Using Magnets for Pain Relief

The idea that magnets can relieve pain has been much debated since the 1960's when Carlos Vallbona conducted his landmark study "Response of pain to static Magnetic fields in postpolio patients, a double blind Pilot study." The conclusion of this study seems to show that magnets have a significant effect on pain relief. In this paper I will explain the similarities and differences of the Pre-Test and Post-Test results as well as the amount of positive change in pain relief for both the Active and Placebo groups in the study.

As I looked over the Pre-Test results for the study I found that the Active group and Placebo group data was very similar. The range of the data only differed by 1 point of perceived pain. All of the participants reported a high level of perceived pain of above 7 points with over 70% of the Active and Placebo group participants reporting the maximum level of 10 points. In further quantitative analysis I also found that both the Active and Placebo groups shared a Median and Mode of 10 points and the Mean only differed by 0.097 which is very insignificant. I feel that this data shows the concrete similarity between the Active and Placebo group Pre-Test results.

After closely analyzing the Post-Test results I found that there is a vast difference between the Active and Placebo group data. The range of the information differs by a significant 4 points of perceived pain. Most of the Placebo group experienced little to no change in perceived pain, whereas most of the Active group experienced a significant change of 4 or more points of perceived pain. There were also very significant differences between the Active and Placebo groups in the Mean, Median, and Mode of the results. The Pre-Test data showed that both groups shared a Median and Mode but the Post-Test results show a difference of 5 points in the Median, and between 6 and 8 points in the Mode. The insignificant difference in Mean of the Pre-Test data is also replaced by a very significant difference of 4.015 points. These statistics clearly show that there is a major difference in the amount of perceived pain in Post-Test results.

This Pre-Test and Post-Test data clearly states that the amount of positive change, or in other words pain relief, between the Active and Placebo groups is drastically different. Before I explain the difference of the data I must first explain the simple formula that I used to calculate the amount of change in the information. I simply took the Pre-Test Results and subtracted them from the Post-Test results which in turn equated the Amount of positive change in perceived pain. The formula looks something like this:(Pre-Test Results) - (Post-Test Results) = Change

I will now discuss the quantitative changes in perceived pain. As I stated above the range of Pre-Test to Post-Test results went from a difference of only 1 points to a difference of 4 points. This was determined by taking the Pre-Test range of 4 points for the Placebo group and subtracting the Pre-Test range of 3 points for the Active group which resulted in a difference of 1 point. Similarly for the Post-Test range difference I took the Active group range of 11 points and subtracted the Placebo group range of seven points which calculated a total of four points. The 8 point change in the range of the Active group (from 3 points to 11 points) also is of significance compared to the 3 point change of range in the Placebo group (from 4 points to 7 points). Aside from the range difference there is a vast difference in the areas of Mean, Median, and Mode as well. The frequency table of Pre-Test to Post-Test changes show that the Active group Mean of pain relief is 5.207 compared to the Placebo group Mean of 1.095 which shows an average difference in pain relief of 4.112 points. Similarly the Active group Median of 6 points and Mode of 5 and 6 points drastically differ from the Placebo group Median and Mode of 0 points. After calculating the percentage change in the amount of pain relief I found that a whopping 86.21% (25 of 29) of the Active group participants experienced some degree of pain relief. Of these 86.21% a total of 13.79% (4 of 29) experienced total relief of pain in some cases by 10 points; 34.48% (10 of 29) experienced changes of between 7 and 10 points of pain relief; 75.86% (22 of 29) experienced significant changes of 4 or more points of pain relief; and 10.34% (3 of 29) experienced pain relief of at least 1 point. This leaves only 13.79% (4 of 29) of Active group participants having no amount of pain relief. These changes in perceived pain in the Active group are very promising compared to the Placebo group. 52.38% (11 of 21) of the participants in the Placebo group experienced no pain relief at all. Of the remaining 47.62% (10 of 21) only 14.29% (3 of 21) experienced significant changes of 4 or more points; which leaves 33.33% (7 of 21) of the Placebo group participants experiencing insignificant changes of 1 to 3 points of pain relief. This data clearly shows that the amount of pain relief experienced in the Active group almost doubles that of the Placebo group; most of which was a significant drop in the amount of pain in the Active group. This is why I feel that the changes are very different and point to a correlation between the use of active magnets and pain relief.

Although the data seems to clearly show that pain can be relieved with the use of magnets there are some limitation to the study which I would like to discuss. The first limitation of the study is the fact that the study only tested pain relief of postpolio patients. This data, therefore, may be of significance in the treatment of postpolio pain, however may not be representative of all types of pain relief. The second limitation is that only postpolio patients with specific pain trigger points or areas were used in the study. This may mean that postpolio patients that don't have trigger points may not receive the same amount of relief. On the subject of trigger points another limitation is that prior to administering Pre-Test surveys the researchers palpitated the pain trigger points of the test subjects. This brings to my mind the question of how much Pre-Test perceived pain was exaggerated by the palpitation and what is the correlation between pain relief and Active magnets versus the subsiding of stimulated pain from palpitation over the course of 45 minutes between surveys. Among other limitations the study possibly alienates some people with postpolio pain from magnetic relief based on muscular and arthritic pain as well as body weight. The study used only postpolio patients whom also reported muscular or arthritic pain; which may mean the results of the pain relief may be more related to the relief of muscular or arthritic pain rather than postpolio pain. The requirement of the study for participants to have a body weight of less than 140% of the predicted weight for their age and height may also imply that people whom are over this weight standard may not receive the same amount of pain relief. The final limitation of the study is the fact that only Bioflex magnets were used which means that other brands of magnets may not prove to relieve pain as well as the Bioflex brand magnets used in the study. Although these limitations do somewhat question the validity of the study it seems very evident that pain can be relieved with the use of magnets.