Conclusions
Collacott and colleagues3 found that magnets were not effective in treating low back pain. Although they proposed that the depth of the pain source might have played a role in the outcome of their research project, such an issue would not be a significant factor in our study because of the relatively short distance from the surface of the wrist to the median nerve. Future research might include a measure of belief in magnets as healing devices to determine the impact of the placebo device. The addition of another arm of the study to include magnet placement adjacent to, but not touching, the point of pain to determine the pressure effect might be interesting. Although this study did not show magnets to be more effective than the placebo, the reduction in pain with this simple intervention was remarkable.
Acknowledgments
Funding for this project was provided by The Oklahoma Center for Family Medicine Research, University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma; Dr. James Mold, director. Thanks to Deborah Cacy, PhD, for her assistance in the development of our project.