Claim: Fluctuations in Earth's magnetic field (geomagnetic storms) causes a myriad of different health problems.

[jdog]

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.

 

[serpentdebunker]

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.

Looked this up and found this page on the Skeptoid site: https://skeptoid.com/episodes/4863

Perhaps Oz is not aware that an MRI machine is used for non-invasive imaging, it's not used to treat pain. And it's great for imaging, because magnetic fields don't interact with the human body. It's not going to do anything to you, which is the basic reason all PEMF devices can be considered worthless snake oil.

The majority of articles promoting PEMF all refer back to a single old trial from way back in 1990, that found pulsed electromagnetic fields "significantly influence healing in tibial fractures with delayed union," meaning it can help broken bones heal faster when they weren't doing so on their own. This one study appears to be the cornerstone upon which most marketing of PEMF devices is based. However a 2011 analysis published in the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews sought to shed more light on all such research. They found a total of four such studies that included 125 participants, and found the use of PEMF in non-union bone fractures was "inconclusive and insufficient to inform current practice." Meaning, in short, there's no reason to use it.

And they're right about FDA approval not proving that a product works. All it means is the product is safe and can be manufactured to federal quality standards. Plenty of snake oil products meet that standard and are FDA approved, and yet don't have any therapeutic value at all.

Towards the end of the article is this:

Particularly entertaining are the "science explanations" given by sellers claiming to describe how and why these work — and, of course, no two websites give the same explanations, because the fact is that there is no mechanism by which these devices might interact with the human body. On the Science-Based Medicine blog in 2016, Dr. Steven Novella discussed the supposedly "science" claims made by a company that manufactured a PEMF pad, something that you'd lay on and it would be magnetic. One of these claims was "The EMPpad's PEMF technology has been developed to deliver an electromagnetic pulse at an intensity and frequency which mimics the Earth's magnetic field." Novella wrote: One immediate question I had — if the device exactly mimics the Earth's magnetic field... then why is the device necessary? Aren't we all being exposed to the Earth's magnetic field all the time?

 

[John J.]

Injecting some personal experience

Hi @jdog, hope the missus is doing well- backs are funny things and can take a while to be sorted out.
And give the dog a tickle from me.

Reading your post, and @serpentdebunker's subsequent post, I don't know what to think about therapeutic PEMF
(I haven't read the linked-to materials yet).

I guess that to get FDA approval, a take-home PEMF device must have limited ability to do harm, say, if you dropped it on a hard surface or inadvisably did some home tinkering, and (improbably) ended up with a device that delivered oscillating/ gradient MF similar to that experienced in GM events, it's unlikely it would hurt anyone.

Looked this up and found this page on the Skeptoid site: https://skeptoid.com/episodes/4863

And they're right about FDA approval not proving that a product works. All it means is the product is safe and can be manufactured to federal quality standards. Plenty of snake oil products meet that standard and are FDA approved, and yet don't have any therapeutic value at all.

Content from External Source

-That's interesting, I didn't know that. Ta serpentdebunker (and Mr Dunning).