How do they work? Magnets have multiple effects on the body. Perhaps the most widely reported are that they increase blood supply to the area they are applied, and that they demonstrably and repeatedly assist injured bones to heal. In terms of choosing which magnets to use, we have gone to great pains to ensure that our magnetic therapy products contain magnets strong enough to be effective, and that they are positioned where they will do the most good.
At a very intrinsic level, magnetic fields make it easier for your body to do the things it does. Magnetic fields allow all your cells to work at maximum efficiency. In physiologic terms, most processes in your body involve the movement of charged particles across cell membranes. It is easier for this to take place in the presence of a magnetic field, therefore the system works more efficiently.
Why do living things respond so well to magnetic fields? We were born to it! The earth is one big magnetic coil so our bodies are engineered to work in a magnetic field. It simply makes sense that applied magnetic fields will allow injured & damaged areas to heal more quickly. And that is what we see time & time again with the animals using our products.
What have we treated? I started manufacturing magnet therapies for some of my racing clients whose horses had chronic back pain in spite of our best efforts. We got results within days. With this encouragement we proceeded to expand our product range and sell them on a wider scale. We just kept getting results. Time & again. And often on “Lost Causes”. While I hate making my colleagues lose face with their clients, it is fantastic to resurrect a riding life for a horse condemned to the paddock. It is also fantastic to be able to help racehorses stay in work and get back to winning when a spell seemed the only option.
Back Pain This is a very common ailment with racing & Jumping horses. They do all their propulsive work with their hindlegs & are often pushing with extreme force. Jumping out of barriers & jumping over obstacles are the two activities that put the most strain on the sacrum, pelvis & lumbars. This makes them prone to muscle & joint strains in this area & it is quite common to find pain there even in horses who are performing well. For others it can be a serious cause of poor performance. We expect results well within the first 2 weeks when used for this condition. We also recommend regular Chiropractic attention from a qualified Veterinary Chiropractor. One benefit of magnets is that you can use them alongside Chiropractic, Acupuncture, Massage or Bowen with no concerns of interference.
Wither Pain This is the next most common site of pain on horses in any discipline. Reasons can certainly include problems with the saddle. One point here:- its not so much a matter of good and bad brands of saddles- your horse can’t read the label. A good saddle for your horse is one which fits him well and places your seat in the right position. Pain at the wither is often from a saddle sitting too low in front- throwing the riders weight forward and overloading that area. Other saddle fit reasons for the pain include “bridging” – where the saddle doesn’t contact well through the middle- usually causing pain at the front & back of the saddle, and a “pinching” gullet – where the gullet shape doesn’t match the horse well enough. Our Animal Magnetism Rug has magnets over this area to help with healing those damaged tissues. Once your horse has any muscle scarring from a saddle problem (yours or a previous one) it is very easy to make it sore again. We suggest the long term use of the rug will keep that under control for you.
Performance Many of our clients use the rug as a preventive measure. By keeping the muscles in a good deep magnetic field, they recover better and quicker after exercise. This reduces your chances of muscle injuries and thus your risk of other problems and leg injuries is much less. Added to this, by keeping the muscles relaxed and supple many of our riders find they get bigger movement out of their horses. They are able to stretch out much more because of the supple state their muscles are in.
This is due to the unique nature of our rugs:- as well as targeting the back muscles that need the help, we have also targeted the hamstrings & shoulder muscles as they are incredibly important for performance.
Leg problems:
Tendon Injuries
We have managed a number of horses through their recoveries after what were career threatening tendon injuries. In all cases the recovery was successful & quicker than expected. On the ultrasound during recovery there was a quicker infiltration of fibres than was expected and the first of these horses was back racing successfully 10 months after the original injury. And I don’t mean back in training;- he won his second start back, 10 months after the injury.
Once recovered we encourage the horses to stay in our tendon boots permanently as part of their training as we have found this hugely beneficial in preventing recurrence of injury.
Prevention:- we have a large number of clients across many disciplines who use our boots as a preventive measure. They are designed to be tough enough to use as paddock boots, and Eventer Kadi Eykamp has found them very useful when travelling to prevent the filling that many horses get in their lower legs when trucked & boxed.
Shin Soreness
This is one of the major causes of lost training days for young horses in the Thoroughbred Industry. Its cause is involved with a normal physical response to increased demands and stresses down the front of the canon bone in young horses. The bone is being stressed and asked to increase its strength and thickness to cope with the load. In the ideal situation the bone would achieve its strengthening & thickening without becoming inflamed and becoming “shinsore”. In reality most young racehorses will go through a bout of Shinsoreness because it is incredibly difficult to judge the fine line between enough work to get the full strengthening response, and that little bit more which sends them into inflamed painful canons with or without microfractures. Once they become sore, training must be halted until they recover.
Our Animal Magnetism tendon/shinboots have proved extremely beneficial in treating shinsoreness once it has happened. More importantly, we have been able to prevent shionsoreness in two year olds as they go through their preparation right through to racing. The reason for this is simple: Magnets assist bone to heal. They increase its rate of healing by stimulating the cells responsible. This means you can get the bone to heal quick enough to cope with the increasing workload and the bone can stay ahead of the demands placed on it. This means NO lost training days if used as a preventive, and MUCH FEWER lost days if used as a treatment because your recovery will be much quicker.
Splints “Splints” are a bony thickening usually on the inside of the canon. Most times they are caused by uneven weight distribution in the lower leg because the canon isn’t perfectly centred below the knee. (There are next to no perfectly conformed horses in the real world which is why it is so common). This causes the inside or medial splint bone to take more weight than it should. The difficulty with that is that it is a bone that doesn’t get anywhere. It disappears 2/3 down the side of the canon. This means any weight it carries had to be distributed back to the canon through a ligament that tightly binds the two bones together. The result of this is that this ligament under the extra weight tears away a little from the bones, in doing so tearing the periosteum. Periosteum is the very fine skin like layer which covers the bone. Its response to any insult is to produce more bone- what we see as the “splint”. What the splint is actually doing is providing a boney bridge between the two bones that will stabilise them and prevent any further injury. Once the process is complete you are left with a very small “splint” which is a hard knot of very calcified bone. It normally takes a very long time to get to this point & in the meantime you are left with a fairly large lump of young bone that is not yet strong and is prone to becoming painful if overloaded.
Magnets do exceptionally well at healing bone, which is why our tendon boots provide such outstanding results in managing splints. They hurry up the healing process taking your large lump of immature bone through to the often “invisible” small knot of strong mature bone that is functionally helpful without being noticed.
A word of caution:- some splints will be caused by trauma and may actually be fractures. Xrays are indicated for splints causing lameness or that are exceptionally painful, especially if on the outside of the leg. Our boots will still help these to heal, but it is worth knowing as the rest becomes much more important.
ARTHRITIS More correctly referred to as Osteoarthritis, this is a degenerative condition that effects the joints. In horses it is part of the “wear and tear” that an athletic life can produce. Through repetitive actions of high performance pursuits the protective hyaline cartilage that lines every joint can start to become eroded. This then produces friction within the joint and an ongoing cycle of degenerative joint disease. This can happen AT ANY AGE. It is also contributed to by conformational imperfections that cause some joints to be loaded unevenly. This is particularly the case in the Pastern joint, which is why it is one of the most common sites of arthritis in Performance horses.
Racehorses are more likely to produce arthritis in the knees and fetlocks because both of those joints in racehorses spend a lot of their performance life at the extreme ends of their range of motion.
Arthritis in older horses is extremely common. In my experience if you take enough X –rays of horses older than 12 who have worked for a living, you will find some arthritic changes.
It’s not the end!! The majority of horses with Osteoarthritic changes can be helped back to performing again and Magnetic therapies have a big role to play. Magnets will encourage blood supply back through injured tissues (interestingly one of the popular administered antiarthritic treatment for horses has as one of its actions an anticoagulant effect to improve the blood supply). The magnet induced improved blood supply not only brings extra nutrients in, but has the effect of encouraging the inflammatory products out of the inflamed area as well ( which is the therapeutically useful effect of antiinflammatories).
As well as their own benefits to the arthritic joint, the magnetic field will also facilitate the movement into those joints of the other products you might be using to help with the problem, through its effect on improving the blood supply. We commonly recommend our Joint Food to be used with the magnets as we find the combination works much quicker than either product alone.
Our pastern wraps are designed to fit around the pastern for arthritis there (Ringbone), but likewise will fit above the fetlock to help with problems in that joint.
Our knee wraps are a similar design to our pastern wraps and are designed to fit above the knee to help with knee arthritis (carpitis). We have hock boots obviously to assist with Hock arthritis, but due to the design of this difficult joint they are the only product we recommend for stable use only. Our other products are all designed to be paddock safe.
Coffin joint arthritis or “low ringbone” is being increasingly diagnosed as a major cause of lameness and we treat it the same as all the other arthritis joints. We have Magnetic Bellboots that have the magnets targeted at the coffin joint & navicular bone that help to improve the blood supply and encourage healing.
Hoof Problems Navicular Syndrome
Apart from the mentioned Coffin joint arthritis, there are an enormous number of conditions that can affect the horses foot: Navicular Syndrome and its cousin, caudal heel pain syndrome (where we think it’s navicular but the X-rays are clear) has long been one of the most difficult things to treat. There is no cure for this, but our boots have time and again made horses much happier. If used early in the disease they can certainly help get the horse back to an athletic life, alongside a talented farrier and medications if indicated.
Pedal Osteitis This is an inflammatory & then vascular problem of the pedal bone. Its common cause is concussion, particularly of flat soled thoroughbreds working on hard tracks. In severe cases there will be small fractures around the margins. It becomes a lifelong problem to manage and hoof pads, corrective shoieng, ice after work & careful track selection are all integral to its management. Our Magnetic Bellboots here will help by reducing the inflammation & improving the blood supply (our magnets are strong enough to penetrate right through the hoof) to the bone & surrounding soft tissues. This will facilitate healing of the pedal bone itself and over time encourage better hoof growth which will be extremely beneficial in managing the problem.
Laminitis
Acute laminitis is always a veterinary emergency and should be treated that way. Having said that I would absolutely utilise our magnetic bellboots in managing the problem as again, improving the blood supply is an important goal of therapy. It will always be difficult to assess how much they have helped as every case of laminitis is different and outcomes at the beginning can be unpredictable.
With Chronic laminitis it is much easier to see a response to our bellboots. They will improve the blood supply and facilitate the repair of the soft tissues of the hoof which will over time make the horse more comfortable and reduce your chances of recurrence.
Poor Growth
Poor hoof growth and weak walls are a problem for a lot of horses. We have had good results with our Magnetic Bellboots improving hoof growth through their beneficial effects on the blood supply. It is largely for this reason that we insist on selling these by the pair, we don’t want your horse to end up with uneven feet- because that causes so many other problems!
Prevention
Any horse with a history of problems, or with conformational imperfections predisposing to problems would benefit from using our magnetic wraps over the appropriate area. Additionally many horse people are using our Rugs and tendon boots as part of a preventive program to prevent their horses getting problems in the first place.
