HEALTH AND ELECTROMAGNETIC FIELDS
by London Acupuncturist Roisin Golding
If Cleopatra VII were a modern phenomenon and her image and name patented, she would spawn a multimillion dollar industry. Renowned more than 2,000 year after her death as one of the most beautiful and alluring women of all time, she is associated with many products said to enhance beauty, youth and vigour. It is claimed, for instance, that she wore a lodestone on her forehead to prevent ageing.
If this is true, then she would certainly have suffered from a permanent lack of sense of direction, geographically speaking. For Dr. R. Robin Baker, when at Manchester University, England, in 1986, proved that a person's orientation is lost if a magnet is held to his forehead. Every living beast has an inherent ability to sense magnetic North (or in the southern hemisphere, the southern magnetic pole.) The exact location for this internal compass is different in different beasts, but in men and women it sits in the pineal gland.
Furthermore, modern man, subjected as he is to a constant barrage of external electromagnetic forces from powerlines (acting like a huge overhead magnet) and other electronic devices, such as the ubiquitous mobile phone, may be wandering in a semi-permanent state of disorientation due to the constant interfering signals.
For centuries, Tibetan Buddhists used bar magnets to influence the minds of novice monks they were training. Those bygone monks could not have known about alpha or theta brain waves, those that correspond with meditation and deep trance, or that these coincide with the micropulsations of geomagnetic forces (in the range of 1 - 30 hz ) nor of modern attempts at mind control using electromagnetic pulsations (for example by the Russians against US embassy staff in Moscow during the cold war.)
Who knows whether the Russians or Tibetans succeeded? But the notion that magnetism has a strong effect on mental health is borne out by research undertaken by New York orthopaedic surgeon and researcher, Robert Becker. Author of "The Body Electric: Electromagnetism and the Foundation of Life," he discovered a strong correlation with mental hospital admissions and magnetically vigorous solar storms. Geomagnetism, however, is not stable; it increases and decreases in strength, and even reverses poles. Major specie's extinctions have all coincided with reversals in the earth's magnetic field, according to some scientists.
Becker proposed that the mental function of higher life forms become deregulated when subjected to irregular magnetic forces, and that erratic behaviour undermined their ability to survive. It is also known that magnetic forces regulate biorhythms, from sleep patterns to the more complex timed release of biochemicals which govern regeneration. This is important for our personal survival and that of our species. Extinctions of species, which is often thought of as a massive 'dying out', could be more accurately described as an inability to reproduce.
Although poorly understood, Becker discovered that the body's connective tissue acts as a semiconductor for minute DC currents, which in itself produces a small magnetic field. Becker believes that this current is synonymous with the Qi energy in Chinese medicine, and he was the first to prove that acupuncture points had significant electrical characteristics. Furthermore, the meridian pathways had characteristics of transmission lines, with acupuncture points acting as amplifiers which send the signal on.
Electromagnetic fields which most closely resonate with our own - approx. 10 hz - enhance our energies while ELF currents (extremely low frequency - which most household and office appliances fall within) are close enough to interrupt our normal rhythyms. There is also highly disputed evidence that exposure to these frequencies can cause chromosomal flaws leading to infertility, miscarriages, and birth defects.
The earth's magnetic field, although in decline for several hundred years, is now in free fall. It is known that strong magnetic fields (such as those from man made satelites) reverse weaker magnetic fields. Man-made electronics are creating an unprecedently large electromagnetic force which may already be contributing to this fast decline in the earth's natural field.
One well known British industrialist recently issued a memo to his staff recommending that they avoid using mobile phones after two of his close friends, both heavy mobile phone users, developed a tumour at the exact site where the antennae of their phones were aimed. While companies rightly say that mobile phones have less than a thousand times the radiation of microwave ovens and therefore have no thermal effects, they refuse to acknowledge the possibility of more subtle bioeffects from electromagnetism. Yet Becker and others have proved that electromagnetic effects speed up the growth of cells, whether malignant or not.
Magnets used as therapeutic devices should also be treated with caution (as should electro devices used to 'enhance' natural therapies, such as electro-acupuncture equipment.) Many of these use currents that are too strong. In Japan, magnets of up to 1,000 gauss are used. However, the more gentle magnets, such as one I found in an acupuncture store in Camden, London, of only 0.8 gauss, may be beneficial. One patient, who in five months had traversed the globe several times and back in his trouble-shooting capacity for a multi-national company claimed that wearing a magnet allowed him to recover from repeated jet lag in a day. His stamina had remained high and he was in good spirits. Had the low gauss (mimicking the earth's magnetic field) reinforced his natural biorhythyms?
