Melanie Griffith Promoting Nikken Magnet Therapy
I’ve never been a big fan of Melanie Griffith, and I’m even less of a fan after reading that she uses her web site to promote “magnetic therapy” as an alternative to pain killers for pain relief (Griffith is recovering from pain killer addiction).
Some people were convinced by a double blind study at Baylor’s Institute for Rehabilitation Research in Houston which reported that concluded magnets helped alleviate pain in people recovering from polio. The only problem is not only was that study was very small — only 50 patients total — but the researchers who conducted it had a prior belief that the magnetic therapy worked for them. That wouldn’t normally be an issue in a double blind study (if properly performed), but while a research subject usually lacks the technical ability to differentiate between an active drug and a placebo, most people can probably think of a number of ways to differentiate between a magnet and a non-magnetic piece of metal.
This doesn’t rule out the possibility that magnets may have some pain relief effect, but given that so far there is no clear biological mechanism for how magnets would relieve pain (and no, forget the iron in the blood idea because iron in blood occurs as individual atoms which are magnetically independent). While it is true that the human body is mildly dimagnetic — i.e. it is repelled by magnetic fields, the dimagnetic effect of a permanent magnet is thousands of times smaller than the dimagnetic effect of gravity.
Moreover, there are some indications that companies such as Japan’s Nikken, which has used a multi-level marketing scheme to sell hundreds of millions of dollars worth of magnets, either trains or looks the other way while its salespeople are trained in the most basic of parlor tricks.
For example, searching on Nikken in Google.Com, I came across a note by a gentleman who noted a relative had become a Nikken distributor. The man was genuinely perplexed by a series of demonstrations with magnets that the relative had given him including,
DEMONSTRATION of MAGNETIC POWER #1: Stand up straight with your arms
outstreached forward, parallel to the ground. The demonstrator pushes
upward on your hands until you lose balance. Repeat the same process while
standing on magnetic soles and it is much harder to make the person lose
their balance. Conclusion: magnetic footwear improves balance.
This is one of several variations on a pseudo-magic trick. There are a number of ways to accomplish this sort of feat, all of which rely to one extent or another on varying the force applied (i.e. when the person is wearing the magnetic footwear you simply don’t push as hard). You would think people would know this, but even people who are aware that the force or method of applying the force is different report that the demonstration is very compelling (and this particular demonstration has been used to promote a lot of different things, long before magnetic therapy became the rage).
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