Magnet Therapy

Back in college (man, that seems like a lifetime ago), I woke up nearly every day with pain in my lower back. Walking around I was the guy you saw with both his hands planted firmly on his back, always stretching and arching my back. It was uncomfortable to sit for extended periods of time (which made class lectures difficult, to say nothing about the often times boring content of those enormous classes). It got to the point where I just felt like I was going to be one of those people who always had back pain.

My father, a traditional physician in southwest rural Colorado, heard about the practice of using magnets to help people with a variety of ailments. My dad, understand, is not a liberal minded guy. Up until very recently, he felt that GW Bush was one of our smartest presidents (he has since changed his mind). His practice was totally traditional AMA medicine. Even today, when I tell him I've had trouble with my sinuses or might be battling a head cold, he recommends antibiotics before things "get out of hand." That's what's worked for him and the countless thousands of patients he's had over the forty years or so of his practice. It's hard to knock that kind of lasting power.

Nonetheless, for him to recommend magnet therapy was quite significant to me. I was willing to give it a try. He ordered me a pair of magnetic insoles to place in my shoes, a magnetic pad that fit inside a belt that could be placed on my lower back, and, my favorite of all, he bought me a magnetic mattress pad.

This pad was about two inches thick and made of that egg carton material- only this pad had tiny magnets inserted in the egg carton material. Lying on the pad, you couldn't feel the magnets. And the pad was pretty comfy all by itself.

Lo and behold! In less than a week, my lower back pain had disappeared. There is no reasonable or even pseudo-scientific explanation for why these magnets worked for me. I briefly tried to sell the product, but ended up just giving them away when I saw others in pain who I felt might benefit from the magnets. But in the one sales conference my father and I attended, the presenters were careful to remind us that we weren't to promise any results. None of us knew how these things worked, but for many of us the results were unquestionable. I couldn't even spend the night at my girlfriend's house during those college years without waking up with that old familiar soreness.

So was I simply the victim of my own mind? Was this just the placebo affect working? Even the people selling the product didn't have an explanation. One of the founders of the company had been healed from a terribly degenerative disease using this magnet therapy. It makes me wonder, does it even matter if it's just our minds healing us?

Perhaps we need something external within which to place our faith in order to heal ourselves. Perhaps that is how all of our true healing occurs, through the power of our minds. It simply takes a framework of belief and empowerment before our bodies can be convinced.

I overworked my back hauling up my seventh grade literature textbooks to my new classroom yesterday. I found that old magnet pad in my closet once I got home, and I placed it up against my lower back. There's something comfortably familiar about feeling its subtle presence there under my shirt. Maybe I'll wake up healed in the morning, ready for my first day of students...

Be well my friends.