sensory and cognitive functions. The use of rTMS to excite local areas of cortex, combined with knowledge of

how local cortical activity can change during various disorders, has raised the possibility of the use of rTMS as a therapeutic tool for

psychiatric and neurological disorders.

During the past few years, magnetic devices have been claimed to relieve pain and to have therapeutic value against a large number of

diseases and conditions. The way to evaluate such claims is to ask whether scientific studies have been published. Pulsed

electromagnetic fields -- which induce measurable electric fields -- have been demonstrated effective for treating slow-healing

fractures and have shown promise for a few other conditions. However, few studies have been published on the effect on pain of small,

static magnets marketed to consumers [1]. Explanations that magnetic fields "increase circulation," "reduce inflammation," or "speed

recovery from injuries" are simplistic and are not supported by the weight of experimental evidence [2].

The main basis for the claims is a double-blind test study, conducted at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, which compared the

effects of magnets and sham magnets on knee pain. The study involved 50 adult patients with pain related to having been infected with

the polio virus when they were children. A static magnetic device or a placebo device was applied to the patient's skin for 45 minutes.

The patients were asked to rate how much pain they experienced when a "trigger point was touched." The researchers reported that

the 29 patients exposed to the magnetic device achieved lower pain scores than did the 21 who were exposed to the placebo device

[3} Although this study is cited by nearly everyone selling magnets, it provides no legitimate basis for concluding that magnets offer

any health-related benefit:

Two better-designed, longer-lasting pain studies have been negative:

Magnets have also been claimed to increase circulation. This claim is false. If it were true, placing a magnet on the skin would make the

area under the magnet become red, which it does not. Moreover, a well-designed study that actually measured blood flow has found

no increase. The study involved 12 healthy volunteers who were exposed to either a 1000-gauss magnetic disk or an identically

appearing disk that was not magnetic. No change in the amount or speed of blood flow was observed when either disk was applied to

their arm. The magnets were manufactured by Magnetherapy, Inc, of Riviera Beach, Florida, a company that has been subjected to two regulatory actions.

Legal and Regulatory Actions

In 1998, Magnetherapy, Inc., signed an Assurance of Voluntary Compliance with the State of Texas to pay a $30,000 penalty and to stop

claiming that wearing its magnetic device near areas of pain and inflammation will relieve pain due to arthritis, migraine headaches,

sciatica or heel spurs. The agreement also requires Magnetherapy to stop making claims that its magnets can cure, treat, or mitigate

any disease or can affect any change in the human body, unless its devices are FDA-approved for those purposes [7]. Ads for the

company's Tectonic Magnets had featured testimonials from athletes, including golfers from the senior pro tours. Various ads had

claimed that Tectonic Magnets would provide symptomatic relief from certain painful conditions and could restore range of motion to

muscles and joints.

The company had provided retailers with display packages that included health claims, written testimonials, and posters of sports

stars.

Texas Attorney General Dan Morales stated that some claims were false or unsubstantiated and others had rendered the product

unapproved medical devices under Texas law. In 1997, the FDA had warned Magnetherapy to stop claiming that its products would

relieve arthritis; tennis elbow; low back pain; sciatica; migraine headache; muscle soreness; neck, knee, ankle, and shoulder pain;

heel spurs; bunions; arthritic fingers and toes; and could reduce pain and inflammation in the affected areas by increasing blood and

oxygen flow [8].

In 1999, the FTC obtained a consent agreement barring two companies from making unsubstantiated claims about their magnetic

products. Magnetic Therapeutic Technologies, of Irving, Texas, is barred from claiming that its magnetic sleep pads or other

products: (a) are effective against cancers, diabetic ulcers, arthritis, degenerative joint conditions, or high blood pressure; (b) could

stabilize or increase the T-cell count of HIV patients; (c) could reduce muscle spasms in persons with multiple sclerosis; (d) could

reduce nerve spasms associated with diabetic neuropathy; (e) could increase bone density, immunity, or circulation; or (f) are

comparable or superior to prescription pain medicine. Pain Stops Here! Inc., of Baiting Hollow, N.Y., may no longer claim that its

"magnetized water" or other products are useful against cancer, diseases of the liver or other internal organs, gallstones, kidney

stones, urinary infection, gastric ulcers, dysentery, diarrhea, skin ulcers, bed sores, arthritis, bursitis, tendinitis, sprains, strains,

sciatica, heart disease, circulatory disease, arthritis, auto-immune illness, neuro-degenerative disease, and allergies, and could

stimulate the growth of plants.

On August 8, 2000, the Consumer Justice Center, of Laguna Niguel, California filed suit in Orange County Superior Court charging that

Florsheim and a local shoe store (Shoe Emporium) made false and fraudulent claims that their MagneForce shoes (a) correct

"magnetic deficiency," (b) "generate a deep-penetrating magnetic field which increases blood circulation; reduces leg and back

fatigue; and provides natural pain relief and improved energy level."; and (c) their claims are established and proven by scientific

studies [9]. A few days after this suit was filed, Florsheim removed the disputed ad from its Web site.

In 2001, Richard Markoll, his wife Ernestine, David H. Trock, M.D., and Bio-Magnetic Treatment Systems (BMTS) pled guilty to criminal

charges in connection with a scheme involving pulsed magnetic therapy. The participants used fraudulent billing codes to seek

payment from Medicare and three other insurance plans for treatment with a device (Electro-Magnetic Induction Treatment System,

Model 30/30) that lacked FDA approval [10]. The treatments -- called pulsed signal therapy (PST) -- were administered in a clinical trial

on an investigational basis not approved by the FDA. The Markolls were sentenced to 3 years probation, a $4,000 fine and a $100

special assessment. Ernestine Markoll was sentenced to 2 years probation, a $1,000 fine and a $25 special assessment. Magnetic

Therapy, was sentenced to a 1-day summary probation and a $200 special assessment. The Markolls also signed a civil settlement

under which they agreed to pay the U.S Government $4 million [11]. The device was invented by Richard Markoll, MD, PhD, who does

not have a medical license but is described in Web site biographies as a graduate of Grace University School of Medicine, a Caribbean

medical school. Trock, a former principal investigator for Magnetic Therapy Center, PC, Danbury, CT, was sentenced to 6 months

probation. and ordered to make restitution of $35,250 [12]. Trock has co-authored studies claiming that PST is effective for treating

pain, but the device is not FDA-approved for that purpose.

In September 2002, California Attorney General Bill Lockyer charged Florida-based European Health Concepts, Inc. (EHC) with making

false and misleading claims about its magnetic mattress pads and seat cushions. The complaint, filed in Sacramento Superior Court,

also named EHC president Kevin Todd and several sales managers and agents as defendants. The suit seeks more than $1 million in

civil penalties for engaging in unfair business practices and making false claims; $500,000 in civil penalties for transactions involving

senior citizens; and full restitution for purchasers of the products. The complaint alleged that prospective customers, primarily senior

citizens, were invited to attend a free dinner seminar at which they were told that EHC's products could help people suffering from

fibromyalgia, lupus, sciatica, herniated discs, asthma, bronchitis, cataracts, chronic fatigue syndrome, colitis, diverticulitis, heart

disease, multiple sclerosis, and more than 50 other health conditions. The sales agents offered phony price discounts for immediate

purchases that actually were the company's regular prices. [13].

The Commissioner called Dr. Philip Neufeld of Health Canada's Medical Devices Bureau as a

witness. He explained that, under the Regulations, a product is considered a Class I medical device as long

as someone makes a representation that it has a medical attribute. A product is designated as a Class I

medical device because the manufacturer claims that it has medical benefits, not because Health Canada

agrees with the claims or the manufacturer has proven them. All that a manufacturer has to do is supply the

required identifying information and declare that its product is safe and effective for the purposes claimed; it

is not required to submit any evidence that this is the case.

The Bottom Line

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.

Livingston JD. Magnetic therapy: Plausible attraction. Skeptical Inquirer 25-30, 58, 199

Ramey DW. Magnetic and electromagnetic therapy. Scientific Review of Alternative Medicine 2(1):13-19, 1998.

Vallbona C, Hazelwood CF, Jurida G. Response of pain to static magnetic fields in postpolio patients: A double-blind pilot study. Archives of Physical and Rehabilitative Medicine 78:1200-1203, 1997.

Caselli MA and others. Evaluation of magnetic foil and PPT Insoles in the treatment of heel pain. Journal of the American Podiatric Medical Association 87:11-16, 1997.

Collacott EA and others. Bipolar permanent magnets for the treatment of chronic low back pain. JAMA 283:1322-1325, 2000.

Mayrovitz HN and others. Assessment of the short-term effects of a permanent magnet on normal skin blood circulation via laser-Doppler flowmetry. Scientific Review of Alternative Medicine 6(1):9-12, 2002.

Morales halts unproven claims for magnet therapy. News release, April 9, 1998.

Gill LJ. Letter to William L. Roper, Feb 3, 1997.

Jeff Wynton and the Consumer Justice Center v. Florsheim Group, Inc., Shoe Emporium.