How effective or reliable are those copper magnetic bracelets in relieving arthritis pain?
Wednesday, June 8th, 2011 at
6:33 am
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Filed under: Copper Magnetic Bracelet
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Very effective. If you like to work at the yard or sweat a lot, you may consider stainless steel magnetic bracelet instead. Copper will turn your skin green due to oxidation. Most of my patients prefer the stainless steel bracelets due to the design and color.
Not at all. Also, copper can’t be magnetic, only ferrous metals can hold a magnetic field. So if you’ve bought "magnetic copper"…you’ve been doubly scammed.
There is no scientific evidence of efficacy, and no plausible reason to expect either copper or magnets to have any sort of healing properties at all.
I have to concur with Skepdoc
Unless you like the looks of them, there is no reason to wear them. If you have osteoarthritis, I would try glucosamine and msm (so long as you are not allergic to shellfish or beef)
Otherwise, try heat (I use a heating pad, or one of those rice filled heating cushions you can put in the microwave) – I find that if I treat it daily (10 minutes or so) I can cut back to every few days, then once or twice a week in the winter (I exert myself more in the winter – while I have arthritis at 35, my neighbors have heart conditions and are well over twice my age….so I do a lot of shoveling in the winter)
I live in Detroit, which at one point had a large Finnish population, and so we have some Saunas around town – those help too.
Also, if you have a massage school near you, they often have clinics where you can get a massage for a greatly reduced price (since the students have to practice hundreds of hours in order to graduate)
Finally, I like to alternate topical products that contain menthol, salicates (a form of aspirin that can be found in wintergreen oil too, or capascin. Be careful with the latter – they can be unpredictable. Start out using just a little.
And be sure to alternate them, because you CAN overdose with the ones that contain salicaytes. I like to apply them after a hot shower and then dress in warm but loose clothes (sweat pants and shirt for example)
Good Luck
There are all kinds of ways to alleviate arthritis pain….
For example, tools that can help open jars, orthopedic car cushions, etc.
A buddy of mine teaches yoga at the Arthitis foundation here in Detroit (I did yoga for years, but have recently switched to T’ai Chi because I was looking to do something new) so I’m gonna tack the link on here. You plug in your zip code and it will give you the number to your local office – they should be able to provide you with some assistance for free
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They are a placebo only.