Personal Health Solutions from NaturalNews Replace your toxic laundry detergent with natural laundry soap that grows on trees! (Popular solution!) This top "underground" natural health newsletter brings you amazing new natural cures each month. Save $100! How to treat and cure over 100 health conditions using little-known health secrets How to halt type-2 diabetes with nutritional therapy - over 50% cure rate proven in studies End cravings with this guide to natural appetite suppressants (Download edition available.) How to blend nutritious meals in minutes with Adams' Superfood smoothie recipes (Delicious!) Breakthrough LED lighting technology prevents global warming, saves 90% on your lighting bill • Browse more health books... • Shop our eco-friendly products... All sales help fund NaturalNews operations.

The technique, called repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS), had beneficial effects lasting at least two weeks, according to the report published Thursday in the journal Stroke.

"The results are certainly encouraging, but what the clinical implications are at this point is really unclear," said Dr. Larry Goldstein, director of the stroke center at Duke University in Durham, N.C., and chairman of the American Stroke Association's stroke council.

Because the study was small and relatively short, "We don't know at this point what the patients will be like six months or a year from now," he said.

Goldstein was not involved in the study, which was conducted by a team at Harvard Medical School and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston.

According to lead researcher Dr. Felipe Fregni, rTMS seeks to slow activity in the side of the brain unaffected by stroke. In that sense, the treatment works on the same principle as "constraint-induced therapy" -- a successful rehabilitation strategy where a stroke survivor's healthy limb is restrained, forcing the affected limb to function better.

Researchers elsewhere are investigating the use of rTMS for a number of neurological conditions. Previous work on stroke paved the way for the current trial, Fregni said.

"We know that several sessions of rTMS can increase the magnitude and duration of the beneficial effects, so we assessed the effect of five sessions," Fregni said in a prepared statement.

The trial included 15 people who had suffered strokes at least a year earlier. Ten got rTMS treatment to ease activity in the motor cortex area of the undamaged hemisphere of the brain. The other five patients got a sham treatment.

Testing reaction time of the patient's stroke-affected hands, the researchers found that those who got rTMS got 30 percent faster after five days of treatment. This effect lasted for two weeks, they said. The improvement increased early as the number of treatments increased. Patients were, on average, 10 percent, 20 percent, 27 percent and 30 percent faster on days two, three, four and five of treatment, respectively, Fregni noted.

Goldstein said that although these motor improvements look promising, it's still unclear whether they will translate into better long-term physical performance, he said. "We need studies for a longer period of time with measures of the [patients'] quality of life," Goldstein said.

Studies of rTMS and stroke are also under way at the Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta, said researcher Andrew J. Butler, an assistant professor of rehabilitation medicine at that institution.

"We have a slightly different perspective," Butler said. "They are using it on the unaffected hemisphere in hopes it will reduce the amount of damage. We are using it in conjunction with physical constraint therapy. We use excitatory pulses into the affected hemisphere," he said.

The Emory group's work with stroke patients has not yet been submitted to a medical journal for publication, Butler said.

In another hopeful development, researchers at the U.S. National Institute of Neurological Diseases and Stroke reported that they had stimulated the growth of new brain cells in rats after a stroke. The researchers said they used a protein to activate the stem cells, setting off a cascade effect that created new brain cells. Many rats given the treatment regained the function they lost after the stroke, the researchers reported in the journal Nature.

###

Related Articles

Popular Topics: stroke, magnetic therapy, the brain, Diabetes, High Blood Pressure, Breast cancer, Prostate cancer, Heart disease, Depression, High cholesterol, Osteoporosis, Vaccines, Autism, ADHD, Infertility, Weight loss, Cancer, Alzheimer's, Trans fats, Acrylamides, Fluoride, Mercury	Take Action: Support NaturalNews.com Email this article to a friend Share this article on: NewsVine | digg | del.icio.us Permalink to this article: http://www.NaturalNews.com/020284.html Reprinting this article: Non-commercial OK, cite NaturalNews.com with clickable link. <a href = "http://www.NaturalNews.com/020284.html">Magnetic Therapy May Help Stroke Recovery (press release)</a>
Receive our Natural Health Newsletter for FREE Subscribe now (it's free!) to win. We randomly choose a subscriber each month to send $100 in eco-home products or a RealGoods.com gift certificate (our choice). Plus, you'll receive FREE news, articles and action alerts from NaturalNews.com editors and join over 800,000 monthly readers who report extraordinary health improvements after becoming a subscriber! Receive breaking news alerts on natural health solutions, renewable energy, the environment, global warming and more. Receive a free instant download of our $29 Secret Sources guide that reveals top sources for little-known health and diet solutions.	Your Email Address: Free Subscription Code: Enter the numbers you see: 100% free of charge. Unsubscribe anytime. Absolutely no spam. We respect your email privacy.
Recommended Special Report: Seven Words that can Change the World by Joseph R. Simonetta Read this special report now... "Seven Words That Can Change the World reveals the astonishing, simple truths that have the power to forever transform our world for the better while freeing our minds from the enslavement of limiting beliefs. This is not a text for the simple-minded; it is a guiding philosophy for the mindful, intelligent few who are wise enough to seek out -- and recognize -- the higher simplicities of truly purposeful living." - Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, editor of NaturalNews.com	More on NaturalNews.com: • Streaming Health Ranger Videos • CounterThink Cartoons • FREE Special Reports • Podcasts