Well, I have been testing that, and I just posted my findings on the forum here:
I honestly do not think “bigger and stronger” is the right path to take for PEMF. I think we will all just have to settle for the astonishingly miraculous effects of focal PEMF for a huge range of otherwise refractory conditions.
I used my trifield meter to measure the magnetic field strength in various locations on a parmed full body mat. The meter can’t actually measure the peak magnetic field on the mat because the field strength is stronger than the maximum limit of measurement. However, I think I was able to get a relative sense of the field strength at different locations on the mat.
There are three general locations on the mat where the field strength is at its maximum, which means it’s beyond the measurement range. As I move away from this peak area along the length of the mat, the field strength drops into the measurable range and it continues to drop proportionally based on the distance from the peak strength area in that segment of the mat. Then, it starts to increase again to a peak, then decreases to a low, and repeats the cycle for a third time. This suggests to me that there are three coils (or coil arrays) in the mat, roughly in the top third, middle third, and bottom third.
The maximum magnetic field is only generated in the area where the coils are located and then dissipates based upon the laws of physics. The field ebbs and flows according to this pattern lengthwise, but at any given level, it does not change as I move the meter laterally to either side. That suggests to me that the mat is constructed with a series of coils that span the entire width of the mat but only cover a portion of each third of the mat lengthwise.
I believe this lends some confirmation to @Bob’s speculation about the nature of the field being generated in at least this particular full body product.
I think that is a good general observation, and I think @Anomaloid is basically correct.
I have had a detailed look at a number of “whole body” mats and most are built that way, but some only contain a single coil, which is only about 6" in diameter. So, this 6" diameter area is the only active area on the mat, and this is verified when you use a calibrated high-speed magnetic field sensor. But the mat is about the size of a small cot, and the suggestion is that the entire mat generates a magnetic field that covers the whole body. This is just false, just another example of misleading marketing. Of course the truthful part is that you are paying for a whole body effect even though you are not getting what you pay for.
It is my scientific opinion that, ironically, these fraudulent “whole body” PEMF systems only have a biological benefit because they apply PEMF to a much smaller area than the whole body. This gives them a more focal area effect, which creates a spatial gradient of field strength in the body, which leads to the biological effects of PEMF.
This is just my best technical insight into this problem, based on more then 25 years of detailed study into PEMF, so keep in mind that I could be wrong.
Supporting evidence for this view is that real whole-body PEMF systems can be built (almost), but they are very expensive because generating large volume magnetic fields is difficult and expensive. For example, it takes the entire planet Earth with a huge spinning molten iron core to be able to generate enough of a magnetic field to nudge a compass needle at the surface of the planet.
One more piece of supporting evidence is that, so far as I know, there was one legitimately whole body PEMF system. It was a PEMF chair, built and sold in China many years ago. It had huge round coils on each side of the chair to form a Helmholtz coil configuration (same as ICES-PEMF with coils placed on opposite sides, but much larger). It sort of looked like a huge Dr. Evil chair, but with huge coils where each armrest would be.
In terms of its physical configuration it seemed properly designed to me. Maybe the head and feet would be outside the field, but otherwise I think the design might have been OK. But for the most part, I think it probably applied a significant magnetic field to the entire body. It was hugely expensive. They don’t sell it anymore, because evidently it didn’t really work. I mean, the magnetic fields were there, but they really didn’t see a biological benefit from using this huge expensive whole-body apparatus. But strangely, smaller versions of this system that were applied to smaller areas of the body actually were thought to be effective.
I think the technological conclusions are that modern “whole body” PEMF systems are not what they advertise, they probably only work because they are much less than you are paying for, and if you could possibly get a real, whole body PEMF system, it would not be what you think and it would not have the effect that you are hoping for.
So, it would seem to me that you could rig up an equivalent “full body” ICES PEMF experience using 6 C5s connected to 6 large pads. That would allow for about the same amount of coil coverage that I am guesstimating for the parmeds pad that I analyzed. Obviously, that would be an extremely expensive undertaking, which circles us back around to the question of whether it is really worth it.
Clearly, there are a lot of people who swear by the “full body” experience and there seems to be a general consensus that includes reports that Bob has received over the years that a combination of periodic full body PEMF in a clinic with regular use of local low intensity treatment at home is better than either alone. Given the periodicity of the clinical component of this protocol, one does have to suspect a significant placebo effect. The doctor patient encounter alone can confer a lot of “healing.” I also suspect that the intense sensation experienced in products like the pulse center units would also lend itself to a significant placebo effect. I’m not saying that high intensity machines like the pulse center products only work by placebo. I am suggesting that the perception of additional benefit from periodic high intensity treatment may be a placebo effect.
I doubt there are any clinicians who have done a truly controlled experiment to determine whether at home use of low intensity local devices without periodic in clinic high intensity treatment would be more or less effective. I also don’t think it would be in any clinicians financial interest to make that determination. That being said, for those who don’t have the time or interest in at home treatment and/or who may just be using PEMF for general health benefits rather than specific complaints, there may be a certain efficiency in laying on one of these pads for 15 to 30 minutes 2 to 3 times per week even if it is not a true full body experience. Arguably, this generalized treatment covering multiple areas of the body at once may address problems in the body before they progressed to the point of noticeable symptoms.
The reason that I asked this question yesterday was because a colleague of mine is opening up a wellness center in Kauai, Hawaii. He plans to offer a wide range of self service machines, including cold immersion, hyperbaric, infrared sauna, photobiomodulation, and PEMF. He reached out to me for a recommendation for a full body PEMF system that would be a good fit for his plan. I spent some time explaining to him that I was skeptical of the true benefit of the really expensive full body systems. However, for his plan, he needs some thing that a person can just go into a room lay down on and flip a switch not something that would require a technician to apply a protocol or required of the customer to be fiddling around with a smaller device with local applicators. I also told him that it greatly concerned me that the companies producing most of these high-end products won’t disclose critical information like waveform.
I told him that I would look into whether there was a “full body” ICE system in development. @Bob would you be interested in meeting my colleague to possibly consult on the development of a custom “full body” pad based upon ICES technology. He’s a very smart guy and will have no trouble understanding your perspective on this.
In my opinion, systems that are sold as “full body” or “whole body” are not what they are advertised as. They only apply an over-powered signal to a limited area of the body with a very inefficient waveform in my opinion.
When you rig up 6 large pads to 6 C5’s which is the first thing I tried many years ago, you really do get a large magnetic field over a large area. Way better than the active area you would get from the supposed “full body” mats that are for sale.
But… I have tried it, many times. It does not work as well as a smaller mat. I think too much is simply too much, for intensity, area, exposure time, etc. I have seen enough to have decided that ICES-PEMF development along these lines would be pointed in entirely the wrong direction.
Maybe I’m wrong, maybe the effects of the larger systems are placebo as you suggest, maybe something else. People do clearly benefit from supposed “whole body” PEMF machines, but mainly because they are magnetically much less than advertised IMHO.
If things really are the way I think they are with the whole-body systems already on the market, then I have nothing to add to this aspect of PEMF commercial technology. Your best strategy would simply be to buy something that is already commercially available.
One thing I know for sure:
I will not spend a lot of time and effort to do something that I am pretty sure is technically misguided to compete in a crowded field of competitors who make a lot of money by being willing to make claims and stretch the truth in ways I can not and will not.
The technology I have developed is optimized for affordable, personal, daily, portable use at very low dosage per unit time. Based on what I know, that gives the best long-term outcomes. Combine it with the larger stuff on the market, the clinical outcome may be even better. If your friend wants what we offer, point him to our web page. If not, there is already plenty to choose from on the market.
i’ve been exploring these earthing/grounding mats… of course, like anything, the list of claims is long and miraculous… interestingly, the biggest claim is that it helps with inflammation and pain. i have not had anything specific to “heal,” but i did have some unexpected, positive results. I dunno if we can say placebo as I did not know at the time that this was one of the claims. 
anyway… the point of my ramble leads to this: I think people are looking for a mat option bc it’s convenient… for pemf, if we could do a mat where we can just sleep on it or sit on it and not worry about wires and how to configure coils, that’s a benefit in itself! even as a smaller blanket where wires are tucked away would be convenient.
It sure sounds easy… but it’s really not.
Not sure if this is related, but it is in your message, so… earthing/grounding mats are entirely different from PEMF in every way. You could make those as large as you want without any added complexity.
haha… you’re right…i was hoping the pemf fairy could make it by magic somehow.
since the coils don’t have to be synced to work, one can just get 2-3 c5s and wrap the coils in a contiguous configuration for a “most body coverage mat”… it’d just be a lil costly and lots of wires to deal with… right?
Well, not a lil costly if you want a whole body sized mat with a real active area the size of a body. If you actually calculate it, then a stack of C5’s and coils large enough to be legitimately “whole body” would end up costing as much or more than most of the commercially-available “whole body” (not) systems. Making large-volume magnetic fields is very (very^x) costly, no way around that.
As for my statement that “it does not work as well…”, of course I could not possibly test it for all people at all ages and for all possible conditions. I tested it on a few people for chronic pain. Larger surfaces did not work as well if they are much larger than a few 2x2 coil arrays. Interestingly, when a few coils failed (not connected properly or broken wires) the larger arrays worked slightly better -> which I interpret as more evidence for the enhanced effect of focal application rather than large area application of PEMF for pain and inflammation.
@Bob as always, thanks for speaking candidly on this subject.
People like my colleague and other gym/spa owners who are putting PEMF units into their facilities are doing so based on the assumption that there is a general health optimization and/or disease prevention benefit from regular PEMF. The self service use of full body PEMF in these facilities is not intended to treat pain or relieve any other symptoms. It is based on the purely speculative idea that long-term, regular use would offer general improvements to energy level, sleep, etc. and reduce the incidence of autoimmune diseases in cancer, for example. There’s obviously no evidence to support this position other than extrapolating from various correlations that may not be related in any particular way.
For example, the fact that being completely isolated from the magnetic fields of the earth have detrimental health effects does not prove that regular full body exposure to Schumann resonances provides any added benefit beyond just living in a world that is constantly bathed in these fields. It would be necessary to do a very large longitudinal study that spanned several generations to answer this question in humans. Is anybody aware of such research in animals whose lifespan is short enough to do a valid analysis?
It’s also impossible to answer this question based upon the subjective reports of people who use full body PEMF either at home or in a facility, because there are always dozens of other variables at play. For example, the same people who are getting regular full body PEMF are also often eating a strict diet, have a regular exercise regimen, meditate, do yoga, drink special forms of water, etc. I’m not knocking any of this. I do it all myself. Just saying that it is difficult to tease out whether an intervention is beneficial or not when there are no acute symptoms to use as a marker. To that point, I have found various local forms of PEMF to be clearly beneficial in a wide variety of scenarios (low back pain, upper respiratory infection, headaches, knee pain, foot pain, flank pain). On the other hand, I used a full body 70G mat at least once a day for five months, and I can’t say for sure that it benefited me in any way.
It might be instructive to draw a comparison with acupuncture. There are 365 standard acupuncture points on the surface of the body. Arguably, full body PEMF would be stimulating all of them simultaneously. No acupuncturist would ever make the argument that such a shotgun approach would be necessary. Of course, it wouldn’t be possible to do such a treatment, so we don’t know what it might do. However, if it was more effective than a standard acupuncture treatment, there would be no reason to develop a complex system of medicine based on precision selection of areas of the body to stimulate.
The standard approach in acupuncture would be to choose a relatively small number of local and distal points. Local points are those points that are close to or directly on the area where the symptoms are occurring, while distal points are generally points on the same acupuncture channel or a connected channel located below the knees or the elbows. I suppose it’s possible that a full body treatment would be more effective than a precision selection of points and that it was just more efficient in the pre-modern age to use that approach. However, with the technological advantage provided by modern engineering, maybe there is some added benefit that would be unknown to the ancients.
There’s this “theory” that I have frequently heard from the high intensity full body crowd, which is that your body ignores the magnetic fields when they pass through healthy areas of the body and only areas that are “out of balance” are actually stimulated by the fields. There’s probably no scientific evidence for this and it sounds a bit pseudoscientific to me.
It occurred to me the other day that a compromise between local and full body PEMF might be a mat that is designed to stimulate only the acupuncture channels on the back, primarily focusing on the spine and the areas just lateral to it. In Chinese medicine, this comprises the governing vessel over the spine and the portion of the so-called bladder channel associated with what are called the Back-Transporting (aka Shu) points. Here’s why one of the main acupuncture textbooks has to say about these points:
The importance of the back transporting points in treatment cannot be over emphasized. They are particularly important for the treatment of chronic diseases. The Chinese character for these points means to transport, indicating that they transport qi to the inner organs. Each point takes its name from the corresponding organ. There’s a back transporting point for each of the yin and yang organs. The back transporting points affect the organs directly. The way in which they act is quite different from that of all the other points. When treating the internal organs, other points work by stimulating qi of the channel, which then flows along the channel like a wave eventually reaching the internal organs. When you needle the back transporting points, Qi goes directly to the relevant organ not through the intermediary of a channel. They’re also thought to have a strong effect on the sensory organs that correspond with the primary organs of Chinese medicine. For example, the liver is associated with the eyes.
The back transporting points are associated with the branch of the bladder channel that runs closest to the spine. As those familiar with acupuncture channels know, the bladder channel has two branches on the back, one which is just lateral to the spine and another that is lateral to that. There are several points on this outer line of the bladder channel that are specifically associated with the psychospiritual components of the organs. As the back transporting points are used in both deficiency and excess conditions, and because the outer line of the bladder channel affects the psychospiritual aspects of the organs, stimulating this area of the body alone seems like it may meet the criteria for a general health optimization treatment without bumping up against the problems associated with full body PEMF (cost relative to benefit, lack of specific research, etc.).
ICES-PEMF systems are specifically designed to allow use directly on any selected acupuncture site. This was part of the design intent of portable, wearable ICES-PEMF systems. For example, equine acupuncturists were among the first to test our systems and give helpful feedback. And it is worth noting that trying to transform ICES-PEMF into a large “whole body” system completely eliminates this important and useful aspect of ICES-PEMF system design.
As for the rest of your message: speculative, yes, and that’s fine. But I know very little about most of it so I can’t comment. But you are certainly welcome to try these and comment on the use of ICES-PEMF for any or all of these, and many other observations, speculations, and theories.
There was a apparently a systematic review of whole body PEMF devices published in the bioelectromagnetics journal a while back. The article was submitted for review in 2010, so the information gathered was from the studies available before then. Here’s a link to the abstract. I was able to view the full article on a service that I subscribe to but I’m not able to download it and distribute it.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/bem.20703
Pulsed electromagnetic fields (PEMF) delivered by whole-body mats are promoted in many countries for a wide range of therapeutic applications and for enhanced well-being. However, neither the therapeutic efficacy nor the potential health hazards caused by these mats have been systematically evaluated. We conducted a systematic review of trials investigating the therapeutic effects of low-frequency PEMF devices. We were interested in all health outcomes addressed so far in randomized, sham-controlled, double-blind trials. In total, 11 trials were identified. They were focused on osteoarthritis of the knee (3 trials) or the cervical spine (1), fibromyalgia (1), pain perception (2), skin ulcer healing (1), multiple sclerosis-related fatigue (2), or heart rate variability and well-being (1). The sample sizes of the trials ranged from 12 to 71 individuals. The observation period lasted 12 weeks at maximum, and the applied magnetic flux densities ranged from 3.4 to 200 µT. In some trials sporadic positive effects on health were observed. However, independent confirmation of such singular findings was lacking. We conclude that the scientific evidence for therapeutic effects of whole-body PEMF devices is insufficient. Acute adverse effects have not been reported. However, adverse effects occurring after long-term application have not been studied so far. In summary, the therapeutic use of low-frequency whole-body PEMF devices cannot be recommended without more scientific evidence from high-quality, double-blind trials. Bioelectromagnetics 33:95–105, 2012. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Several things jump out at me about this abstract:
The intensity used on these products is extremely low. Far lower than the products we normally think of as low intensity in this forum, such as Micro-pulse, flex pulse, and some parmeds units The strongest product generated a field of 200 micro tesla. 200 micro tesla equals 2 gauss.
Almost half of the studies that met the criteria for inclusion were for local problems such as knee, cervical spine, and skin ulcers. One was on fibromyalgia, which is normally a whole body problem. Two were on pain perception, which I would assume varied in location from subject to subject. One was on multiple sclerosis related fatigue, which is arguably a systemic symptom but one which may be directly related to Central nervous system function. Only one of the studies that met the inclusion criteria was focused on general well-being. The conclusion of the authors was that there was no evidence at that time to indicate the effectiveness of full body PEMF systems.
Yes, this was a very disappointing review of PEMF. They were wrong about so many of their assumptions, explicit and implicit, that the only solid conclusion we can draw from this review is that PEMF is so poorly reported in the scientific literature that we can conclude almost nothing from 6 decades of academic research on PEMF. If you take the whole of what I have written on this forum, and cross reference it against what is said in that review, the whole review falls apart like wet toilet paper.
Nonetheless, they did correctly point out that there is almost no solid scientific evidence in support of the effectiveness of “whole body” PEMF systems for any particular condition. Whether they are effective is a different issue… my point is that we have no way of knowing for sure that they are effective for anything. So:
Q: how is it that “whole body” PEMF marketers can make so many claims?
Answer: fraud.
Q. why is it that so many people believe that “whole body” PEMF systems are the ultimate embodiment of PEMF?
Answer: Repetition. Repeat a lie enough times and it becomes truth.
My opinion on the matter: Some “whole body” PEMF systems probably do work, at least somewhat, but not for the reasons they claim because the marketers do not understand what they are selling. Of course I could be wrong, but I have been looking at this picture for more than 25 years, and that seems to be how it is resolving into focus.
The folks who sell the really expensive high intensity full body systems often refer to the extensive body of research on PEMF as a selling point. @Bob, I know you have been a voracious consumer of the research literature for decades. Was any of this research done on full body systems as far as you know?
As I keep saying, and will continue to say, over and over and over and over:
There are no real “Whole Body” PEMF machines. It is a physical impossibility to make one the way they make them currently with pads. Unfortunately, these are the PEMF systems used in “whole body” PEMF research because they are commercially available.
Therefore:
There has not been any real scientific research on “whole body” machines. None. Zero.
In addition to this, they do not measure, record, and report the actual electro-magnetic parameters that actually have biological effects. If you want “Gauss”, you can but a very powerful rare earth solid magnet for a few dollars. But a pulsed magnetic field requires detailed measurement and description of the waveform, or you simply cannot know what is being studied.
Therefore:
Even if someone did produce a “Whole body” PEMF mat, they have never actually researched it in a way that makes scientific sense.
In addition to this, the publication bias across all areas of academic medical research is 80 to 90%, and in my opinion it is worse than this in the area of PEMF research. This widespread deficiency in academic medical research is well researched and documented. This means that if an experiment yields negative or undesirable results, it is at least 5 times, perhaps 10 times, as likely to not ever get published in peer review as a paper with positive results. But negative results are crucial scientific information, but we are missing them in medical research, and especially in PEMF research.
Therefore:
Taking the entire huge body of research on PEMF, it is important to realize that 80% to 90% of it is missing. It was never published due to publication bias.
CONCLUSION:
No matter how large the body of published research is, we basically know nothing about the effects of “whole body” PEMF other than what I pointed out in my previous response.
P.S.
No matter how many ways this question is reformulated to ask it from a slightly different angle, I will give the same answer because it is the truth.
How about making a pretty covering on Bob’s small pad, and telling the customers to place it over or under the area they have trouble with? Making sure it’s not adding volume on the side facing them?
The 2x2 coil pad is designed to be placed below thin pillows, pet bedding, under sheets, and to be placed inside cloth or foam covers. Different people need different things, so I do not try to develop all possible garments and pads. It’s really a DIY thing to do.
Are all the coils strong enough to go through normal bed sheets? Id like to put the 2x2 arrays I have under my sheets, what is the maximum thickness I should stop at? And how about the regular coils?
Yes, definitely, and even thin pillows and cloth bandages.