Injecting some personal experience, my wife had spinal surgery last year and the surgeon's team prescribed a bone-growth stimulator that generates a pulsed electromagnetic field (PEMF) that puts out a field a few dozen microteslas strong over an area of a few centimeters for a 30-minute interval. That's roughly as strong as the static geomagnetic field. (The literature says the static field is close enough in strength to most potential PEMF applications and varies enough with local and environment that it should be accounted for in clinical testing but often isn't, making it hard to replicate and evaluate studies.) But the physiological effect of stimulating bone cell growth is backed up clinically and approved by the FDA.
We also use a vet-recommended PEMF device on our aging dog, who suffered some muscle injuries. (Well, it's not the actual $1,000 mat recommended by our vet, but a much cheaper one.) That puts out a much stronger field, 1 mT or 2.5 mT (milli-Teslas), that's in the refrigerator-magnet range. The repeated changes of the magnetic field, the pulsing, can help activate ion channels at the cellular level and affect cellular metabolism, but it's much less clear from the literature whether these sorts of over-the-counter PEMF products do much good, since the potential ion channel affects appear to vary with the strength and frequency of the field, and it doesn't seem like any two products offer the same combination. (And for our dog, well, we also give him other recommended medications and exercise him, so we have no idea which treatment is helping.)
Pulsed Electromagnetic Fields (PEMF)—Physiological Response and Its Potential in Trauma Treatment from the International Journal of Molecular Sciences, has some interesting background on the subject and a couple of passing references to research on the geomagnetic field's potential impact human health.
We also use a vet-recommended PEMF device on our aging dog, who suffered some muscle injuries. (Well, it's not the actual $1,000 mat recommended by our vet, but a much cheaper one.) That puts out a much stronger field, 1 mT or 2.5 mT (milli-Teslas), that's in the refrigerator-magnet range. The repeated changes of the magnetic field, the pulsing, can help activate ion channels at the cellular level and affect cellular metabolism, but it's much less clear from the literature whether these sorts of over-the-counter PEMF products do much good, since the potential ion channel affects appear to vary with the strength and frequency of the field, and it doesn't seem like any two products offer the same combination. (And for our dog, well, we also give him other recommended medications and exercise him, so we have no idea which treatment is helping.)
Pulsed Electromagnetic Fields (PEMF)—Physiological Response and Its Potential in Trauma Treatment from the International Journal of Molecular Sciences, has some interesting background on the subject and a couple of passing references to research on the geomagnetic field's potential impact human health.