- Is it possible that the magnetic therapy used by physicians
in ancient Egypt to keep their young queen healthy does have a positive
effect? Not so long ago, magnetic therapy was pretty much shunned by mainstream
medicine, dismissed as ineffective and, even worse, condemned as quackery.
Any benefits that it might have, said the sceptics, could be explained
by the placebo effect: patients believed that it worked, ergo it did.
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- But there is now mounting evidence that magnetic therapy
can be effective. More than 300 research teams around the world, at institutions
as prestigious and mainstream as Imperial College London, and California,
Yale and Harvard universities, have found evidence of positive effects.
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- It has been shown to work in conditions as diverse as
arthritis, depression, incontinence, wound healing, epilepsy and spinal
injuries, and is being investigated as a treatment for many more, including
cancer, migraine and MS. It can even, it is suggested, help to straighten
crooked teeth, encourage bone to grow and help people who hear voices but
have not responded to drug treatments.
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- Back in ancient Egyptian times and beyond, it is likely
that the original idea of magnet therapy stemmed from the unusual effects
of natural stones. That is almost certainly why Cleopatra wore a naturally
magnetic lodestone on her forehead to slow down the ageing process.
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- Before and since, many cultures have used magnetic therapy,
and although it has always been part of the treatment portfolio of alternative
medicine, it has remained largely at the margins of mainstream medicine
because of the lack of good scientific evidence that it works. Over the
years, one or two good studies have surfaced hinting that something might
be happening due to magnetic therapy, but the real turning point came when
gold-standard, double-blind clinical trials, in which no one knows who
is being treated with what, began to support some of the earlier claims.
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- There are two main ways of using magnets in medicine.
The hi-tech way is magnetic stimulation of the brain, while the more traditional
technique uses others types of magnet to stimulate specific areas of the
body. There is now evidence that both approaches work in different ways
for different conditions.
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- One of the landmark studies for the hi-tech way has come
out of the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, which showed that magnetic
stimulation of the brain eases severe depression. After two weeks of treatment,
half of the patients showed a 50 per cent improvement in symptoms. Half
the patients also had no need for further treatment with electroconvulsive
therapy (ECT), while all those who had been given a dummy treatment did
need it. "Our findings are very exciting since they provide clear
evidence for the effectiveness of magnetic therapy, at least over the short
term," says Dr Ehud Klein, who led the study and whose findings have
now been replicated in three other studies.
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- In a study at the Medical University of South Carolina,
20 depressed patients, who had not been helped by medication, had the treatment
for 20 minutes a day for two weeks, and 10 had a magnet applied to their
scalp but no treatment. In half of the 20 patients, symptoms were reduced
by 50 per cent, while none of the group of 10 improved. "This allows
us, for the first time, to stimulate the brain non-invasively while the
person is awake and alert," says Dr Mark George, professor of psychiatry
at the university.
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- The technique, transcranial magnetic stimulation or TMS,
works on the principle that the brain can be manipulated by small electric
currents because brain cells communicate with each other and pass instructions
by pulses of electricity. "We can demonstrate it quite easily,"
says Dr Declan McLoughlin, a consultant psychiatrist at the Institute of
Psychiatry in London. "For example, if I were to take a magnetic coil
and move it over parts of the brain that control the movement of body parts,
I could make the little finger, then the middle finger, and then the thumb
move."
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- The trick with TMS is to set up the fields over the particular
area of the brain that needs retuning. It is known from the results of
scanning patients with depression that there is reduced activity and blood
flow in the left frontal lobe, an area of the brain above the forehead
that is involved in thinking and planning. In the therapy, a wire coil
is held close to the patient's scalp above the left frontal lobe to produce
a magnetic field that passes through the skull and into the brain to get
activity up to normal levels.
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- At Imperial College, they have used the same kind of
approach in people with incomplete spinal-cord injuries, leading to improvements
in their ability to move muscles and limbs, and feel sensations. In the
therapy, an electromagnet is put over the cerebral cortex. "The [electromagnet's]
repeated signals may work a bit like physiotherapy, but instead of repeating
a physical task, the machine activates the surviving nerves to strengthen
their connections," says Imperial's Dr Nick Davey. The same hi-tech
approach has been used successfully, too, in cases of epilepsy and schizophrenia.
Yale researchers used magnetic stimulation on patients who had been hearing
voices. The researchers say 70 per cent of such patients appear to benefit
from TMS for up to a year, sometimes more.
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- Other forms of magnetic therapy are applied directly
to the problem area. At Harvard University, patients with osteoarthritis
were given high-strength magnet or dummy sleeves for their knees, which
they wore for six hours a day, for six weeks. The researchers found that
the beneficial effects of the magnetic sleeve began to kick in after four
hours, with a sevenfold difference between patients who had the real sleeve
and those who had the sham device. The team ruled out placebo effects because
77 per cent of the people who had the dummy treatment believed that they
had had the real thing.
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- Researchers at the Peninsula Medical School in Plymouth
also found that osteoarthritis pain was helped by wearing a standard magnetic
bracelet compared to a dummy one. "Pain from osteoarthritis of the
hip and knee does decrease when wearing magnetic bracelets," they
reported.
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- For a study at the University of Washington, researchers
put a magnet on the shoulder of patients who had suffered chronic pain
for many years as a result of spinal-cord injury. After the magnet was
put on the shoulder for one hour, pain levels halved.
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- The researchers in this last study said that the therapy
might work by the magnet acting on the nerves. But just how this laying
on of magnets works is still not clear. One theory is that it has some
kind of impact on the blood, and research in North Carolina with animals
shows that blood flow is stimulated by the movement of magnetic fields
through tissue. Other theories suggest that magnet therapy changes skin
temperature; has an effect on iron in the blood; improves oxygenation of
the blood; alters the pH balance; improves electrical conductivity of cells;
or stimulates new cell growth.
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- But researchers in Canada, who reviewed all the research
on magnetic therapy and osteoarthritis, suggest that magnetic therapy works
by stimulating new cartilage cells to grow. More conditions are now being
tested for magnetic therapy, and sales of many devices are booming.
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- And the success with humans has spawned magnetic therapy
for pets, too. The Magna-Cell Health Collar, for example, is an adjustable
collar with a sealed magnetic unit; with the blurb reassuringly stating:
"Tested on humans for animals."
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- ©2005 Independent News & Media (UK) Ltd.
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- http://news.independent.co.uk/
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