Hi!
We got our Sharper Image & Herrington catalogs today, and in it, one of them had a whole section dedicated to magnetic therapy - bracelets, leg wraps, arm wraps, etc. Is there any scientific basis behind this, and does it really heal or help? Or is this just a fad like the crystal therapy that was popular a while ago?
Thanks!
Scott
According to Skepdic, it’s hogwash.
Soap and water work better on hogs IMO.
Minor hi-jack, but may spark ideas for you.
I used to read the skeptical enquirer and discovered over time that their science is as bad as the quacks. There is a commercial/short on the discovery channel that refutes the efficacy of magnetic therapy on mind-blowingly poor logic.
The skeptic holds a couple of sheets of paper between a magnet and a paperclip and the paperclip falls to the floor. He then says that a magnetic field is too weak to transfer through the skin based on this experiment. Now last time I checked our red blood cells or whatever molecules may be the target of this therapy don’t weigh as much as a paperclip.
Here’s the problem. MRI’s subject a patient to magnetic fields on the order of a million times stronger. Even with a field that strong, there are no physiological effects noticed.
Besides that, there isn’t a plausible mechanism for the magnets to do anything. Some of the people hawking the magnet bracelets will come up with stuff like “the magnets draw in on iron in the blood and bring it to the tissue under the bracelet, increasing the blood flow.” That idea doesn’t make alot of sense. The iron compound in hemoglobin is non magnetic. And generally magnetic fields inhibit the flow of fluids that can be influenced by magnets.
The demonstration with the paper and bracelets is to demonstrate that the field strengths in these “medical” bracelets is so low that they couldn’t even penetrate the skin deep enough to effect anything in the underlying joint or muscle.
Last thing. Medicine has tested for healing and helpful properties of magnetic devices and found none. The alternative medicine field often portrays traditional medicine as unwilling to use substances or devices they don’t understand the mechanism of. This simply is not true, even to this day, there are many drugs for example that they know have measurable effects but no understood mechanism of operations. That has not slowed their use. It is simply assumed that if something is effective there is a mechanism of operation, just because we don’t know what it is yet doesn’t mean it isn’t useful.
Unfortunately for magnetic devices, when a properly designed study is used to see if they work, they just don’t. We also understand magnetism much better than we understand all of brain chemistry for example. The results of the magnetic devices match what we would expect they should do, nothing. But, end the end, if they were found useful, medicine would probably embrace them.
Hi Scott,
Here’s a recent thread on magnetic therapy. It should answer most of your questions about magnetic therapy.
Therapeutic magnets only work when they’ve been soaked in snake oil. This causes them to release more placebo rays. 
Dr. Strangemind
Given the grasp of science displayed by KidC elsewhere on these boards, I would take his “discovery” with a softball-sized grain of salt.
Just to expand on scotth’s excellent answer – many of the magnets sold as magnetic therapy are made from the same magnetic sheets used to make refrigerator magnets, which have alternating strips of material with opposite dipoles (N-S, S-N, N-S, etc.) The magnetic field is only appreciably strong at very close range, which is what the paperclip demonstration is supposed to show. Not only are they weak magnets, but the magnetic field drops off very quickly with distance compared to a normal ferromagnet.
So, if one is to make the argument that the magnets are somehow influencing the blood, it would be nice if they used material that would have a non-zero magnetic field more than an inch away… (Even though it’s still a bunch of hooey that only sells because it sounds scientific.)
Cervaise what the hell is that supposed to mean?
Well, I would suggest that some of the questions posed by you would indicate that you are not really in a strong position to critique the science within the Skeptical Inquirer.
I am not suggesting for one second that there is anything wrong with asking any of the questions I have seen posed by you, in fact I hope you keep asking them.
However, the questions asked reveal a less than thorough grasp of the basics.
I would generally characterize the issues of the Skeptical Inquirer that I have seen as extremely coherent and if anything rather conservative in their pronouncements.
Even your critique of their short spots on Discovery Communications channels reveals shortcomings.
- The spot was extremely short and a complete examination of the issues are not possible in the time alotted. Hard to ding them on that.
- The logic of showing the magnets in those devices can’t hold a paperclip through a few sheets of paper is right on the mark. You just took away the wrong message. The message is that if the field can’t make it through a couple of sheets of paper, how can it be expected to make it through many times that thickness of tissue to effect anything in the interior of a joint for example.
But please, dig up your old copies of the magazine and show me a few examples of their science being as “bad as the quacks.” That is a pretty serious charge against a pretty reputable source of info. A charge that I would doubt based on what I have seen of their magazine. But, I haven’t seen all the issues.
This is a use of magnetism for different therapeutic ends than that in the OP, but I thought I’d drop it in, since we’re talking MRI:
Klein, E. et al. (1999). Therapeutic efficacy of right prefrontal slow repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation in major depression. Archives of General Psychiatry, 56, 315–320.
They conducted a double-blind study of people with depression, comparing slow repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (abbreviated “rTMS”) to a group receiving placebo and found improvement. They recommend this treatment over ECT(electroconvulsive therapy, i.e. shock treatment).
A recent study by Janicak, P. G. et al. (2002) compared rTMS to ECT for depression and found no difference in efficacy. However, the side effects of rTMS seem to be a lot less severe than those of rTMS.
This is a use of magnetism for different therapeutic ends than that in the OP, but I thought I’d drop it in, since we’re talking MRI:
Klein, E. et al. (1999). Therapeutic efficacy of right prefrontal slow repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation in major depression. Archives of General Psychiatry, 56, 315–320.
They conducted a double-blind study of people with depression, comparing slow repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (abbreviated “rTMS”) to a group receiving placebo and found improvement. They recommend this treatment over ECT(electroconvulsive therapy, i.e. shock treatment).
A recent study by Janicak, P. G. et al. (2002) compared rTMS to ECT for depression and found no difference in efficacy. However, the side effects of rTMS seem to be a lot less severe than those of ECT.
I’d like to see how they double-blinded that study!
First off, I am not defending the efficacy of magnetic therapy. We do know the difference between rejecting an argument and the ultimate veractiy of the conclusion drawn from an arument, right? Just in case we don’t, then know that I think MT is probably bunk too but I wouldnt say that as a professional skeptic. I think that the SE consistently confuses unproven with disproven in the tone with which they deliver their opinions. While the conclusions they draw in their arcticles are conservative the tone often isn’t.
The TONE of the Discovery Channel did not seem to me to be one of “maybe/maybe not, we really don’t know.” It was more like the idea of magnetic therapy is BS, not merely unproven. There is a huge difference in tone between the commercial and one of their articles regarding MT.
http://www.csicop.org/si/9807/magnet.html
The only study in the article is actually positive. Of course they insist on finding the cheesiest ads for magnetic therapy items to reveal their true slant on the subject. Something isn’t untrue because it’s unproven and the efficacy of the current applied “science” of these items shouldn’t be confused with the potential truth of a pure science when it is studied more. God forbid someone rolls the dice on something unproven but probably harmless huh?
Scott,
If you think that argument by the DC is right on the mark then Im probably not the one who should check his/her basics.
Regarding point one…
No argument is still better than a short but fallacious one.
and point two…
The only thing his experiment showed is that the magnet wouldn’t hold a paper clip through a few sheets of paper. Is the field being blocked outright or just reduced in strength? If it’s the latter then it certainly COULD affect something with the weight of the average molecule. And if you affect something right under the skin, who knows what reaction will occur when the body attempts to regain stasis. I’m not positing a theory here, just saying that their argument is bad.
And please, do site examples of my poor grasp of the basics. Not light-hearted ideas like the breastman/breast feed question to which you are probably referring.
You were accusing Skeptical Inquirer of science no better than quacks.
Paper has almost zero effect on a magnetic field. They weren’t trying to show that paper was enough to block it. The demonstration shows how rapidly the field strength goes away as a function of distance. If a magnet is supposed to work on a joint (the claims were never made that they magnets improved skin conditions such as acne, etc) it has to be able to reach the joint at a much larger distance that the thickness of a couple sheets of paper. That is a valid arguement against magnet therapy that can be shown in a short spot. The bottom line is that frequently the magnetic field felt by the tissues that are supposed to be effected by these devices would be overwhelmed by earth’s own magnetic field. An even better thing to show IMHO would be the results of a real double blind trial that showed no meaningful results.
As you wish, a few recent ones:
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=124556
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=122683
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=109452
I wasn’t considering the breast ones at all.
Also, I don’t criticize you one single bit for asking any of the above questions. They do however reduce your credibility while slamming the Skeptical Inquirer.
I could be wrong though. If you really feel your criticism of them was valid, please quote some pieces of the offending material that support your position.
In the end, the theory of Magnetic Therapy (at least in so far as using little bracelets and such to relieve muscle and joint pain) appears to be completely BS. There is no believable mechanism, but much more importantly, there has been no properly designed study that showed the claimed effects. If a properly designed study demonstrated an effect it would no longer be considered quackery.
There are a number of medical materials/devices that we simply don’t know how they work. LSD is an example. There are a number of theories about how it may work, but no one knows yet. However, there is no mistaking the fact that there IS an effect when it is ingested. That leads to the reasonable conclusion that there is a mechanism, whether we know what it is or not. Science/medicine has been dealing with this situation for a long time. Contrary to popular belief, science generally embraces demonstratable phenomena that it cannot yet explain.
I’ve only read the abstract. Hmm… how about putting the control group in the same machine for the same amount of time and performing similar medical activities (pushing buttons, making hand-passes, checking readouts) but not having the machine actually function?
I’m guessing it’s easier to keep patients from knowing their treatment condition than to keep staff in the dark–sedate or knock out the patients.
im not gonna defend mygrasp of science any longer against someone who can’t see the fallacy in the paper clip argument. I;ve already said it doesnt have to have a direct linear effect on the joint itself to have an indirect effect. And your sites against me are pretty lame, especially considering you go on to give the very reason I do for the “it depends” on the rowing resistance.
That’s a low blow in GQ, Cervaise. You can criticize the errors in his post, but attacking the poster is not allowed here. KidC, I want to commend you for keeping your cool after receiving such a rude comment.
The paper clip demonstration simply shows that there is no appreciable magnetic field at any significant distance from the surface of the magnet. It is not a fallacious demonstration. It is an illustration that these magnets cannot have any direct effect on subcutaneous tissue. That’s all.
As far as your claim of an indirect effect, like all claims, it’s up to the claimant to prove that the effect exists. It’s not up to skeptics to prove that it does not. In any case, as has been said before, there is no known mechanism by which these magnets could have a therapeutic effect. With no evidence and no workable theory, why should anyone believe in the therapeutic effect of magnets?
KidC, magnetic forces do not effect molecules directly unless the molecules are simultaneously holding a charge and moving. Otherwise there is no magnetic force other than those associated with the electrons… and those indeed require a large magnetic field (orders of magnitude larger than one which is depriciated through thickness of some sheets of paper). Thus it is perfectly reasonable to show such a mockery of the magnets when in associating with what the forces would be on molecules.
More than that, the electric currents that exist in the body are not going to be effected by such weak magnets. There are studies on how strong a magnetic field it takes, and it is quite a bit more than any on the market I have seen. Yes, all these products are utter trash and quackery.