The Powers of Attraction: Magnetic Therapy

What is Lodestone and Why do we care?

Lodestone is a naturally derived mineral fragment that is magnetized causing attraction to iron; this mineral is known as magnetite. To make things even more mysterious, not all magnetite has these magnetic tendencies, hence why there is a different name for the ones that do!! How certain pieces of this mineral become magnetized still plagues the scientific community; however, it is theorized at this time the magnification occurs by proximity to lightning bolts and their magnetic fields, which I personally think is fascinating (Livingston, 1996).

The name Lodestone was cultivated by its ability to provide navigational help to travellers as these stones were the first magnetic compasses. In Middle English lodestone roughly translates to leading stone, the word "lode" itself roughly translates to journey or way (Merriam-Webster,2009). Today, these magnetized minerals are more commonly known by their laymen name -- magnets.

Magnets have been around for eons; it is hard to hone into when magnets were first discovered and used but there are two drastically different regions/areas of the world that have documents from BCE mentioning lodestone.

They were first documented in literature by the Greek philosopher Thales of Miletus which date back to the 600BCE. Chinese literature from the works of Lushi Chenqiu known as "The Book of the Devil Valley Master" also references this magnetism phenomenon in 400BCE (MAGNETIC PRODUCTS, INC, 2022, Brand et al., 1995).

It's safe to say that magnets have been around for a long time and that they have a very rich history in different parts of the world. Most people know that magnets have been used for navigation purposes but lesser known uses have been for healing.

Magnets and their History with Healing

Magnets were first documented for healing use in the 1600's after physicians attempted to aid wound healing of smallpox lesions. The first form of magnetic therapy was electrically charged gold leafs which were applied to patients with smallpox to prevent scarring (Robertson, 1925)!!

Over the centuries, physicians continued to seek ways that could help with wound care/healing as well as a help relieves aches, pains, and symptoms of a multitude of ailments using magnetic therapy. Just as mysterious as how the magnetic mineral is created is how they work in a healing capacity. Although there has been a lot of people who claim that magnetism works, scientifically speaking, there is difficulty conclusively stating that it fully works; however, that is not to say it doesn't.

One study I have read looked at the open wound healing times of rats with and without the use of magnetic therapy. This study found that the rats that had magnetic therapy used on them had an accelerated wound closure time of around 15.3 days compared to the sham magnetic group and control group who had on average 20.7 days. This would be around 25-27% faster healing based on the study’s numbers, which is highly statistically significant (Henry et al., 2008)!! The higher statistical significance the more confidently we can concur that magnets indeed have an influence of the body’s physiology.

With this in mind, I began my journey looking into magnetism as a form of therapy for my clients and animal companions. Doing an abundance of research, I decided to try doing clinical trials on a brand called Streamz in order to figure out based on my own data whether there was any merit to their claims. I can in good conscious say that I believe they do work, exceptionally well at that, from the results I got with my clients.

Client Trials

**For privacy purposes I will post details and pictures of only the clients I have worked with who have given me permission to do so. The others will be referenced in writing only.

For 10 weeks I performed observational trials (through look, feel and movement) on different clients with a few different aliment types as well as tried the products on myself. I recognize that I am only doing a small focus group without a control group; however, I worked within the confines of the resources I had at my disposal.

To keep this article concise I will only be talking about 3 clients.

I started testing out the Eq-Streamz bands by placing one on my own right ankle to see if I noticed anything. Back at the beginning of 2018 I was in a severe accident with one of my horses which caused significant damage and trauma to my right leg that still causes discomfort and swelling with pressure changes, weather changes and sometimes activity levels. I wore the band on my ankle 24/7 for a week and noticed that I had less aches and pains in my day to day as well as the pressure drops from summer turning to fall didn't bother my leg nearly as much as it typically does during the season change. I also found I was able to extend my daily activity tolerance.

Unfortunately, I did not think to take pictures of these inflammation changes… and I wasn’t overly eager to put them back on after they had been peed on by the horses

I then moved on to using it on certain clients with permission, all of which had all different ailments and conditions. Depending the ailments some clients had them longer but on average everyone got them for 10 days.

I will start by talking about my most impressive and substantial results on Iris. Iris is a client of mine who has injured both her front tendons and has been placed on stall rest based on this. She was also placed on anti-inflammatories by the vet due to how extensive the swelling in her back and front limbs were. For 2 months the swelling was so extensive that you would never have been able to tell that she was being treated with-anti-inflammatories already… They were that inflamed!! Her owner happened to notice one of my other clients was using the Eq-Streamz bands for my trial and asked if I would also work with her as a new client!! When I first got my hands on Iris, there was significant heat radiating off her back fetlocks and I could barely fit my hand around her fetlock joint area. I could not bend the joint areas much due the swelling restriction either. After placing the bands on her for 2 days, the results were already beginning to show significant swelling improvement and by day 10 the difference was astounding.