General Health
General health maintenance is a lifetime, daily activity and goal FOR ALL HUMANS. All systems of the body undergo “aging.” This normal slowing or aging of body processes accelerates with any kind of significant illness, even a simple flu episode.
Aging accelerates significantly with the use of pharmacologic agents too. Poor diets, lack of exercise (not too much and not too little), stress, long commutes, lack of enjoyment of career, family or personal relationship problems or occupational, personal or environmental toxic exposures etc. all rob vitality. Decreased vitality accelerates aging and increases risks of added problems. Nature kicks you when you’re down. All these issues have to be continually balanced to maintain health. Sadly, most of us only wake up to this need for health maintenance when we finally have a wake-up call – an illness or tragedy in our own health or someone else we know. As a doctor, I see this all the time. We only take health seriously when we have been “awakened.” We will have to listen to the shouts when we fail to pay attention to the whispers.
Every organ in the body needs health maintenance. All cells turn over, i.e. they die, and are replaced regularly. Some cells are replaced daily, others weekly, others annually and some only every 7 years. We are a completely new person about every 7 years. We need to be sure new cells are being “born” into a healthy tissue environment. We also need to be sure “old” cells are dying off (called apoptosis) when they should. This is the cycle of life.
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How can magnetic field therapy help with general health maintenance?
Treatment Goals:
- Maintaining good health and function
- Whole body balancing
- Daily use
- Stress reduction
- Blocking electrosmog
The daily grind of life is loaded with stress. We don’t need to have an airplane fall on our heads to have health robbing stress. This would certainly be noticeable stress. The stress of daily living is not as noticeable. Over time though stress is like water or wind wearing down soils or rocks. We all have a huge and unmet need to “take out” or neutralize the effects of this daily stress, doing this continuously, daily, before they become noticeable as health problems. Magnetic therapies do this. They work best only with daily use.
Regular stress reduction
Health maintenance with magnetic therapies is made much easier with regular use. Daily use doesn’t require you to play “catch-up.” Because of the basic, universal actions of magnetic fields, the body is able to maintain a general, more stable level of health.
Basic beneficial actions of magnetic fields:
- reducing muscle tension
- improving circulation
- improving tissue healing
- reducing pain
- improving clotting factors
- slowing the development of arthritis
- stimulating the immune system
- improving cell function
- helping the body to detoxify
- improving the uptake of nutrients
- reducing blood pressure
- helping nerve function
- helping liver function
- balancing the acupuncture meridians
- improving sleep
- reducing stress
- bone healing – eg fractures and osteoporosis
- making soft tissue more flexible
- reducing arthritic changes
Taken together all these actions of magnetic fields help the body stay well and rebalance problems before they will ever become noticeable by you at the cellular level, the physiologic level and the emotional level.
Balancing actions of magnetic fields
All these benefits of magnetic fields we recommend happen at the same time. The ones that get turned on depend on what the body needs at the time. They are not specifically “tunable.” That means you can’t select which ones will be activated at any given time. They are all potentially active all the time. If the body is healthy and balanced for any given action, it will not be turned on. That means you won’t notice that particular effect. The body will decide what it needs. This is the beauty of recommended magnetic therapies – they will work with the body’s own systems, naturally. In this respect they act like acupuncture therapy. They only act to stimulate the body’s own systems. They will not create actions the body isn’t capable of.
Taking care of problems early when they arise is the key to keeping the body balanced. Neglected problems unbalance the body quickly and tend to cascade into new problems, creating a downward spiral of worsening health.
Actions depend on field characteristics
The actions that happen in the body from magnetic therapies is dependent on the characteristics of the magnetic system used. These include:
- the types of frequencies,
- the strength/s of the field,
- size/s of the magnetic fields,
- the length of time they are used for and
- how often they are used.
For health maintenance the best results would happen with:
- Whole body exposures
- Daily use and
- Low intensity, extremely low frequency (ELF) PEMFs
Static magnetic mattresses are helpful but whole body pulsed fields are better. Also the pulsed fields tend to be more flexible and offer multiple uses for the same cost. They may cost more initially but are a better health investment in the long run.
Small area PEMFs that you already own, can help the overall body as well, even from the treatment of any local problem. But this indirect whole body action is incidental and not as effective for good health maintenance.
Small permanent magnets, used on acupuncture points are also helpful for health maintenance but you have to know where to put them. Using them over acupressure points is one way to start. An acupressure book that could be helpful to locate and use these points is Acupressure’s Potent Points (A guide to self care for common ailments) by Michael Reed, Phd. Even so, whole body balancing, by using whole body treatments takes away the guesswork of which points to use at any given time.
Electrosmog
Electrosmog is a powerful energy drainer and strong stress inducer. Electrosmog is pervasive and insidious. It is all around us – and goes right through us, all day, every day. Computer terminals, hair dryers, TVs, electric stoves, the wiring in the house and our cars, stereos, microwave antennas, wireless systems, all strongly act on our bodies. They can’t be blocked – anywhere on the planet. We can only decrease them or add frequencies to the body that balance the body. They stress body systems continually – day and night. Cell phones are the newest “societal need.” They deliver very powerful effects to the brain and are like sticking your head in a microwave oven. As the brain goes, so goes the rest of the body. So, using hands free cell phone systems decreases, but does not eliminate these risks. Keeping healthy and practicing holistic health is the best protection.
Devices that are offered to keep the body from being thrown out of balance by harmful “electro-smog” may be useful to wear throughout out the day, whether in our own homes where we have a lot of wiring and TVs, stereos or radios playing, driving/riding in a car, sitting in front of computer terminals, using cell phones in office settings with a lot of electronics, in stores or in urban areas. These devices don’t specifically block out magnetic fields – it’s unlikely that anything can significantly – but probably stimulate the body to maintain frequencies that will make the body more resistant to the effects of the “electro-smog.”
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Specific Magnetic Field Devices for General Health Maintenance
I recommend PEMF devices over static magnetic devices most of the time for General Health, if a choice is available, because of the shorter amount of treatment time needed, that ease of whole body treatment, the range of benefits that frequency magnetic fields have on the body, and because these fields have been shown to “wash” stress out of the body.
If there is a strong component of anxiety or depressive symptoms, I also suggest considering the Fisher Wallace (formerly Liss) Machine for cranial electrical stimulation.
How to use PEMF devices for general health
Always check to see if you have electrical sensitivity before you start. If sensitive, start low and go slow in advancing the settings. If you are extremely sensitive, you may need consultation to know how to proceed.
- Always treat your day’s water ration on the system with you in the morning – preferably in a glass container without a metal lid.
- Take your morning supplements before you get on the system. There are no supplements I know of that have to be avoided with these treatments.
- Have a drink of undistilled water – at least 10-16 ounces within half an hour as a general rule before you get on the system.
- Before morning treatment have your breakfast first to stimulate digestion.
- Let your body tell you what it needs in terms of settings, length of treatments and/or placements of applicators.
- Daily use is the key maximum benefit – twice a day if you can. In the morning to wake up the cells. In the evening to clean out the effects of the day’s stresses on the body. You can still use the system mid-day if needed for any other given problem/s. Health maintenance settings may be combined at any given treatment session with treatment settings and applicator placements as needed.
Go to my Product Reviews for more information on specific magnetic field devices.
Nutritional, supplement and lifestyle recommendations
No specific diet is necessary for magnetic therapy to be effective. A well-balanced diet (such as Mediterranean food diet) is recommended unless specific health issues require specific dietary modifications. Magnetic therapies are expected to assist in digestion, absorption, assimilation and metabolism of nutrients in general. Liver metabolism is enhanced by magnetic therapies. Since magnetic therapies improve oxygenation, there is naturally, an increase in free radical production. A diet high in antioxidants would facilitate the removal of the free radicals. The same issue applies to exercise and, again, a diet high in antioxidants would be healthier.
