The BIOflex Story

The benefits of Magnetic Therapy over tradition methods

During the normal course of our lives, two types of pain tend to disrupt our lives. There is the "new" pain that results from an overuse injury, sprain, strain and those injuries resulting from impact. The "old" pain that seems to become part of our lives, preventing us from the normal joys of living is the other prominent type of pain. There are many products available to the consumer without a doctor's prescription for the treatment of both these types of painful conditions. Tennis elbow, sprained ankle and knees, muscular low back strain, bumps, bruises as well as the aches and pains which seem more common as one ages are traditionally treated in various ways but with one common goal - to increase blood circulation to the affected area. The rationale being that the blood is the nutrient source our tissues require in order to rebuild themselves. Raising the concentration of these vital nutrients accelerates the healing process by providing an increase in the basic building blocks needed to rebuild. At the same time, increasing the amount of blood flowing through an area will simultaneously allow the waste products of the damaged tissues to be washed out of the area at an accelerated rate.

When one chooses to apply an electric heating pad, liniment or electric stimulation, as the warmth increases we tend to feel less pain and more mobility. This perception is not due to the temperature, it is due to the increased blood brought to the area to diminish the effects of the high temperature. As the tissue is heated, the body acts to dissipate this extra heat using its own thermoregulatory system - the blood. There are many drawbacks and overt dangers to using these types of modalities to increase local blood flow. For example, electric heating pads have caused thermal injuries as have electric and ultrasound stimulation. Liniments and balms have offending odors, recurring costs and may cause skin sensitivity reactions in predisposed individuals.

Magnetic fields offer the possibility of causing an increase in local blood flow that is consistently better tolerated than any other method. There is no potential for thermal, chemical or electrical injury when using permanently charged magnets to increase flow. The pads are simply placed on the intended area and secured by tape or within appliances such as braces, shoe insoles, facial masks, mattresses, pillows and car seats. The use of the products can reduce pain and discomfort due to musculoskeletal injuries as well as common aches and pains.

There are two principles of physics, the Hall Effect and Faraday's Law which describe the mechanism through which these effects are manifested. A combination of physics, mathematics and common sense resulted in the magnet which can cause this effect more consistently, efficiently and economically than any other magnet in the world. Three of the strongest patents, German (therefore the European Community), U.S. and Japanese, have been granted to protect the designs which will revolutionize the physical therapy field as well as several other areas of medicine.

The Hall Effect predicts the actions of charged particles as they pass through a magnetic field. When a positive charge passes through a positive magnetic field it is going to be pushed away by the magnet because identical charges will repel one another. However, we all know that opposite charges attract one another, so if a positive electric charge passes through a negative magnetic field, it will tend to move towards the source of the magnetic field.



The Hall Effect further states that the highest degrees of deflection or attraction will occur when the direction of the electric current (defined as moving charges) is perpendicular or at right angles to the magnetic field's direction. We can use the image of a child walking along a picket fence to help us visualize this concept. When the child drags a stick across the pickets the stick moves in and out from between the slats and makes that characteristic sound with which we are all familiar. If the child dragged the stick up from the sidewalk on a 45 degree angle, the sound would be very different, there would not be the same movement in and out within the same area. Contrast this to dragging the same stick across a burner element on an electric stove. Regardless of the direction one begins, the same pattern will be crossed, the same sound will be heard.

The same actions occur within one's blood vessels when a magnetic field is placed over them. The best previously available magnetic designs looked like the picket fence, a series of alternating North-South Poles arranged in parallel fashion. The principles of the Hall Effect and Faraday's Law require that the blood vessels cross perpendicular to the poles and this design limited the effectiveness when used on the human body. The distribution of blood vessels in the body is a meshwork of lines crossing over and under one another from all directions. If a pattern of parallel lines is placed over the body, only those vessels crossing perpendicular to those poles will be affected. Relative to the total vessels in that area, this manifests as a very small effect. This limited effectiveness was the stumbling block which kept magnetic therapy from fulfilling the promise made by Hall over one hundred years ago. BIOflex® pads are designed to affect the maximum number of blood vessels in a given area. While the parallel lines can affect 5% of the total vessels in any given area, those that happen to run perpendicular across the poles by coincidence, the BIOflex® pattern can affect 95% - by design. The special magnetic design featured in BIOflex® products is mathematically the most efficient with respect to the physiology of the body.




One can easily appreciate the incredible increase in potential paths the blood vessels could take and still cross North-South Poles at right angles when looking at the electric stove element. The BIOflex® pattern is designed to achieve this same effect when placed against the skin. BIOflex® can affect the maximum number of blood vessels, therefore the most profound increase in flow can be achieved.

BIOflex® pads have been extensively tested at prestigious universities around the world to validate the science explaining their actions. At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, it was proven that the magnetic pads cause an increased flow unmatched by a conventional magnet. Also, the use of the BIOflex® magnets on a distilled water solution had no effect on flow because there were none of the charged ions necessary for the process. A clinical trial was conducted at the prestigious Bavaria Clinic in Germany. This double-blind investigation reported on low muscular back and cervical syndromes and proved that BIOflex® products are extremely effective in relieving the severity of pain, therefore reducing the amount of pain medication required. Clinically, we have seen remarkable results on tennis elbow, rotator cuff tendonitis, bursitis, muscular low back pain, cervical syndrome and many other of the aches and pains which keep us from enjoying life at the level most of us would like. The really exciting aspect of this project is that the theoretical has been proven to be a reality.