It's an interesting area.

I've heard a lot about the use of magnets to treat ulcers and bed sores because, like the article says, they increase blood flow to the affected area.

There's a book you might have read already called Energy Medicine: The Scientific Basis by James L. Oschmann in which he references lots of these types of studies. So I think the suggestion in this article that 'until now there has been little if any scientific proof that magnets can heal' - really depends on your definition of proof.

For example, he talks about a study where they crushed the sciatic nerves of some rats (ouch!), but when their bodies were pulsed magnetically the nerves healed incredibly quickly.

He also talks about a man called Professor John Zimmerman at the University of Colorado doing studies where he used a magnetometer to measure the biomagnetic fields emanating from the hands of people giving therapeutic touch.

(I'm not an expert on the physics of these kinds of things but I think a magnetometer is a fairly standard instrument used in geophysical endeavours.)

Apparently he found that when the touch practitioner went into a quiet, meditative state the readings shot so high he was able to get a sound recording of the field being produced, but with non-practitioners he couldn't measure anything at all. It seems as though his results were confirmed a couple of years later by a man called Seto in Japan.

Of course, these are very 'out of the box', heretic ideas that you might now want to voice too loudly in front of the wrong people!! But I for one can't want to see how this area develops.

Michael (healthrevolutions.com)