Posts Tagged "magnets for neck pain"

Magnet therapy for neck pain

Posted by mark in Neck Pain Essentials |

What’s the attraction?
Why are people drawn to them?
What are the positives and negatives?
Will I stop using magnet puns?
(Thankfully for the reader, yes)
Many people are using magnets for pain relief .In fact worldwide it’s a $5 billion a year industry. That’s a lot of magnets! A 1999 survey of patients who had rheumatoid arthritis, osteoarthritis, or fibromyalgia and were seen by rheumatologists reported that 18 percent had used magnets, and that this was the second-most-used alternative therapy by these patients, after chiropractic. So I had to ask myself, with all these people using magnet therapy for pain relief, what’s it all about?

So first of all, let’s have a look at what magnets are. Magnets produce a type of energy called magnetic fields and possess a property called polarity—that is, a magnet’s power of attraction is strongest at its opposite ends, usually called the north and south poles. The north and south poles attract each other, but north repels north and south repels south.
Magnets vary enormously in strength measured in units called gauss (G). if you look at a typical refrigerator, those magnets range from 35 to 200 G whereas magnets marketed for the treatment of pain are usually 300 to 5,000 G. You have probably heard of an MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) machine used to diagnose medical conditions. This baby produces up to 200,000 G! And of course who could forget good old’ terra firma- our Earth- which has a magnetic field of about 0.5 G.

You may be forgiven for thinking that magnets are quite a new phenomenon but they have actually been used for centuries. They were used to treat many painful muscle and joint conditions like arthritis and eve used on gout.

So how are they supposed to work?
• When you place the magnets against your body part they then relax the capillary walls which in turn increase the blood flow to the area. An increased blood flow means an increase of oxygen and nutrients to the area. Blood contains iron so maybe this is how it does this. (By the way, joints have a very poor blood and nutrient supply and get their supply by moving the joint. Therefore it’s always important to be moving your joints more as opposed to becoming more and more sedentary-you will just get worse in the long run as you begin a downward spiral of less movement/more pain/more weakness. Keep those joints moving!)
• They are all said to interfere with muscle contractions decreasing painful muscle spasms as well as interrupting the pain-gate mechanism which sends the pain message to the body(this incidentally is also one of the proposed theories as to why acupuncture can be so effective at relieving pain)

The studies are wide and varied.

There are numerous conflicting studies that are too numerous to mention. However, I will mention that there have been studies that have apparently produced good results and others that haven’t. The FDA doesn’t recognize magnets as a pain relieving method as yet and when people have been tested in an MRI which is many times stronger than medical magnets used for pain, they haven’t seen these supposed chemical/cellular/neural reactions/interactions. It also should be noted that in several studies it’s been difficult to monitor the studies. This is because it’s not been easy to make sham magnets and effectively convince people in the sham groups that they have the magnets and not fake ones.
Although for many years magnets have been used medically to speed bone growth in fractures where they are not healing properly.
I would also like to add, being an acupuncturist that I too have seen and read many studies that have said that acupuncture does not work for various conditions but in the clinic I have seen remarkable results for these conditions.

Are we getting conned by the billions of dollars every year by using magnets?

Have they been using them for hundreds of years hoping the healing effect is on a purely placebo basis? (The patient believes it will work so it works)

I have seen people over the years in my clinic that absolutely swears by magnets. In fact my best friend uses one for his knee whenever he snow skis or plays golf and wouldn’t be without it. I know of others who have had no results. Then again, I also know of people who have had no results from acupuncture for their allergies/pain/stomach problems etc whereas others have had enormous benefits. Other clients have had no results from their chiropractic treatments and others wouldn’t be without their adjustments.

I always tell my clients, there is not one treatment or treatment technique that fixes everything or everyone. If there was, we would all be studying it! This is one reason I studied so many different therapeutic modalities so that I could apply a certain technique or techniques on conditions where I found that that particular therapy worked better over another.

So maybe you would like to give magnets a try?

After all, they are not overly expensive, have no side effects compared to taking drugs and just may help you like they have helped many of my clients over the years. Always remember though, you must adopt good posture at all times, use proper lifting techniques and remove the causes of your pains. If you don’t, just like anything else, all the magnets in the world won’t help you. You must remove the cause of your pain. Just like if you keep having headaches because you bang your head against a wall all day you need to stop banging your head against a wall (and probably seek some professional help too). Likewise, if you suffer from lower back pain from sitting slouched all day, you need to correct this first and foremost.

Related Links:

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The stretch you should not do for Neck and Shoulder pain