Fluctuating magnetic fields cause heart attacks and strokes to double!

[LaraKnowles]

https://biomedscis.com/fulltext/the-effects-of-solar-activity-and-geomagnetic-disturbance-on-human-health.ID.000203.php

''m) Solar activity may contribute to the development of and be a trigger of the exacerbation of nervous and mental disorders, such schizophrenia, Alzheimer's disease, and multiple sclerosis [38].''

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5805718/

https://blogs.biomedcentral.com/on-health/2019/09/19/geomagnetic-disturbances-and-cardiovascular-mortality-riskutm_sourcebmc_blogsutm_mediumreferralutm_contentnullutm_campaignblog_2019_on-health/

''Our results may be explained through the direct impact of environmental electric and magnetic fields produced during GMD on the human autonomic nervous system. Interactions between GMD and the autonomic nervous system are likely to induce a cascade of reactions in the body's electrophysiology that culminate in the collapse of organ functions and death.''

https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn13769-does-the-earths-magnetic-field-cause-suicides/ Geomagnetic storms and suicides.

https://aepi.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s42494-020-00019-9 geomagnetic activity also causes seizures.

Scientists theorize that this is because when Earth's magnetic field fluctuates, it messes up the pineal gland, causing all sorts of issues. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geomagnetic_storm 

[TheVat]

I don't see a clear line of evidence that geomagnetic storms directly cause CV problems.  There is a more direct causal link between GM activity and levels of PM 2.5, and the latter is a definite influence on CV problems due to particulates of that size passing through the alveolar membrane and entering the bloodstream. 

I find no evidence that the pineal gland has anything to do with this, outside of various pseudoscience theories.  If the pineal gland does anything besides respond to day/night cycles with melatonin production, no one has found evidence of it.  If it were so easily "messed up" by magnetic fields, then I would think power plant workers, physicians, particle physicists, auto salvage yard workers, and anyone receiving an MRI would be in SERIOUS trouble!  

[LaraKnowles]

28 minutes ago, TheVat said:

I don't see a clear line of evidence that geomagnetic storms directly cause CV problems.  There is a more direct causal link between GM activity and levels of PM 2.5, and the latter is a definite influence on CV problems due to particulates of that size passing through the alveolar membrane and entering the bloodstream. 

I find no evidence that the pineal gland has anything to do with this, outside of various pseudoscience theories.  If the pineal gland does anything besides respond to day/night cycles with melatonin production, no one has found evidence of it.  If it were so easily "messed up" by magnetic fields, then I would think power plant workers, physicians, particle physicists, auto salvage yard workers, and anyone receiving an MRI would be in SERIOUS trouble!  

What about this? https://www.newscientist.com/article/2324402-solar-storms-may-cause-up-to-5500-heart-related-deaths-in-a-given-year/

They're saying magnetic fields from geomagnetic storms can disrupt the heart causing thousands of deaths a year.

[swansont]

12 minutes ago, LaraKnowles said:

They're saying magnetic fields from geomagnetic storms can disrupt the heart causing thousands of deaths a year.

Can you link to the research rather than the paywalled pop-sci summary? At least we’d get an abstract.

I can read as far as “a handful of studies have also hinted that” which is not a phrasing that one uses when there’s solid evidence. It sounds like there’s a blip in the data that might not be statistically significant, and perhaps someone has made a plausibility argument 

[studiot]

1 hour ago, LaraKnowles said:

What about this? https://www.newscientist.com/article/2324402-solar-storms-may-cause-up-to-5500-heart-related-deaths-in-a-given-year/

They're saying magnetic fields from geomagnetic storms can disrupt the heart causing thousands of deaths a year.

What about It ?

 

Hve you done no work on it wither from a physics or statistical or even medical point of view ?

 

You first post seems to me to be more like a blog, summarising other people's blogs.

 

5,500 deaths ?

 

Let us put that in context of the 8 billion or so people on the planet, that's almost 1 in 2 million.

How does this compare with other causes of death ?

https://ourworldindata.org/causes-of-death

 

 

That's just slightly less than the bottom line of the longest list I could quickly find 'Natural Disasters'.

[LaraKnowles]

24 minutes ago, studiot said:

What about It ?

 

Hve you done no work on it wither from a physics or statistical or even medical point of view ?

 

You first post seems to me to be more like a blog, summarising other people's blogs.

 

5,500 deaths ?

 

Let us put that in context of the 8 billion or so people on the planet, that's almost 1 in 2 million.

How does this compare with other causes of death ?

https://ourworldindata.org/causes-of-death

 

 

That's just slightly less than the bottom line of the longest list I could quickly find 'Natural Disasters'.

The 5,500 figure is for US deaths only, not worldwide.

I just did a quick experiment by rapidly waving a fridge magnet across my heart and also my head. Nothing happened despite a fridge magnet being hundreds of times stronger compared to the Earth's magnetic field. For some odd reason my heart didn't stop despite the studies I linked in my OP suggesting that a much weaker field (Earth's) moving much more slowly has such catastrophic effects on human health. I wonder why the much more powerful fridge magnet had no effect on me? 

[TheVat]

6 hours ago, LaraKnowles said:

I just did a quick experiment by rapidly waving a fridge magnet across my heart and also my head. Nothing happened despite a fridge magnet being hundreds of times stronger compared to the Earth's magnetic field.

Please tell me you're pulling our legs.  

[exchemist]

7 hours ago, TheVat said:

Please tell me you're pulling our legs.  

As this is the person who once tried to convince members of another forum that you can be strangled by your own thymus gland in cold weather, nothing is off the table. 😄

[Moontanman]

2 hours ago, exchemist said:

As this is the person who once tried to convince members of another forum that you can be strangled by your own thymus gland in cold weather, nothing is off the table. 😄

ROFLMAO!

[guidoLamoto]

Anybody who has ever worked in the ER will try to convince you that all the coo-coos come out during the full moon. There may be a plausable explanation for that-- the stronger gravitational influence my draw more electolytes up in to the brain, altering nerve conduction. That effect could also explain the behavioral changes that occur in women according to their monthly cycles- more estrogen causing Na retention, etc.

Horses and at least some migrating birds can sense the planet's magnetic field. Hemoglobin and myoglobin, among other biochemical constuents are full of Fe- obviously magnetic- so possibly influenced by magnetic fields.

Science works when an observation is made, a plausable explanation formulated and then tested.

As pointed out by others above, whether on not this phenomenon is "real" it certainly is not of very much clinical importance in the great scheme of things. Anybody who would be affected adversely by a cosmic storm probably is about to suffer the damage soon anyway, with or without the cosmic storm.....

Has anybody seen my tin foil hat  lately?

[swansont]

3 hours ago, guidoLamoto said:

Anybody who has ever worked in the ER will try to convince you that all the coo-coos come out during the full moon. There may be a plausable explanation for that-- the stronger gravitational influence my draw more electolytes up in to the brain, altering nerve conduction. That effect could also explain the behavioral changes that occur in women according to their monthly cycles- more estrogen causing Na retention, etc.

Horses and at least some migrating birds can sense the planet's magnetic field. Hemoglobin and myoglobin, among other biochemical constuents are full of Fe- obviously magnetic- so possibly influenced by magnetic fields.

Science works when an observation is made, a plausable explanation formulated and then tested.

Yes, plausibility is important; the moon would not draw anything up - things don’t fall upwards when the moon is overhead. The earth’s gravity still dominates, even though one can measure a small reduction in the net acceleration toward the earth. There’s also an effect from the change in local mass from tidal effects, so one would expect any effect to be accentuated near coastal regions.

Also perhaps see an effect in skydivers and astronauts on the ISS

What would aid in a plausibility argument is the calculation of the physics involved, such as a comparison of the moon’s attraction as compared to e.g. wearing a hat. (I know that this has been done to debunk the notion that astrology has some basis in science by comparing the gravitational attraction of planets vs that of the attending staff when a baby is born)

[guidoLamoto]

Is it just a coincidence that the human female hormonal cycle is 28 days, the same as the lunar cycle, and that the moon is referenced so often in the literature of love?

[LaraKnowles]

When I saw the articles it reminded me of the so called "Lunar Effect" as well, but instead of the moon it's the sun, and instead of "tidal forces" it is "Schumann resonances" and magnetism. The Lunar Effect has been talked about for ages. I'm wondering why all of a sudden there seem to be studies cropping up within the past 2-3 years making claims that geomagnetic storms cause pretty much every health problem imaginable. They're done by different authors in different countries, but they always seem to use the same terms and focus on Earth's magnetic field as the culprit for all these negative effects on the human body.

First time hearing of "heliobiology" as well, which is apparently what this field of science is.

[swansont]

51 minutes ago, LaraKnowles said:

I'm wondering why all of a sudden there seem to be studies cropping up within the past 2-3 years making claims that geomagnetic storms cause pretty much every health problem imaginable

The phrasing of these articles is that the evidence is quite weak, that they are teasing out small correlations in data. The links you provided don’t present any of the science; they’re just summarizing other studies, so there’s not much science to discuss.

[exchemist]

4 hours ago, guidoLamoto said:

Is it just a coincidence that the human female hormonal cycle is 28 days, the same as the lunar cycle, and that the moon is referenced so often in the literature of love?

Re your first, apparently yes.

Re your second, no, but that has nothing to do with anything physical.

[TheVat]

There's some variation in the menstrual cycle - 21 to 35 days.  The moon's synodic period, however,  is 29.5 days.  So the correlation is kind of weak.  And mammalian estrus cycles show wide variation among species, a range which is not at all centered around the lunar month.

So those cycles look to be controlled by biological factors not astronomical ones.  

[iNow]

3 hours ago, TheVat said:

those cycles look to be controlled by biological factors not astronomical ones.  

It’s not unreasonable IMO to posit many cellular-level functions will flux along with the moon and tides. Even the very first life on earth in the oceans likely aligned with those cycles and tides and it would be strange if those early primordial patterns weren’t still in many ways nested deeply within our own DNA. 

This clearly isn’t what the previous poster meant, however, so I return you now to your regularly scheduled program. 

[swansont]

22 minutes ago, iNow said:

It’s not unreasonable IMO to posit many cellular-level functions will flux along with the moon and tides. Even the very first life on earth in the oceans likely aligned with those cycles and tides and it would be strange if those early primordial patterns weren’t still in many ways nested deeply within our own DNA. 

This clearly isn’t what the previous poster meant, however, so I return you now to your regularly scheduled program. 

The length of the day is very different from what it was hundreds of millions of years ago, the length of the year isn’t constant, the orbit of the moon changes, the magnetic poles flip on occasion. Cellular functions can’t be too dependent on such external influences.

[iNow]

1 hour ago, swansont said:

The length of the day is very different from what it was hundreds of millions of years ago, the length of the year isn’t constant, the orbit of the moon changes, the magnetic poles flip on occasion. Cellular functions can’t be too dependent on such external influences.

An excellent point. I was positing a circadian style rhythm even at the cellular level, but it too has surely shifted with the celestial changes across the billennia (like millennia with a B) if it exists at all. 

Edited December 12, 2023 by iNow

[studiot]

On 12/10/2023 at 8:31 PM, LaraKnowles said:

The 5,500 figure is for US deaths only, not worldwide.

I just did a quick experiment by rapidly waving a fridge magnet across my heart and also my head. Nothing happened despite a fridge magnet being hundreds of times stronger compared to the Earth's magnetic field. For some odd reason my heart didn't stop despite the studies I linked in my OP suggesting that a much weaker field (Earth's) moving much more slowly has such catastrophic effects on human health. I wonder why the much more powerful fridge magnet had no effect on me? 

OK but it's still bottom of the list.

 

If you are genuinely interested in verified information about what we know about the magnetosphere and geostorms, try reading the book by plasma physicist Melanie Windridge.

It is readable by a lay person.

Melanie has studied this in Antarctical, Canada, Scandinavia and elsewhere.

 

[guidoLamoto]

The association of the female cycle and the lunar cycle was pointed out as food for discussion....There are several rather obvious diurnal cycles in human biology, why not lunar assocations?..

.While the human female cycle is variable from individual to individual, the mean/median coincides with the moon's cycle length.....Even our diurnal cycles vary about a mean. That indiviual variation accounts for a good deal of the insomnia problems man in iindustrialized society has. If the sun is on a 24 hr cycle and you are on, say, a 28 hr cycle, you will want to be awake when the sun is up for a good deal of the month, but want to sleep when it's up for the complementary portion of the month...and da capo.

While the length of the lunar cycle has changed considerably over the eons, H.spaiens is less than 10^6 y/o, and a good deal of that time may have been used "evolving"  to the current state. The Moon's cycle period has not changed all that much in that time span.

None of the objections raised above exclude or reject the concept of a lunar/hormonal association. The phenomenon is certainly operant in other species  https://www.astronomy.com/science/how-lunar-cycles-guide-the-spawning-of-corals-worms-and-more/ Why not H. sapiens?

The real question is can we make a drug to take advantage of this and make some real money?

[LaraKnowles]

All of a sudden, out of nowhere, within the past three years, there have been a myriad of studies all saying that fluctuations in Earth's magnetic field causes heart attacks and other heart problems, due to Earth's magnetic field disrupting the heart's electrical activity. Pretty much every serious health problem you can think of has been correlated with geomagnetic storms.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2214552420300080

https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/10.1161/JAHA.120.021006

https://biomedscis.com/fulltext/the-effects-of-solar-activity-and-geomagnetic-disturbance-on-human-health.ID.000203.php

https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn13769-does-the-earths-magnetic-field-cause-suicides/

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2324402-solar-storms-may-cause-up-to-5500-heart-related-deaths-in-a-given-year/

I've even seen studies linking fluctuations in Earth's magnetic field (geomagnetic storms) with the incidence of seizures, schizophrenia, and even Alzheimer's.

So, what about MRI machines? The magnetic field of an MRI machine is a whopping 100,000 times stronger than Earth's, and the fluctuations are much more violent. By comparison, the fluctuations of Earth's magnetic field during even the most severe geomagnetic storms are measured on the order of a few hundred nanoteslas per minute and don't even affect pacemakers.

[swansont]

!

Moderator Note

Similar threads merged

 

1 hour ago, LaraKnowles said:

So, what about MRI machines?

What about them? Are there any statistics or reports of people dying while undergoing MRIs?

You posted these links earlier, and they’re still weak tea. Summaries of studies saying there’s a hint of data, or effects on specific subpopulations (e.g. people with epilepsy)

[LaraKnowles]

This recent news story, published 2 hours ago popped up on my MSN https://www.msn.com/en-gb/weather/topstories/strong-magnetic-storm-raging-on-earth-and-will-last-for-several-days/ar-AA1lJLAH?rc=1&ocid=winp1taskbar&cvid=a1612a7a07bb44a0e7e28844b28de6f6&ei=10   Quote "According to experts, a strong magnetic storm with a K-index of 6 (red level) is expected on December 19, maintaining its strength for several days. Additionally, a gradual decrease in the intensity of the magnetic storm is forecasted from December 21-23. The red level corresponds to a severe magnetic storm capable of affecting people's well-being. Magnetic storms can cause headaches, fatigue, insomnia, irritability, general discomfort, exacerbation of chronic illnesses, and even negatively impact a healthy individual. During such days, it is advisable to be extra cautious when driving, pay close attention to your well-being, and if possible, postpone long trips, important meetings, and negotiations. To minimize the negative impact of increased solar activity, adhere to simple rules: Spend more time outdoors during magnetic storm days, except the midday time (12-4 PM), when it's better to avoid direct sunlight. Include more water, fresh fruits, vegetables, and berries in your diet. Avoid elevated physical and mental stress and overexertion. Refrain from alcohol, fatty, spicy, and salty foods on these days. Instead, opt for light dishes, such as vegetables and poultry." The past week I keep seeing new news articles posted every day about solar flares/geomagnetic storms, and most of the ones I've seen on my MSN news feed go on about how magnetic storms are causing all these health effects. I've never heard about magnetic storms causing health effects until a few days ago and I've read about solar storms a lot in the past.

[swansont]

2 minutes ago, LaraKnowles said:

This recent news story, published 2 hours ago popped up on my MSN https://www.msn.com/en-gb/weather/topstories/strong-magnetic-storm-raging-on-earth-and-will-last-for-several-days/ar-AA1lJLAH?rc=1&ocid=winp1taskbar&cvid=a1612a7a07bb44a0e7e28844b28de6f6&ei=10   The past week I keep seeing new news articles posted every day about solar flares/geomagnetic storms, and most of the ones I've seen on my MSN news feed go on about how magnetic storms are causing all these health effects. I've never heard about magnetic storms causing health effects until a few days ago and I've read about solar storms a lot in the past.

We’re a science discussion site. Saying you’ve seen news stories is very vague. Where are the actual papers where analysis is shown? Where are the statistics showing these alleged increased effects?