Bio-magnetism: An Awesome Force in Our Lives
(This article was published in the Reader's Digest January 1983 issue.)
Blindfolded and ordered not to speak, the University of Manchester (England) students were escorted into a van without knowing where they were to be taken--or why. After traveling an hour on winding roads, the van stopped. With their eyes still covered, the students were led into a secluded clearing in a forest in hill country of central England.
R. Robin Baker, a university zoologist, took one of the young women aside and said, "I want you to point in the direction of our campus." Like most of the others with her on that autumn afternoon, she pointed with uncanny accuracy in the direction of her campus home.
The "homing instinct" is known to exist in many creatures, from snails to honeybees to homing pigeons. Baker argues that we humans also have a natural sense of direction, however subtle or ignored, that is as real as our senses of sight, smell or hearing. He is convinced that this sense is magnetic because in his experiments blindfolded students, who otherwise displayed a keen sense of homing direction, became disoriented when magnets were put in helmets and placed on their heads.
Researchers long have described some species with precise homing instincts as having a compass in their heads. Scientists have found evidence that this figure of speech is true. The homing pigeon, for instance, has in its head tiny deposits of an iron oxide known as magnetite, or lodestone, a metal used to make the first compass.
Similar deposits of magnetite granules have recently been discovered in algae, tuna, butterflies, dolphins and certain migrating birds. According to Baker, these magnetic particles could exist in humans, clustering near the brain in the region where the nose joins the skull, and thus enable us to sense any magnetic pull on the magnetite. (Attempts to replicate the results of Baker's experiments have failed, and a number of researchers are skeptical about the existence of a magnetically related homing instinct in man.)
We live on a sun-lit planet, and most living things have acquired some means to use the light. We live in a world filled with sounds, and most living things have developed a means to sense vibrations. Since our planet is also a giant magnet, it should not surprise us to discover that we and many other living things have a sensitivity to Earth's magnetic-force field.
The infant science of bio-magnetism has begun to explore this awesome, invisible force that so influences health and life. Soviet scientists, for instance, report in one study that severe attacks of glaucoma, caused by increased fluid presence inside the eyeball, tend to occur during sudden distortions in Earth's magnetic field, created when flares from the sun's surface send gusts of magnetized particles into our atmosphere. American researchers report that psychiatric hospital admissions jump at times of such geomagnetic disturbances.
The electromagnetic fields we create in our environment may also have the power to do us great harm. In a study, epidemiologists found that a high proportion of young victims of leukemia and certain lymphatic cancers lived within 130 feet of local power-line transformers. These transformers generate intense magnetic fields, and other studies have shown that magnetic fields accelerate certain cancers.
Some people may be sensitive to the changes in nearby weak magnetic fields. Studies have been done indicating that magnetic sensitivity could explain dowsers' ability to locate underground water. Some investigators are also persuaded that the ability to know what another person is thinking may be explained by the body's ability to transmit and receive faint electromagnetic signals. As advances are made in technology, scientists may have the tools to conclusively prove or disprove such speculations.
Many scientists remain skeptical of hard-to-replicate research into magnetism. In recent times, they have tended to perceive life largely in biochemical terms. Most cures have been brought about by having patients take a powder, pill, or injection of a chemical.
But we are every bit as much electrical beings as we are chemical beings. "I sing the Body electric," wrote poet Walt Whitman, and indeed electrical impulses sing in our central nervous system. Scientists have not yet unraveled the mysterious connection between electricity and magnetism, but they have discovered that where electric currents flow, magnetic fields are generated.
At the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center in Denver, Dr. John Zimmerman and his colleagues are working with a device that allows scientists to monitor the body's subtle magnetic fields. An ultra sensitive magnetic-field detector, the Super-conducting Quantum Interference Device (SQUID), uses liquid helium to lower its electrical resistance to near zero and can focus on the magnetic field of a cluster of cells, the size of a quarter, inside the brain. By patiently mapping the magnetic patterns of healthy brains, Zimmerman and other scientists are learning how to pinpoint the areas of brain function.
But suppose doctors could go further and pinpoint areas where some problem was disrupting the body's electromagnetic signals. Suppose they could supplant the body's flawed signals with correct man-made ones--in effect, speaking the language of the body's cells to command it to heal itself.
Such miracles are already happening. At the Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center in New York City, Dr. Andrew Basset is a pioneer in electric medicine. "Electricity," he predicts, "will become as ubiquitous in medical practice as surgery or drugs are; in many instances it will replace them."
When a patient with a broken leg that is not healing properly comes to Dr. Basset, he is likely to go home with two heavy pads connected by wires to a box that can plug into an electrical wall socket. The patient puts one pad on each side of his broken bone and turns on the device. Coils of wire in the pad induce a pulsing electromagnetic field into his flesh and bone -- a field of energy that somehow commands the bone to heal itself.
In recent years dozens of major scientific studies have verified that electromagnetic fields speed the healing of broken bones.
But research by Basset and other scientists in electro-medical science holds even more promise.
If a primitive animal such as a salamander loses a leg, it grows another. Many creatures possess this power--and even young children have to some degree the ability to re-grow severed fingers.
As our bodies mature, they lose this ability. But suppose that by deciphering the codes through which the brain gives commands to the body, we learned how to give cells the command to regenerate tissue. In theory it might be possible to order a patient's ailing heart to heal itself--or even direct his body to grow a second, healthy heart. It might be possible to induce a patient's body to heal or reproduce a needed organ, or to enhance lung or brain capacity, by electrically stimulating growth in those areas.
Researchers have already induced limb regeneration in adult rats, a mammal whose body, like ours, typically does not re-grow lost limbs in adulthood. Pulsed electromagnetic fields have been shown to speed wound healing in human fleshes as well as bones, and in animal studies such fields have accelerated repair in many species.
The new tools of magneto-encephalography have surprised scientists by revealing that the magnetic fields of our brain are strongest when we are asleep. Soviet researchers have for decades experimented with what they call electro-sleep, putting people to sleep 8 to 12 hours after they have been exposed to certain pulsing electromagnetic fields around their heads. Coupled with the growing sophistication of SQUIDS to pinpoint activity in specific parts of the brains, such methods are sometimes used to cure insomnia, and it is hoped that in the future they may be applied to the treatment of mental disorders, or to facilitate learning.
By using some electromagnetic currents, Western scientists are discovering that they can replace local anesthetics, such as might be used in the dentist's office. This new method relieves pain without the risks that often go with chemical anesthetics, but there are yet unknown risks in using electromagnetic treatment.
Other researchers, meanwhile, are finding ways to use drugs and magnetism in combination. In one ongoing investigation using laboratory animals, drugs to treat specific organs are encapsulated in magnetically sensitive, inactive substances. By then placing a magnet next to the targeted area, the drug is attracted there-- meaning the powerful drug can be administered in smaller, more regulated doses.
The emerging science of bio-magnetism not only promise amazing new medical tools, but also reminds us that we are not just a collection of chemicals. We are beings with the spark of life.
THE END
From this article, I suggested to people to sleep in a head east, legs west direction. When we are asleep, the earth's magnetic field is neutral to us, but the sun's and moon's magnetic fields are affecting us. In this sleeping position, the magnetic fields are combing down from the head to the toes of our bodies.
Edited on 10th June 2008