Magnetic therapy: evidence and clinical applications

Magnetic Therapy: Sound Practice or Simple Phooey?

Ever since the Enlightenment and arguably even further back in the history of Western civilization, almost every technological advancement has been accompanied by new ideas about how to medically treat the human body. Many of these technological ideas, especially since the nineteenth century and hugely in the modern era, have led to significant advancements in treatment. Others, however, have been less scientifically successful and are less medical treatments and more mechanisms for sometimes well-meaning but often outright conning "practitioners" to extract profits from gullible patients. The following paragraphs examine the scientific evidence regarding magnetic therapies, coming to the determination that despite strong belief by some adherents the treatment is in almost all cases proven to be ineffective.

Past Use and Current Controversy

Ever since the 1500s, when some of the principles of magnetism began to be more scientifically observed, the use of magnets and magnetism as a means of treating various illnesses has been a perennial favorite of a certain type of healer (Ramey, 2012). Literally every curable disease has been claimed to be treatable and successfully treated by magnetic therapies despite a lack of any concrete evidence that magnetism alone can have any affect on the body or its tissues; nervous disorders, digestive problems, and most commonly pain are just some of the many applications for which magnetic therapy has been recommended (Vallbona & Richards, 1999; Cepeda et al., 2007; Livingston, 2012; Ramey, 2012). Though there are many subtle and sometimes not-so-subtle variations in magnetic therapies depending not only on the illness or symptom being treated but also on the practitioner doing the treatment, but the basic practice is relatively straightforward: magnets are attached to or passed over the body or parts of the body -- sometimes the part of the body that is suffering an ailment and sometimes other "magnetically related" parts of the body -- and the magnetic fields promotes "healing" or pain alleviation, etc. (Vallbona & Richards, 1999; Cepeda et al., 2007; Livingston, 2012; Ramey, 2012). Explanations of how magnetism works to promote healing of any kind, including in pain relief where its use has been most studied, are fuzzy at best, and even the most ardent proponents of magnetic therapy acknowledge that it needs further study for the phenomenon to be understood (Vallbona & Richards, 1999; Ramey, 2012).

Only one prominent objective study has demonstrated any measurable effect of magnetism on healing, when a cohort of fifty post-polio patients were treated in a double-blind study with either real magnets or sham magnets, and the real magnet group reported a much greater reduction in the amount of pain they felt following the treatment than prior to the treatment than did the placebo group (Vallbona & Richards, 1999; Livingston, 2012). Though there have been some other claims regarding the effectiveness of magnetic therapies in a variety of other treatments, none of these other studies have reached a threshold of evidence or of stringency in methodology to have become the subject of any widespread scientific examination (Vallbona & Richards, 1999; Livingston, 2012; Ramey, 2012). In addition, none of the findings of any individual study -- including the only widely reviewed study that has found magnetism to have an impact on pain -- have been repeated by other studies despite attempts (Cepeda et al., 2007; Ramey, 2012). The lack of explanation as to how magnetism works and the lack of concrete evidence that it does work both mean that there is little reason to accept this treatment as valid.