Magnetic therapy is the use of magnets to align the magnetic fields in the body. There has been a lot of controversy over this pseudo scientific practice because the effects have not really been proved. A lot of folks utilise this kind of alternative medicine as a way to alleviate continuous pain and help with particular conditions. Many of the websites and practitioners claim that this form of therapy has been in use for thousands of years. It is believed that the utilization of magnets and the study of the electromagnetic balance of the body has long been a secret of the Chinese. Even so, there have been other cultures that have written about bio magnetic therapy including Egypt, and even Greece. The procedure of using magnets to restore the natural balance of the body supposedly works by increasing blood flow and oxygen into the natural healing process. The magnets in some way create a magnetic field that can rid the user of many ailments. Whether this is actually accurate is a hotly contended subject.
It might sound like something out of a sci-fi movie, but electromagnetic field therapy has more recently been employed to treat depression. The NeuroStar Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation or TMS Therapy system has been approved by the FDA for people with depressive disorders who have not responded to antidepressant drugs. Patients will receive three thousand zaps of an MRI strength electromagnetic pulse in the prefrontal cortex during a daily forty minute process over a period of four to six weeks. In a clinical study of one hundred and sixty four folks, significant improvement was recorded for depression, anxiety and several other signs of distress in just seven days. Roughly, twenty four percent showed noticeable improvement, which is just as good as any antidepressant drug, say researchers. The only real side effect of the treatment was mild to moderate scalp discomfort and headaches, which declined after the first week, and less than five percent finished treatment because of it.
Magnetic therapy is by no means some type of magical panacea. While magnetic jewellery or a magnetic pillow may not be expensive, actual transcranial magnetic stimulation can be costly. TMS is anticipated to cost somewhere between six and ten thousand dollars, dependant on how many treatments are needed. On the one hand, it is cheaper and less invasive than surgery; but on the other hand, there are few studies to corroborate the long-term effectiveness when treatments are stopped. Magnetic therapy seems to have no bad side effects. At the end of the day there needs to be more studies done in order to see what the long-term effects of magnets are as well as if they are genuinely beneficial. Perhaps researchers have just hit the tip of the iceberg for magnetic treatments with many more breakthroughs in the pipeline. Only time will tell in that respect.