The following information has been gathered and compiled over a period of years, through personal experience, while traveling, teaching classes that include T’ai Chi, Qi Gong, herbal information, martial arts and other health related subjects. The article also contains feedback from students and anecdotal information from friends and readers of my columns. The following are my opinions and deductions from those sources.
Some years ago, while living on Kauai, A friend and I were talking about when we had lived on the mainland and drove long distances. Driving on Kauai consisted mainly of going a few miles from home to work and back again. For most people it also consisted of sitting in a line of traffic, since there was only one main road. Some of us rode our bicycles and were able to bypass some of the frustration, arrive home sooner, save on fuel costs and get some exercise at the same time.
My friend, who was a realtor, put in quite a few miles in a car seat and said that she had found a magnetic pad that took the pain out her back when in a car. She was so satisfied with it that when she went to the mainland on business, or for a visit, she took the pad with her. That was before 9/11 and I have no idea how that impacted her travels with a magnetic pad.
I read what I could find, no Internet access in the mid-eighties, and tried a magnet on my right knee. I was doing triathlons, bicycle racing, marathons and race-walking. My right knee wasn’t responding to conventional treatment and pain killers only covered up the problem. I was a little skeptical that magnets would help, but in a few days most of the pain was gone. If I didn’t wear the magnet during non-training hours, the pain would return. After putting the magnet back on, the pain would go away. This told me that the magnet wasn’t curing the problem and only treating the symptom. I continued to look for other ways that might prove effective in dealing with the cause.
At that time my wife was taking a course in Touch for Health®. You can access more information at www.touch4health.com. I’m not connected or affiliated with them, only telling a first person account of what it did for me. One evening I mentioned that if the instructor wanted a guinea pig, I’d be glad to participate. After Celinda’s next class, I was told I’d be front and center the next week. The day of the class, I ran 10K, swam two miles, rode my bike home (12.5 miles) and race walked 5K, then went to the class.
The instructor weighed all of about 98 pounds. After some muscle testing, she told me she was going to press on my knee and it was going to hurt. I didn’t say anything but I thought, “I’ve been putting up with the pain for a couple of years and you’re smaller and weigh less than my daughter: no sweat.” It hurt, real bad it hurt! I was barefoot and if toes can dig into concrete, I’m sure my prints are still there.
I was told that she’d have to press on the knee and hold it for two minutes. No sweat turned to plenty of sweat. When she was finished, she asked me to walk around and see if it felt any different. Truthfully, I told her it did feel different. Having her not pressing on my knee was a tremendous relief.
The next morning I woke up, got out of bed, walked around and felt no pain. Since that time, I’ve never experienced that same pain again, and that was twenty-one years ago. Before the Touch For Health® treatment, I’d been to various doctors about the problem and was told by them, including a sports medicine doctor, that I needed to have arthroscopic surgery on the knee. Fortunately, that wasn’t the case. The instructor told me I’d torn most of the muscle attachment point, a tendon, loose from the bone. When that happens fluid is placed in the area by the body. In order to completely reattach the tendon, it was first necessary to squeeze the fluid out of the space between the tendon and its attachment point. Happily, that was the case.
I still use my self-administered magnet therapy for temporary arthritis pains in my knees and back, the results of an accident forty-five plus years ago that are triggered by changes of weather and in the barometric pressure.
There is a lot of controversy concerning magnet therapy. All I can state is that it works for me and years have proven that it’s not a placebo effect.
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