Magnetic Headpiece - the verdict!!

I used to work in a yard which delt with so called problem horses, and by squaring up it often wasnt much, not beating them up all the time if thats what you think i mean, just more often than not people who rode like they were 'sitting on the toilet' was the problem...
 
So if when do you look at a possibility that there could be something wrong with the horse? After all a lot of riders dont ride that well. And some problems can be intermittant because at times the horse can tolerate the discomfort. In fact just like people horses can have referred pain. How many people actually look at the whole picture, ie feed, shoeing, tack, conformation etc, when they are having problems. Because a lot of problems have more then one origin. From my experience of people not many.
 
And what I am saying is it can be more then one issue. Feed may just be a part of it, same as a tight fitting saddle, may just be a part of it. There could still be another issue. Or it could be just a confidence issue which is helped by calming the horse down so he has time to think & not just act. If something works for someone then it works, does it need to be torn to bits? This person along with many others have found a benifit from using the headpiece, & shared that. Some have taken a personal attack which was not necessary. There were things typed in a way that were obviously meant to have a dig at the person, except some comments streatched out to others ie calling all those that have bought/used this bridle/headpiece muppets. There was no need for that, would that person stand in front of Nick Skelton & call him a muppet? Oh I bet they will respond yes, but is that pigs I see flying overhead!
 
My question in all of this is:

Are the magnetic products sold by these horsey companies the same product as sold by magnet manufacturers that you and I can buy over the internet?

There's lots of talk about north and south poles, gauss, neodymics, strength etc. What does all this mean and what does it mean to the tack buyer such as myself?

Are the magnetic items I have handmade with magnets bought from a supplier the same magnetic strength as that sold by Armadillo, Barnsby and the like?

If no, then I've wasted my money. If yes, then probably you peeps have.

A simple question, for a simple answer please?
 
The magnets used in the Barnsby crownpiece are registered in Germany as “class one medical devices” (European Patent No. 0.134.437, US Patent No. 4,549,532, Japanese Patent No. 1,652,939)

If your magnet matches the above then yes it is the same strength, but you know what, I have not wasted my money because it cost no more then my elevator & is used daily. As I needed a bridle anyway & would only use a padded version therefore it is not wasted.
 
Interesting post. Whether the headpiece works as described or not, I think there must be a lot about magnetism that we just don't understand yet.

Take dowsing; I always took that with a pinch of salt until I saw it & tried it (it worked for me once; wierd sensation; not something I was causing but likewise not something I could control- it wouldn't happen again for me). Two civil engineers from my work had confirmed that the phenomenon exists and had used it to find buried pipelines on site; one guy in particular was definately not a man to believe in fairies. The best tentative explanation they could come up with was that it was in some way due to magnetic fields; but they couldn't fully explain it and no scientific trial has confirmed it; & I can see why not, given my own experience.

Until persons of a supposedly scientific bent stop lampooning this sort of thing and start considering whether there might be some truth in it and how best to find out, then there will always be a lack of knowledge and an opening for con artists.
 
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Until persons of a supposedly scientific bent stop lampooning this sort of thing and start considering whether there might be some truth in it and how best to find out, then there will always be a lack of knowledge and an opening for con artists.

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But I have considered whether there is some truth in this but all the evidence so far suggests not. There is a way to find out if these things work, certainly on some parameters but this research has not generally been done by the people who manufacture these things. They prefer to make grand claims backed up by very weak science and then use a few quotes from customers...
 
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The magnets used in the Barnsby crownpiece are registered in Germany as “class one medical devices” (European Patent No. 0.134.437, US Patent No. 4,549,532, Japanese Patent No. 1,652,939)

If your magnet matches the above then yes it is the same strength, but you know what, I have not wasted my money because it cost no more then my elevator & is used daily. As I needed a bridle anyway & would only use a padded version therefore it is not wasted.

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Ah but did you say you bought a bridle or headpiece. As was said before, £85 for a good quality bridle including the headpiece isn't that bad a price for a good quality bridle.

£60 for the headpiece IS expensive for what it is and it smacks of the "whack the price up if its horsey" attitude that is around. If they are magnets that can be bought cheaply and they are hoiking the price up just because, well this is rip off britain, surely we'd be used to it?

Its fine if it works for people, but although people can say "it works for me so b*gger the science" - I would be concerned in the absence of any scientific evidence at all - what damage they could do without you realising it.

Big what if - but what if these things DO cause damage and there is no scientific evidence or no evidence as to what they do AT ALL, but 5 years down the line your horse ends up with a tumour or brain haemmorhage?

It would be nice to see some proper research to show that even if the benefits can't be measured - there are no side effects or bad implications down the line.
 
GM - as far as my understanding goes that although there is no evidence as such to prove that they work, there is no evidence to show that they can cause harm either. For static magnets there are officially NO contraindications for their use, though generally people avoid using them during preganancy and on pregnant animals just to be on the safe side. Pulsed magnetic products have more contraindications, but are much more expensive and not as common.

I'm sat on the fence on this one.. I can perfectly understand the scepticism felt by so many of you due to the lack of significant research, but at the same time I'm happy to 'just accept' that some things don't need to be scientifically proven as there is so much anecdotal evidence in their support.
I myself wear a magnet, and have used magnetic wraps and straps on my horses.
 
I'm a fence sitter on this and actually see both sides of the arguement. Like Bounty I've used successfully magnetic products, but would also question a quick fix, particularly on a horse that sounds like it is showing such a wide range of irrational behaviour as the OP posted, but hey if it works for them great.

My one question/concern would be, when I have used magnetic products (leg wraps etc) before, they have seemingly heated up the area and I believe many of the leg wraps carry instructions not to be used for intensive work as they can heat the tendons. Presumably this is the magnets? How would that affect such a vunerable area as the poll/brain?

As I say, I'm not dissing it at all and will continue to read with interest (so please keep posting !), particularly with the headpieces possible relevance to headshakers, as my sister's pone is one and we are always looking for things that may help him.
 
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Are the magnetic items I have handmade with magnets bought from a supplier the same magnetic strength as that sold by Armadillo, Barnsby and the like?

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The likely answer is yes - the magnets used in these products are permenant magnets - that is to say chunks of magnetic material, iron for example, that do not carry an electric current. So, what you need to know about the magnets used in these products is the strength of their magnetic fields (measured in Telsa) and their magnetic moment (the strength of the magnetic field at a distance r from the magnet). When you see the strength of a magnet in Gauss it is just an alternative unit of strength: 1 Tesla = 10000 Gauss.

So, if you know the "strength" of the magnets, what distance they are positioned from, say the poll, and their size then there is no reason why they should be any different from the ones used in hugely overpriced products! Hope that helps.
 
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Until persons of a supposedly scientific bent stop lampooning this sort of thing and start considering whether there might be some truth in it and how best to find out, then there will always be a lack of knowledge and an opening for con artists.

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But I have considered whether there is some truth in this but all the evidence so far suggests not. There is a way to find out if these things work, certainly on some parameters but this research has not generally been done by the people who manufacture these things. They prefer to make grand claims backed up by very weak science and then use a few quotes from customers...

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Exactly!! Just because "scientific research" has supposedly been done it doesn't mean it is reliable - if it was then it would likely be found in some of the most respected science journals published - which its not! (or atleast not to my knowledge - if it is then by all means direct me to it!)
 
Also, taken from the Bad Science website:
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the first placebo controlled trial in the history of medicine was done on magnet therapy in 1784: by Antoine Lavoisier and Benjamin Franklin, investigating the claims of Dr Franz Mesmer, who got his patients to sit with their feet in magnetised water, and hug magnetised trees.

He brilliantly “discovered” that you can cut a patient and make them bleed, and if you pass a magnet over the wound , the bleeding will stop. He also brilliantly discovered that if he waved a stick about, the bleeding would stop too. Anyone who had ever seen a wound stop bleeding by itself suggested to Mesmer that “doing nothing” (or “jumping about and swearing a lot”) might be equally effective, and so, out of a simple desire to compare these two possibilities, with some finessing, the blinded trial was born. Negative trials on magnet therapy have been around for as long as trials and magnet therapy themselves


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tempi- have just trawled through this post

i think people have been very personal on here which is absoultely not acceptable-im sure you have tried things with arhci to sort him out and this is just something else to try-if it works then so be it..brilliant!!
 
I'm not getting involved in the "whether it works or not" debate but P_G, what is Archie like if someone else rides him? And has he always been like this even in his previous home/s (if he had previous ridden homes)?

I have nothing to add except to say that any pictures/videos I have seen of him, he never looks particularly happy, like there is something wrong with him, however you say not, so perhaps all you have to go on is trying something new like the magnets or suchlike. If you feel they are working then great.
 
not getting involved with rights and wrongs of head thingy debate as NOT my thing

Christiamas - i have been lucky enough to see both sides of horse. Thos horns are defo there, BUT HE DEFO has a hailloo aswell and when he is in latter mood he looks and is ridden like a Billion dollars horse and not hint of any problems and is just a huge cuddly sweetie on ground. I tried my hardest to load into my trailer, but i was spotted
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I think we should be a bit generous to P_G and encourage her, as she only trying to find something that will make him consitant and as per normal some subject can go sky height without any reason IMO in here

Don't they say that the really talent horses always have some quirk with them
 
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Don't they say that the really talent horses always have some quirk with them

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Well some people may say that, but it's not necessarily to be believed. There are plenty of super-talented horses who don't give the rider any hassle whatsoever.
 
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Don't they say that the really talent horses always have some quirk with them

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Well some people may say that, but it's not necessarily to be believed. There are plenty of super-talented horses who don't give the rider any hassle whatsoever.

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I think there must be a mixture, some horses that are talented are also very well behaved and some aren't so. My friend has been told that her horse is a potential 4* eventer but my God he is a bugger! There aren't many people that could sit to what he throws at her at times
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but with him I think he has so much ability that he sometimes just doesn't know what to do with it... and so plays up! He always does it with a huge 'look at me' smile on his face though!!
From what I can tell from P_G/ Tempi's posts Archie is probably similar!
 
Well some people may say that, but it's not necessarily to be believed. There are plenty of super-talented horses who don't give the rider any hassle whatsoever.
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and are they very lucky, but i never seen very talent horse without some quirk (not saying that they don't exist)...................... and then it boils down to what quirk thoses riders/grooms are happy to live with and trade off with talent
 
Spot on, Kick-On
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. I obviously know P_G very well and have competed with her and watched her. Archie is a sweetie, yes he does have devil moments, but he is hugely talented. P-G is a very quiet rider and really gets the best from him. I can also 100% guarantee this is about 'quick fixes'.
 
Before you spend your money on this device, you need to find out the actual strength of the magnetic field (measured in Gauss units) and polarity. Applying the magnet for the duration of a ride, journey to a show isn't sufficient for any benefit really. It usually has to be worn for many hours and for many days before any benefit is seen.
 
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