I read this article and it worried me about ordering a machine - I gather from this belle that PEMF can cause changes in stem cells or other cells ? https://emea01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fstemcellres.biomedcentral.com%2Farticles%2F10.1186%2Fs13287-016-0312-5&data=05|02||972d432f597c4bd32d7208dd28e63f29|84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa|1|0|638711691550972493|Unknown|TWFpbGZsb3d8eyJFbXB0eU1hcGkiOnRydWUsIlYiOiIwLjAuMDAwMCIsIlAiOiJXaW4zMiIsIkFOIjoiTWFpbCIsIldUIjoyfQ%3D%3D|0|||&sdata=junil2dfasla7caq2EDkQueLwWZPGAWLXq5UOiAUOUs%3D&reserved=0
Everything can be good or bad. You can drown in water, without it you die. You can overdo some trace elements, but without them you die.
If you worry about cancer, you should first remove all wireless devices and base station in your house and surroundings. There the development of cancer is proven.
Regarding ICES: Low energy low frequency PEMF has a very good track record. ICES runs with a tiny battery for hours. Imagine that!
Your hair dryer or electric tooth brush will probably, or certainly, generate more badly perceived EMF regarding the body then ICES will ever, even hypothetically, cause in the same time.
For me it is about what ICES does good. And if you read here you may find out, that ICES is effective without causing negative long term issues - at least that we know of.
Also cancer happens every second in your body. Your body will repair it. Only when your body is to weak or the stress that causes cancer-cells does persist over weeks, months and years, cancer may persist and grow. Think mercury, think root canals, think bad food causes inflammation, WLAN, mobile Phones and the like.
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Well…
In my opinion, this is a case of misinterpreting science that is questionable to begin with. People in academia absolutely hate this, but it appears that about 70% to 90% of academic research simply can not be repeated, these are essentially false findings. This is called “the Replicability Crisis”, and you can (and should) read about it here:
(if this link is broken, search amazon for this book: “Rigor Mortis” by Richard Harris)
Academic researchers often publish emotionally triggering findings (read: fear mongering, or false hope mongering, if that is a thing) for the same reason that click bait gets posted everywhere in social media: it gets a lot of attention and indirectly generates wealth by monetizing fear and false hope (and greed and hatred, all the bad emotions).
The many serious problems with academic research are way too vast to discuss in this forum, but I think everyone should have some basic tools to deal with this serious problem. So, first I would not get very excited (or depressed, or fearful, or have any response aside from healthy skepticism) about anything that triggers an emotional response in you that you read or hear anywhere. Just take a deep breath, then…
The best way to determine whether a scientific finding is really meaningful is to search to find whether or not it has been repeated, independently, by a different set of researchers. Try to avoid confirmation bias and echo chambers by being sure to seek out and read and consider opposing opinions on the matter at hand. This is difficult to do with academic research because of publication bias. It is crucial to understand publication bias. This is when positive findings (usually the most “click-baity” findings) are published preferentially. This is because scientific journals need to grow their readership. So they use, and have been using for decades, a policy of preferentially publishing only what they call “positive findings”. Not positive in the sense of good, but positive in the sense of statistical significance to support an hypothesis.
OK, too confusing, so here is an example:
If your research is based on showing that something causes cancer, and you run an experiment to show this, then your findings are “positive” if you show that the thing causes cancer. But if your findings show that the thing does not cause cancer, those are considered negative findings.
What you need to realize is this: “publication bias” is about 5 to 1 or 10 to 1 against negative findings. This means that for every paper showing that something causes cancer, there will be about 5 or 10 papers that never get published that show the opposite scientific result. So, unfortunately, you can’t just count up papers, pro versus con, to see what the scientific consensus is. You need to realize that many more “negative results” are hidden from view. This is really a huge problem, and this has resulted in the development and marketing of a lot of therapies and drugs because the contrary findings never saw the light of day. The book I reference above gives a few examples of this.
Publication bias is one of the dirty little secrets of academic science. But don’t just believe me, explore this for yourself and decide… just be careful to avoid mainstream science publications that say that “this is wrong, that everything is OK, nothing to see here, move along, move along…”
For this very complex issue, a practical approach for most people is simply this:
Try not to put emotional stock in click-bait from academic scientists unless you can find a healthy two-sided conversation about it in the literature, and plenty of independent replication of important results.
With all of this in mind, here is my response to @Lara’s valid concern:
I had the same concern about the dangers of electro-magnetism about 30 years ago: does it cause cancer, or accelerate the growth of tumors or the growth of bacteria?
So, as a scientist, I looked into this issue. In the 1990’s this was a very hot topic, so there was a lot of research on it, a lot of active laboratories with a lot of funding. (note: not a lot of published papers resulted from this huge research effort in the 1990’s because it generated a lot of negative results. This is a great example of publication bias. This is super important. You should pause to think about this a while.)
I read everything that was available. I talked to scientists doing active research in this area, and I visited many of their laboratories, looked at their experimental setups, and discussed the details of their work. Fun fact: much of what most scientists discover never gets published. To hear about it, you need to talk to them directly.
I even did some experiments on these potential effects in my laboratory…
After many years of looking into the widely publicized dangers of electro-magnetism, I eventually formed a reasonably educated opinion on the matter. I could be wrong, and I will change my mind if I see compelling facts to the contrary, but this is what I think:
Scientists failed to find a clear link between exposure to electro-magnetism at reasonable levels in our every day environment and increased risk of cancer or infection. Scientists also failed to find such a link when they applied electro-magnetism such as PEMF as we find it in “health” devices. Many scientists tried, but they failed to convincingly show a link. Please don’t respond by posting the occasional paper that shows such a link unless it has been independently replicated. The way medical science works is that we would expect an incorrect result about once in every 20 papers anyway because they often set statistical significance at p<= 0.05. This means that for a typical scientific finding in the medical literature, they tacitly admit that their result is “probably” true, but there is a 5% chance that it is wrong.
So, we need to expect that about 1 in every 20 medical research papers are wrong simply because they accept a 5% chance of being wrong as a threshold for publication.
This 5% threshold is arbitrary. Other fields, such as particle physics, have a much tougher standard. They may demand a false positive rate as high as 1 in 10,000,000, not just one in 20, for example.
So, medical research has its problems. But it is necessary. We need to improve it, but non-scientists should be aware of the limitations and should look for replication of results, as well as look to see whether this is an open conversation representing both sides, or if there are signs that negative results have been suppressed.
My current opinion, subject to change with new information, is that electro-magnetism is potentially harmful, but there is not strong scientific evidence that it clearly and repeatably causes harm when the exposure is at a reasonable intensity and at a non-ionizing (high) frequency. Essentially PEMF systems currently on the market do not seem to cause detectable harm. But this has not been proven either way, so we need to keep an eye on it. To be as safe as possible, it’s a good Idea to limit unnecessary exposure to excess electro-magnetism.
— apologies for the many edits, which were typo corrections, not change of content.
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I agree with you @Bob! I worked in the field of academic research and unfortunately, it is heavily biased (and corrupt!). The funding agency will most likely dictate were the results are going. You are expected to tweak your methodology to confirm what their hypothesis stated otherwise you are risking the funding continuity.
I still remember how my MSc. and PhD advisors would fight for one-more-paper! My main paper, that i wrote and worked on for a year, was claimed by my advisor as first author and i was put as a co-author! then later i found out that my PhD work was passed, to another team member, to publish similar work to mine without notifying me (that ended my PhD at that point as the idea was leaked!). I have endless stories…
One day I was in my advisor’s office and another professor comes and asked my advisor if they both can co-author each others papers! I was a witness that they barely know what the paper is about! but one will be first author and many others are put as co-authors although they never touched the research!
The tenure track is stressful to a point people in academia are so stressed to publish anything and to bring more funding.
I was in electrical engineering field so at least it is not health-related research and it is pretty much replicable!
when my interest switched to study the EMF effect on humans, around 2/3 of research will negate it when the funding is from big tech companies and the opposite is true when it is independently funded!
My conclusion honestly, as bob said, is to be very carful not to jump to conclusion, look into who is funding, human research is not very replicable, and also i personally question the idea of “scientific method” when it comes to human studies as they negate so many factors that can alter the results
sorry for the long comment but i kind of spent more than a decade of my life with this issue!
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I have seen all that too, and much more. Academic medical research is far worse than most engineering fields in my experience. But all of them are pretty bad.
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Thank you for that insidefull comment! I read / research many health topics and often wonder why the abstract is different then the results.
Also really many papers about vitamins to not state the specific form or CAS number. Is it ascorbic acid or natrium ascorbate? and so on.
Circumstances are not well described, animal studies are with doses no human could or would ever take. Cell studies neglect how the stuff could come in such a dose ever through the intestines, the liver 1-st pass metabolism, the blood and transporters that may not exist and so on into a “cell” or even the mitochondria.
Its really crazy. But that does not give one insight about the loss of any integrity on the human side.
For the effects of microwave EMF with WLAN/3/4/5G modulation I do not need studies myself. My head is my “meter”. Even in automobiles I can tell. A EV i would never drive, but also combustion vehicles are overloaded with to much crap nowadays and the generator location is a big problem. Feel it on my legs.
Now on topic: I NEVER had issues with using ICES PEMF. It may do nothing for a situation, but I NEVER felt worse! Neither my wife. And she is using it now at “15” on her head because of an upcoming migraine, which ICES suppresses in 95% of cases!
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@hcf as always makes good sense. For many things, I don’t need to see a study, I can tell just by how my body reacts. Yes, it may be an illusion, yes, it may not apply to all people. But there are many things where I have followed my own feelings and responses over many decades, often contrary to the “scientific” advice at the time. Most of the time, I would estimate at least 90% of the time, I have been very fortunate and have avoided a lot of damage to my health, or have benefited, by simply paying attention to my own response to foods, additives, environmental exposures (good and bad), and using common sense.
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PEMF clears stuff out first and foremost in my opinion. Yes, there is much in the literature that says PEMF may produce minute amounts of reactive oxygen species that serve in oxidative stress cell signaling. There is evidence in the literature that it boosts ATP production that can signal all cells to do things differently. the price of the flux devices are competitive. I’d give it a try, listen to your body, and not be afraid of the Big C. This paper was a review making it a great way to find all sorts of studies with their individual nuances and caveats.
I find so much of this academic school of thought cringe worthy. Cancer is usually thought of a mutation in some gene that codes for a protein that regulates cell growth and then a signal that causes a cell to start to divide. If you particular flavor of PEMF is generating large amounts of
reactive oxygen species, then maybe there could be new gene mutations. Lorentzian swishing around growth factors, well maybe. Other signaling molecules that tells the cell it has sufficient resources to enter the cell cycle and divide… Well maybe it can promote cancer that is already there. I suspect that the biggest asset in the fight against cancer is in flushing out of the tumor microenvironment where bad things get worse. Myl PEMF dream is to produce educational content on this topic.
I though that line of though “genetic causes of cancer” was long ago ruled out as plausible reason and is only upheld by huge grants.
I mean 3 things are common (according to Hirneise) for all “long term survivors”: You eat right (correct your lifestyle), you fix your teeth and fix your emotional problems by leaving the social/work environment, that made you sick.
This may have to do with epigenitic regulation and oxidative stress suppressing the various control systems in the body.
If we now knew how PEMF (what is that exactly) interacts with the various types of cells and signalling in the body, if we would even understand the “electrical” pr “magnetical” or “aether” (other people would write here “Quantum” - but thats only a measure) body and its “system wide” regulation, we could do some thought experiments.
on the note of following my own experience and results, I’ve been experimenting with ices pemf for every part of my body with unnoticeable to positive feedback. lately it’s been applied to my heart and gut/liver area… can’t say i can tell how it’s affecting my numbers. I’ve been doing this more consistently at night for the last month or so. what got me started was after noticing funky heart palpitations maybe a few times over a week. i didn’t like that feeling and just figured I’d apply ices to my heart. i typically don’t have any heart beat/rhythm issues… as i get older (after 40s things start changing for me), I’ve noticed range of tolerance had gotten shorter - generally speaking.
it’s been my experience that things improve or don’t get worse when i apply (consistently) ices pemf to it. everything beating normally since… so I’ll continue my ices pemf usage every night!