OT: Magnetic Mattress Pad

[Guest guest]

Hi All,

I've recently joined this group and it is wonderful. I am learning so much. My

17 year old daughter has had lyme for about 4 years and is currently being

treated by an LLMD.

I am still trying to learn more about rife, but I wondered if anyone has had

experience with magnets? They are touted as helping people with chronic pain,

like fibromalygia. I wondered if magnets would affect the spirochetes at all.

And if so what the effect might be (good or bad). I recently acquired a

magnetic mattress pad, but am skeptical to try it.

I would appreciate your input/advice.

Thank you.

[Guest guest]

Hi ,Before diagnosis, my neck was a constant agony, and along with PT, I used a Nikken magnet collar which really helped. Inasmuch as magnets help circulation and thus cell nurture, it helped reduce pain, stiffness and nerve involvement down my arm, but I don't think it did anything to kill critters. That only came later with Rifing and S & C, etc. ( never herxed from my collar) I have a sculptor friend who had a deteriorating spine and was helped immensely by his magnetic mattress pad. The way I see it, anything that can relieve pain is a good thing.Be well,Léna Hi All, I've recently joined this group and it is wonderful. I am learning so much. My 17 year old daughter has had lyme for about 4 years and is currently being treated by an LLMD. I am still trying to learn more about rife, but I wondered if anyone has had experience with magnets? They are touted as helping people with chronic pain, like fibromalygia. I wondered if magnets would affect the spirochetes at all. And if so what the effect might be (good or bad). I recently acquired a magnetic mattress pad, but am skeptical to try it. I would appreciate your input/advice. Thank you.

[Guest guest]

Hi ,

Welcome to our group! Glad to hear you are learning from others here, lots of

helpful and compassionate

people are here on our group...

Sorry to hear about your daughter... This is a tough age to have Lyme, there are

other Moms here who also

have teenage kids with Lyme.

I personally have not use magnets, but some of my group members have in the

past... Sorry I don't recall

much info about them, except the kinds of magnets used really count and that

they appear to be helpful

with pain... ..

Here are a few links I saved on magnets,

http://www.polarpowermagnets.com/index.html

http://www.magnetictherapycure.com/

<<<<Science & Society 2/16/04

Magnetism and the brain

By nne Szegedy-Maszak

It began as just another research project, in this case to examine the effects

of various drugs on patients with a severe mood disorder. Using an advanced

brain scanning technology--the clumsily named echo-planar magnetic resonance

spectroscopic imaging procedure, or EP-MRSI--researchers at Boston's McLean

Hospital scanned the medicated and unmedicated brains of 30 people with bipolar

disorder in order to detect possible new treatments for the more than 2 million

American adults who suffer from the disease.

But something unexpected happened. A patient who had been so depressed she could

barely speak became ebullient after the 45-minute brain scan. Then a second

patient, who seemed incapable of even a wan smile, emerged actually telling

jokes. Then another and another. Was this some bizarre coincidence? Aimee Parow,

the technician who made these observations (she is now a medical student in New

York) didn't think so. She mentioned the patients' striking mood shifts to her

boss, and together they completely refocused the study: to see if the

electromagnetic fields might actually have a curative effect on debilitating

melancholy.

As it turns out, they did. As reported last month in the American Journal of

Psychiatry, 23 of the 30 people who were part of the study reported feeling

significantly less depressed after the scan. The most dramatic improvements were

among those who were taking no medication. The researchers are cautious. Says

Bruce Cohen, McLean's president and psychiatrist in chief: " I want to emphasize

that we are not saying this is the answer. . . . but this is a completely

different approach in trying to help the brain than anything that was done

before. "

Looking back. It's a completely different approach because of the way the

magnetism is applied to the brain. But it's an example of burgeoning new

research on an old idea: that the brain is an electromagnetic organ and that

brain disorders might result from disarray in magnetic function. The idea has

huge appeal to psychiatrists and patients alike, since for many people the side

effects of psychiatric drugs are almost as difficult to manage as the disease

itself. And 30 percent of the nearly 18.8 million people who suffer from

depression do not respond to any of the antidepressants available now. People

with other severe mental disorders--schizophrenia, obsessive-compulsive

disorder--might benefit as well. And while no one fully understands exactly why

or how the brain responds as it does to electrical currents and magnetic waves,

intriguing new research is offering some possible explanations.

This area of psychiatric research and treatment has a grisly history to

overcome. " Shock treatment, " technically known as electroconvulsive therapy, or

ECT, has been around since the 1930s, but its unsavory public image comes mostly

from movies like One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and The Snake Pit. And from

fact: It was in the early days a brutal procedure. But research on the magnetic

brain has led to improvements in such treatments, and their use is on the rise.

In 1980 30,000 people received ECT; in 2001, nearly 100,000. Although there are

still side effects--headaches and memory problems primarily--the days of

seizures, bitten tongues, and broken bones are largely a thing of the past. And

the response rate, especially for treatment of drug-resistant depression, is as

high as 70 percent.

A related treatment, called rapid transcranial magnetic stimulation or RTMS,

creates a current in the brain by using a magnetic field that crosses the

exterior of the skull. It has also proved successful in treating depression.

Much like the way a defibrillator works in the heart, RTMS uses a powerful

magnet to deliver an electric jolt to the brain. In clinical trials, many

patients who failed to respond to several other treatments improved within a

week, and the vast majority were significantly better after two weeks of daily

20-minute sessions. " Transcranial magnetic stimulation is, in a way, a

misnomer, " says Alvaro Pascual-Leone, a neurologist at Beth Israel Deaconess

Medical Center in Boston. " The main effect is not because of the exposure to the

actual magnetic field but because of the way that a rapidly changing magnetic

field pulse may be generating a current. "

Other electromagnetic treatments are more invasive. With vagus nerve

stimulation, a stimulator is slipped into the chest wall, much like a pacemaker,

and electrodes are attached to the left vagus nerve in the neck. Stimulation

occurs constantly; again, some with chronic, treatment-resistant depression have

responded well to the procedure. Deep brain stimulation is the most invasive

treatment of all. It involves an electrode implanted directly into a particular

part of the brain. It was originally used to treat movement disorders like

Parkinson's disease by targeting one area of the brain, but researchers

found--again by serendipity--that if the electrode was slightly misplaced, it

could either cause or alleviate the symptoms of depression, including

hopelessness and suicidal thinking.

The notion that the brain might respond to magnets and electricity actually goes

way back before the era of ECT. Franz Anton Mesmer, an 18th-century Swiss

physician, developed a theory that the human nervous system was magnetized, just

like the Earth. So he developed a variety of treatments using magnets and

claimed to have restored sight to a blind musician and relieved the back pains

of a hypochondriac. (Mesmer's most enduring contribution is actually not medical

but linguistic, since his name is the source of the word " mesmerized " and he

coined the expression " animal magnetism. " )

What is it about the brain that makes it especially receptive to electromagnetic

stimulation? A partial answer can be found in the neuron, the electrically and

chemically excitable nerve cell that receives, processes, and transmits

information in the brain. When neurons are activated by magnets or electricity,

the nature of their signals changes--affecting everything from mood to cognition

and memory.

Networks. Complex brain functions such as these are impossible to completely

localize because the brain is composed of complicated, intertwined networks of

cells. Much of what we do and think and feel requires the coordinated

functioning of several regions in the brain; one small change in one region can

cascade into dramatic changes in the whole circuit. " Electrically induced

seizures actually cause turnovers of brain neurotransmitters and receptors, "

says Stuart Yudofsky, chairman of the department of psychiatry and behavioral

sciences at Baylor College of Medicine. " We know that this is not like kicking

the TV and hoping for better reception, because magnets and electricity do

affect neurotransmission. "

In psychiatric illnesses, the functioning of the neurons may be compromised so

that circuits are disrupted. In a recent article about the neurobiology of

bipolar disorder in the American Journal of Medical Genetics, authors

Berns and Nemeroff point out that " changes are evident at virtually all

levels of the central nervous system in bipolar patients. " Particularly

intriguing about the research at McLean Hospital is that most patients in the

normal control group were unaffected by the brain scans; their moods neither

improved nor worsened. No one really knows why, but Berns, who was not involved

in the study, is intrigued. " Part of the neurobiology of bipolar disorder is

that there seem to be biochemical alterations at the cellular level within

neurons that make them more sensitive to anything coming in, " he says. Magnetic

stimulation, he speculates, may be tapping into the hypersensitivity of the

neurons.

Most fascinating, perhaps, and most complicating, is the fact that the brain is

dynamic, always in physiological flux. What these recent experiments most

vividly illustrate is the complexity of the brain's pathways, the intricacy of

its connections, and the concrete hope that may be offered to those suffering

from the anguish of mental illness by the evanescent power of a magnet.>>>>>

Hope something here is helpful....

Take care,

Jim

>

> Hi All,

>

> I've recently joined this group and it is wonderful. I am learning so much.

My 17 year old daughter has had lyme for about 4 years and is currently being

treated by an LLMD.

>

> I am still trying to learn more about rife, but I wondered if anyone has had

experience with magnets? They are touted as helping people with chronic pain,

like fibromalygia. I wondered if magnets would affect the spirochetes at all.

And if so what the effect might be (good or bad). I recently acquired a

magnetic mattress pad, but am skeptical to try it.

>

> I would appreciate your input/advice.

>

> Thank you.

>

>

>