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Magnetic
Treatment
Magnet therapy involves the use of a magnetic device placed on or
near the body to relieve pain and facilitate healing.
How Does It Work?
The theory behind magnet therapy is
that the magnetic fields produced by magnets (or by devices that
generate electromagnetic current) can penetrate the human body and
affect the functioning of individual cells and improve the working
of the nervous system and various organs. Precisely how the magnetic
fields do this remains a mystery, but there are several hypotheses.
Some say that the electrical current created by magnets interrupts
the transmission of pain signals in the central nervous system.
Others claim that magnets increase blood flow to an area, boosting
the flow of oxygen and other nutrients, and ultimately reducing pain
and swelling.
The electrochemical processes of the
human body are extremely complex and incompletely understood, and
physical effects of magnetic fields cannot be ruled out. Many
thousands of papers have in fact been published on biological
effects of electromagnetic fields, much of it focused on the effects
of radio-frequency and microwave fields or, in recent years, on
fields at power-line frequencies (fifty or sixty cycles per second).
Studies of biological effects of steady magnetic fields (reviewed by
Frankel and Liburdy 1996) have concentrated mostly on high fields of
the level encountered in MRI magnets, typically of the order of
10,000 gauss (1 tesla). Unfortunately, research has been very
limited at field levels typical of magnetic therapy products, most
of which are limited to a few hundred gauss, even at the magnet
surface. (The earth's field is a bit less than half a gauss.)
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