PEMF Therapy

NickPineault

PEMF therapy has been used to stimulate faster healing, regenerate tissue, etc. https://blog.bulletproof.com/pemf-therapy/

Might be worth looking into if we're talking about ways to recharge mitochondrial energy and optimize overall cellular function.

Another link to an interview with a NASA and DARPA scientist who an expert in PEMF therapy: https://selfhacked.com/blog/nasa-and-darpa-scientist-on-the-best-pemf-device-to-get-part-1/

JessicaYoon

Thanks very much @NickPineault for these suggestions!

Roey

@NickPineault -
PEMF therapy is highly suspect of being a 'quack scam'. There is nearly no research corroborating it, and it seems to rely on unproven (or even nonsensical) ideas.

See -
https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/pulsed-electromagnetic-field-snake-oil/

NickPineault

In my experience sciencebasedmedicine.org is a very poor source of information. I wouldn't dismiss an entire technology based on one anecdote where a celebrity endorsed a product backed with pseudoscientific claims.

Arthur Pilla is an important researcher who's been elucidating the mechanisms which explain how a non-ionizing signal such as radiofrequency radiation could be used in therapeutics settings. See his 2012 paper on how it plays on the nitric oxide pathway: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22940137

Emerging fields of science can be clouded by the "quack scams" you mentioned, but it doesn't make them completely irrelevant. I'd highly recommend looking deeper into PEMF, considering how anecdotally it's used on high level athletes with good success.

Roey

Thanks!

hjforman

No matter how exciting an anecdote is, it is not scientifically sound until tested with controls and for reproducibility. Pilla did interesting work that has largely failed to be reproduced. That doesn’t mean it was incorrect, but skepticism is well merited here.

NickPineault

@hjforman That's very well put. I agree that skepticism is well merited, but that we also need to stay very open-minded to all possibilities if we want to extend life beyond what was previously possible for humans

hjforman

Being open-minded to all possibilities rather than discarding the obviously incorrect will waste time and resources. There are risks worth taking on the unlikely but not on the ridiculous.

hjforman

I’ve now looked over sciencebasedmedicine.org. It seems like a respectable organization that debunks pseudoscience. Alternative therapies may have some real benefits for some people but so does the placebo effect.