Because PEMFs induce charge in tissues, the tissues can only produce as much charge as they are physically capable of doing. Tissues cannot be overcharged by PEMFs. On the other hand, electrostimulation can actually burn tissue because it uses externally applied electrical energy.
Magnetic fields affect charged particles, so all the elements or processes of the human body that rely on charge to function can be directly affected by magnetic fields. PEMFs have been found to enhance the function of cell membranes, helping to equalize the charges on either side and revitalizing the cell. This is especially true for the sodium/potassium and calcium/magnesium membrane channels. The inflows and outflows of calcium are particularly important in normalizing cell function. The most studied effects of PEMFs are on changing the sodium/potassium and magnesium/calcium ion channels. These actions of PEMFs on the calcium channels in particular appear to create most of the physiologic actions of PEMFs.
Imbalances in the body, which lead to disorders or disease, may be like the twigs blocking the natural flows of energy in the tissues. PEMFs unblock these natural flows, like a gentle tap, allowing the tissues to return to a normal state.
The body is completely transparent to pulsed electromagnetic fields. Low frequency PEMFs go into and through the body without being blocked, slowed down, or used up. All tissues in the body are equally transparent to a PEMF. There is no difference between muscle, bone, brain, blood vessels, or solid organs. PEMFs go through the air and fluids of the body equally. PEMFs affect the body but not the other way around. As the PEMFs pass through the body they stimulate all the components of the body to the degree the different components can interact with the PEMF.
Since all of the tissues of the body, particularly the brain, have their own frequencies and are flexible to varying degrees, outside frequencies applied to the body can cause or “tune” the body’s frequencies to be synchronized with the externally applied frequencies. So, a small amount of PEMF energy that is resonant with the molecules or cells of the body produces a much stronger response than when there is no resonance. The practical application of resonance in healing magnetic fields, particularly in neurology, is called entrainment.
Entrainment refers to the synchronization (resonance) of an existing frequency (such as the brain in a specific brainwave state) to an external frequency stimulus (such as one provided by a PEMF device).
Although there are many types of entrainment, for our purposes we refer primarily to neural or brainwave entrainment. Any stable frequency presented to the body, especially the brain, evokes a brain response. The brain synchronizes its own natural dominant brainwave frequency with that of the external stimulus. This is called brainwave entrainment.
When an electromagnetic field is presented to the body, the pulses elicit the brain’s “frequency following” response, encouraging the brainwaves to align or resonate to the frequency of a given beat. This “frequency following” response of brainwave entrainment can be seen in action with those prone to epilepsy. If a strobe flashes at their seizure frequency, the brain will “entrain” to the flashing light resulting in a seizure. This technique is commonly used in clinical neurology when EEGs are being performed to investigate seizure disorders.
If a PEMF is used for other tissue or organ stimulation purposes, any acupuncture points or meridians in the magnetic field will also be stimulated. This will be true whether the stimulation is local or whole body. In other words, when whole-body magnetic field therapy is used, all the acupuncture points and meridians in the body will be stimulated at the same time, creating a simultaneous rebalancing of the meridian system.
In addition to hindering bacterial growth, research also shows that PEMF exposure improves the function of cells that kill bacteria (phagocytes). One type of phagocyte, the monocyte, had higher levels of stress proteins, leading it to become a better bacterial hunter 4. Magnetic field stimulation has also been shown to improve the function of the specific type of white blood cell that traps bacteria (neutrophils).
Bacteria infecting the body often leave behind fragments as they break down. These fragments can lead to chronic inflammatory reactions, such as happens in rheumatoid arthritis.
PEMFs have been found to significantly reduce the inflammation caused by these bacterial components and help those tissues to heal and recover.
Just as with some bacteria, viruses can also cause chronic inflammation of joints and create inflammatory arthritis. A PEMF applied to herpes virus infected cells did not affect the growth and viability of the cells. However, the viruses developing under PEMF exposure had mainly defective viral particles. This would therefore give the PEMF an opportunity to heal the tissue, while potentially rendering the virus less active.
Cellular resistance to virus injections in cultures of animal and human cells exposed to MFs and the production and characterization of antivirus substances induced by these exposures were studied. PEMF exposures were uniform 60 Hz of 1 gauss on virus infections. In vitro exposure of cells to the PEMF for at least twenty-four hours induces (1) a state of significant cellular resistance to virus challenge by adenovirus type 5, herpesvirus Type 1, coxsackievirus B3, and vesicular stomatitis virus and (2) the
production of substances that markedly suppress virus infections when transferred to unexposed cells.
The virus suppressor substances induced by the magnetic field are neither virus- nor species-specific, are not apparently interferon-like, and are important in the regulation of virus replication.
There is always a concern that PEMFs may stimulate bacteria to become resistant or mutate. Numerous stimuli may cause bacteria to mutate, including antibiotics, insecticides, or pesticides. These are called mutagenic stimuli. One study examined this specifically and found that PEMF exposure inhibited mutagenic transformation in these bacteria.
A PEMF field had no mutagenic effects on the bacterial strains studied. The magnetic field was also not co-mutagenic in combination with a variety of chemical, oxygen, or physical mutagens like UV radiation. So, PEMFs do not appear to increase the risk of bacterial resistance and in fact, at least experimentally, do the opposite.
PEMF therapy addresses many of the mechanisms that lead to increased blood viscosity and clotting, including the reduction of platelet adhesiveness, reduction of fibrinogen and improvement of fibrinolysis, improving the pliability of red blood cells (allowing them to move through capillaries more easily), and increasing the saline content of the blood, decreasing viscosity. These
anticoagulant effects appear to be universal to virtually all types of PEMFs.
PEMFs affect ion flow through specific cell membrane channels that positively affect these enzymes. PEMFs induce death (apoptosis) in activated T cells, thereby reducing chronic inflammation without negatively affecting the acute inflammation necessary for tissue repair.
Because PEMF stimulation has a direct effect on cellular charge, it improves calcium flow in and out of the cell and therefore impacts cell depolarization and action potentials.
PEMF stimulation has been shown to improve mitochondrial function and ATP synthesis in a variety of studies.
In another study, authors investigated the effects of a PEMF on mouse embryo fibroblast autophagy. Fibroblast cells exposed to a PEMF were found to cause a
significant increase in autophagy markers starting at six hours after exposure.
If PEMFs can improve autophagy at a basic level, as they did in these studies, then they are likely to help with many of the conditions of aging and cell breakdown and injury. This is another basic mechanism through which PEMFs help to maintain health and improve poor health conditions.
Improving circulation is considered one of the most essential mechanisms of the healing effects of PEMFs, by delivering nutrients, repairing molecules, stimulating growth factors, increasing oxygen, eliminating waste, and many other actions.
Because PEMFs improve inefficient or suboptimal liver and kidney function, they clearly help the body to detoxify. Also, since PEMFs improve the ability of cell membranes to open and rebalance themselves, cellular detox is improved as well. All the things that PEMFs do well contribute to the ability for the body to detox better. These include
improving blood and lymph circulation, decreasing inflammation, rebalancing cell energy, helping to restore cell function, improving skin respiration, and repairing damaged cells of tissues involved in detox.
PEMF stimulation fine-tunes growth factors in many ways, but one of the best-understood is by increasing nitric oxide production. Calmodulin (CaM) is a messenger protein in the cell that binds calcium. It mediates various biologic processes. Once CaM binds to calcium (a process PEMF therapy increases by supporting the necessary electrical charge activity), the resulting cascade catalyzes the release of nitric oxide, and therefore improves growth factors.
A NASA PEMF neural stem cell stimulation study using a 10 Hz square wave PEMF signal found the increased production of over 160 different growth factors that may facilitate nerve regeneration.
PEMF therapy acts beneficially on the functional state of the nervous and endocrine systems as well as on tissue metabolism.
Magnetic stimulation causes the heart rate and BP to decrease and the cardiovascular system becomes less reactive to adrenaline and acetylcholine. The parasympathetic nervous system is activated. Stimulation of the autonomic ganglia along the spine reduces the stress hormones cortisol and aldosterone.
In addition to stress protein effects mentioned above,
PEMFs increase free radical scavenging and accelerating RNA/DNA production as part of laying down new repair tissue. This means that if cardiac surgery were required, EMFs would help tissues be less traumatized and speed recovery afterwards.
Since PEMFs at desired brainwave frequencies (below 7 Hz) and higher intensities can improve sleep, PEMFs can improve psychological and cognitive daytime function through better sleep.
Direct benefits result from magnetic fields’ actions on the brain and nervous system. Whether these actions are because of changes to the brainwave levels or actions on the brain cells themselves, the effects are measurable. Through entrainment, PEMFs can quickly shift dominant brainwaves from beta (hyper alertness and anxiety) to alpha (relaxed) or theta (dreamy), and even down into delta (deep sleep).
Even weak PEMFs appear to help cognitive function, including short and long-term memory, word finding, attention, and concentration. Recollection seems to improve more dramatically with higher intensity stimulation.
There is a significant amount of evidence that PEMFs affect stem cells. PEMFs increase RNA building blocks of neuronal progenitor embryonic stem cells. Human bone marrow stem cells (hB-MSCs) can differentiate into nerve cells and PEMFs induce this differentiation. Proteins turned on through PEMF stimulation may help as a therapeutic option for treating neurodegenerative diseases. PEMF stimulation increases the amount of viable stem cells by 40 – 59% and results in up to 60% higher cell densities.
PEMFs help with stress in three basic ways. One is to reduce the brain’s reaction to it. The second is to help the body to eliminate the neurotransmitters and hormones produced by stressful fight-flight reactions. The third is to defend the cells and tissues of the body from the physical changes induced by stress chemicals and hormones.
PEMF stimulation of the kidneys accelerates the excretion of produced stress hormones. The same thing happens with the hypothalamus in the brain, which has a central role in controlling the brain’s responses to stress.
Chronic conditions also result when natural and smooth flows of ions in and out of cells become impeded. In this case, cells will end up building up an excessive amount of charge on the outside of the cell membrane indicating insufficient energy inside the cell. The lack of energy and nutrients inside the cell then creates the effect of a chronically sick or dysfunctional cell or cells and tissue. PEMFs have a direct effect on ion flow through specific cell membrane channels that affect key cellular enzymes. So, by improving ion flow through the membrane channels of a cell with PEMFs, sick or dysfunctional cells are able to be restored partially or completely.
PEMFs have been studied to a moderate extent in the setting of cancer. I will say right at the outset that PEMFs are not expected to cure cancer. Cancer is not a contraindication to the use of PEMFs. However, the sickest individuals who are the most depleted by their cancer therapies are going to be the most vulnerable to excessive PEMF stimulation. Current evidence appears to suggest that PEMFs can be an appropriate complementary and integrative approach to use in the management of cancer, along with behavioral management, nutrition, and lifestyle.
Cancer – Animal and laboratory studies
Because the focus of this book is on what is of value to you, a human, I will not go into detail on what is already known from research in the laboratory and in animals about the effects of PEMFs on cancer. This is a summary of the results from numerous laboratory and animal studies:
Basic mechanisms:
- influence free radical recombination processes that activate p 53 gene dependent survival mechanisms
- lack of adverse responses in normal cells and tissues
- affect early tumor growth as well as advanced tumors
- affect metastatic processes
- angiogenesis inhibition
- long-term exposure to ELF-EMFs reduced proliferation of several cancer cell types associated with increased mitochondrial activity, increased energy demand
- increase mitochondrial activity leads to early death of breast cancer cells
- do not appear to act as a promoter or DNA-damaging agent for human breast cancer cells
- decrease the proliferative activity of myeloma cells by 42%
- increase mitochondrial activity and causes changes in the structure of breast cancer cells
- decrease the rate of proliferation of HeLa cells by 15%; the HeLa cell is from an immortal cervical cancer cell line
- exposure for twenty minutes causes two-fold increase in SOD antioxidant activity; forty minutes causes even more of an increase of SOD activity but only in lymphocytes
- either alone or in combination with radiation, decreased growth and reduced vascularity of tumors
- increases sensitivity of some types of cancer cells to radiation
- co-exposure of breast cancer cells to PEMFs and seven chemo agents caused further decreases in mitochondrial activity, from to 6.0% to 39.5% of the control for an average of 39% reduction over chemo agents alone
One of the most important aspects of the use of PEMFs for Lyme disease management is to be able to uncover or expose the forms of the Lyme organism that hide out in the cell, hidden from detection by the natural immune system. Antibiotics have not been found useful for attacking these hidden forms.
PEMFs help to open cell membrane channels, allowing nutrients, supplements and antibiotics better access to the inside of the cell and also helping the cell to eliminate waste better. By balancing the energy of the cell membrane, the cell will be healthier and more resistant to the hidden forms of the Lyme disease in the cell.
