Bioresonance (sometimes called bio-energetic therapy or bio-frequency therapy) is an alternative or complementary therapy based on the idea that every cell, tissue, or organ in the body emits its own electromagnetic frequency or “vibration.”
Devices are sold for placement on the skin (or, for animals, sometimes attached to the coat), and the devices measure electrical signals, analyse their “frequencies,” and emit counterfrequencies supposedly intended to cancel or correct the imbalance.
With her characteristic clarity and curiosity, Gillian explores why bioresonance sounds plausible in theory. She also discusses legitimate areas of electromagnetic therapy, such as PEMF and photobiomodulation, and calls for proper research to separate real physiological effects from pseudoscientific claims.
Whether you’ve seen these devices online, been recommended one, or are simply curious about the science behind them, this episode is an essential listen for any evidence-minded equestrian or therapist.
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Transcription
Here is a transcription of the podcast. (Please note this is an automated transcription, so we apologise for any errors from the original podcast.)
Hello, this is Gillian Tabor. I wanted to use this podcast to talk about a theory that is a term thrown out there when discussing potential effects of various therapeutic devices. And it covers quite a wide range of products and claims that are made on the internet and the reasons why people might be drawn to buy various bits of kit to help their horse
Now at no point am I blaming anybody for spending their money to help their horse because obviously we are all horse lovers and we want the best for our animals. But I feel it’s important just to explore some of the science or lack of science or pseudo science that supports some of these claims and just to try to explain why
Some of us are particularly skeptical about these devices and actually, you know, we come under a fair bit of flack from some of the companies saying, you know, that we just sort of poo poo everything and that actually, you know, we should believe because a lot of owners are saying that horses are getting better or there’s changes when they are using or wearing these devices. So I wanted to sort of set out my
position based on explaining why there is this sort of shout of pseudoscience behind them. And the term that I want to talk about today is something called bio resonance, which sounds great. If there is something that works by this theory called bio resonance, then that should be beneficial to a horse. But what it’s suggesting is that every cell, ⁓
part of our tissue or maybe an organ in the body, whether it’s human or horse or dog, emits its own electromagnetic frequency or a vibration. So the theory behind bio-resonance, which sometimes you’ve seen it written as bio-energetic therapy or bio-frequency therapy, the theory being that, you know, we all have this sort of low ⁓ level
perhaps, you know, of different frequencies of some form of vibration in our cells. And when we go back to the sort of biology that we learned at school, we have talked about the fact that there is sort of movement in our body. And yes, you know, I know that there’s blood moving around our body and, you know, the oxygen and, you know, that’s right. I’m trying to sort of think about it, how to explain it, but.
If you remember that when we talked about our individual cells and the walls around them, there were these things called iron channels and sodium and potassium move in and out and across those. it is, and it does sound quite plausible. And then when we understand about how we have around us these electromagnetic waves, you know, we have light.
We have sound and then also, you know, we have frequencies that are imperceptible to us, such as radio waves, microwaves, our phone waves, how they communicate. Then we are aware that there are electromagnetic fields all around us. So it sort of seems quite sensible to link those two together and think that our body cells and our systems communicate via electromagnetic signals.
And then also there are those that are saying that bodies are damaged by these electromagnetic fields. And we’ve all heard the scaremongering with regards to, know, if you live underneath one of these big electricity pylons, then are there increased rates of cancer? Or some people say that they get headaches when they’re near their mobile phone. I don’t believe that there’s significant proof or association between those two. However, it, again, it sounds plausible that
illnesses or dysfunction to a lower level can be caused by the signals in our body, know, our bio resonance being distorted or out of balance. So if there was a device that could put these signals back into balance or something that was clever enough to detect these disturbances and sort of put in corrective frequencies to our body.
If there was some way of restoring harmony or an energetic balance, then that would be beneficial. So we see devices that apply things to the skin ⁓ or outside the hair coat of a horse or a dog. And the electrodes can be small, sort of self-adhesive electrodes, and then they can have wires attached to them, or they could be in the form of a material that contains something.
that is supposed to actually help sort out our affected electromagnetic signals. So the idea being that there is something that sits on the outside of us that can analyze the frequency of our bio resonance and it can emit a counter frequency which is supposed to either block out or maybe it’s supposed to cancel or correct the imbalance.
you know, that would be brilliant, wouldn’t it? So if it was going to be able to work as claimed, so if you were going to use bio resonance to actually solve some of these problems, there are a few things that would need to be true. So we’d have to be able to measure these electromagnetic signals. So to do that, our cells, our tissues or our body would have to emit a stable signal. We’d all have to have a characteristic
⁓ frequency and intensity for a device to be able to work that out to then be able to ⁓ change that electromagnetic or the bio resonance ⁓ of the cell or the body. We’d have to then know that if there was pathology, so if there was infection or inflammation, then that signal would be altered in a way that we could use
⁓ diagnostic machines, ways to measure it ⁓ in a predictable way. We’d also then have to have devices that would then penetrate into our cells and tissues and it would be able to choose which cells were abnormal, which had an altered bio resonance or a dysfunctional or abnormal bio resonance and then that particular tissue or
sorry, that particular device would then be able to selectively change the bio resonance of that cell compared with the one next to it or in a similar area that might be normal. And so if you think about a lot of these devices, whether they’ve got electrodes or their wraps or something, they are not specifically targeting one cell next to another. And we’d also have to think about, you know,
what was the level of input? We know that ionizing radiation is bad for ourselves. We know with X-rays and gamma rays and things like that would be problematic. So we’d have to be cautious of that. And then another consideration would be that we wouldn’t want to change the temperature of the tissue because that also could be damaging chronically. So we have to be aware of that.
We’d also then have to know that the body would ⁓ respond to that correction. So ⁓ how would that be? Would it be via sort of enzyme changes, alteration in flows of the ion channels or the gene expression? And then the challenge that we have is none of these mechanisms have any measurable or ⁓ scientific or experimental support at a whole organism level.
So we don’t have a way of measuring bio resonance. There’s no way therefore of measuring the effect on the body of these devices on the bio resonance. Because if you have a magnometer or a gauss meter in this sort of environment, there are so many electromagnetic frequencies that are being given out by all our
electronic devices around us, but also by the sunlight, by other sort of things that come into our atmosphere from the solar system. So there are so many electromagnetic signals, both biologically and in the sort of physics realm that are around us. So it’s really noisy.
⁓ That’s why your radio in the old days where you had a tuner, you could turn the dial and it could pick up various frequencies and give you that radio signal. But there isn’t something like that for measuring bio resonance. And when we think about bio resonance, it’s so small ⁓ that you would, could you measure it in this really loud, crowded electromagnetic environment that swamps us?
So, you know, we’re not sure that we can. Now, you can, ⁓ and ⁓ I have sort of personal knowledge of ⁓ companies that measure electromagnetic interference, you can have what’s called screened rooms. Examples of these are radio studios, you know, where they look like they have, in the old days, they had egg boxes on the wall or they had foam that was in that shape. So that
deadens the electromagnetic ⁓ noise around you. So you can get these. So they’re big enough. I know in France I’ve stood in one that was big enough to put a car in. ⁓ And the reason for that is when they’re measuring devices that are on airplanes, for instance, what they don’t want is for those particular ⁓ mechanical or ⁓ electrical devices to be interfered by other devices. So again, thinking back.
to the old days, any of you that used to have your big capacitive ⁓ TVs, you know, those great big chunky things, if you went near it with a hairdryer, it would have funny lines on it. And that was that idea that the electromagnetic interference. So we have to have ways of measuring, but that is on a much bigger scale. You know, those are measured much higher Gauss or Tesla levels, which are measures of magnetism. And they are able to
measure and identify singular frequencies, but we don’t have that in our human or our horse. David and I have spoken about the fact that we could put a horse in one of these systems and measure the electromagnetic frequency of the horse ⁓ because there was a little while back, were things, probably is going around the internet still, but you know, on Facebook, was this idea that our
heart rate and our horse’s heart rate actually sync together because of these electromagnetic waves and there were pictures of waves going between the horse and the human and that was related to some sort of behavioral expression in the horses or stress or know, up regulation of the sympathetic nervous system or alternatively down regulation, so relaxation and switching to the parasympathetic nervous system. But the only way you’d be able to even
measure it would be to put a horse into one of these screened rooms. But even so, there’s no suggestion that that could be measured. So if we go back to science, what does the scientific evidence say? Well, mainstream medical and veterinary science does not recognize bio resonance as an evidence-based treatment. There are some studies that talk about some of the devices having an effect, but
usually it’s very small sample sizes, poor methodology, there is no blinded measure or there is no control group or sham group and these studies have just occurred singularly, there’s no replication of them. So based on the fact that there aren’t any strong research trials, there are no systematic reviews or meta
analyses, there are some narrative reviews, but there’s no reliable evidence to suggest that bioresonants can diagnose or treat disease in humans or animals beyond that placebo or general relaxation effects. When we look at some of the ⁓ regulatory statements around them, I did find that the
advertising standards authority in the UK have produced some guidance and advice on bio resonance. They cautioned that bio resonance treatment claims are not substantiated ⁓ and health claims made are problematic because there’s no rigorous evidence to back them. ⁓ And often the devices that make medical or diagnostic claims do not comply with the regulations and they have actually closed down some of the marketing.
on some of the devices that are advertised in the UK. I also found that in ⁓ Australia, the Therapeutic Goods Administration has taken action against advertising of bio-resonance devices, especially when misleading therapeutic or diagnostic claims are made. They have identified, and I’m reading from their statement, that bio-resonance devices are often promoted improperly.
because they include diagnosing disease or altering serious conditions. So yeah, in terms of our sort of, legislator bodies that cover animals, ⁓ there’s quite a lot to do with complimentary medicine. ⁓ and we have to be careful in the UK because obviously if you’re not a vet, you’re not allowed to diagnose. So you can’t say that
these devices will treat certain conditions if they haven’t been diagnosed by a vet. So that sort of opens up the status of using some of these devices or the marketing to be considered pseudoscientific and also questionable by medical and veterinary regulatory bodies. To be honest, they do tend to be safe. They’re low risk because they’re non-invasive.
There are some minor side effects to some of them, certainly if they’re battery operated and they use ⁓ low level, low intensity ⁓ electrical currents across the skin because some people have reported damage to the skin. The issue that I have with them is the cost. say one of the issues I have with them is the cost because if people are spending lots of money on the devices saying that they work or telling people to spend money on them.
You know, money is short supply and it would be better to spend your money on veterinary diagnosis because if you’re not getting the vet out, it might actually delay evidence-based diagnosis or effective treatment. So we do have to caution against that. So whilst I’ve been talking about bioresonance and pseudoscience, there are some legitimate areas where there is
some research regarding electromagnetic fields and those are pulsed electromagnetic fields. So we have got strong evidence that actually electromagnetic therapy, pulsed electromagnetic therapy, PEMF or PEMF does have an effect on healing and bone growth. So, you know, we have sort of some evidence to support that and that’s actually different. You can measure the output of the PEMF devices
using a gauss-homometer and they are given out at a set frequency and a set intensity, although some of the studies that we have at the moment aren’t supportive. One particular study on PEMF didn’t have blinded measure and I have reviewed that in the past so you can look back at the PEMF. Also we have ⁓ laser, so low-level laser therapy, LLLT, photobiomodulation,
And we have evidence for wound healing, for pain reduction, and for instance, on suspense trees and horses and back pain in horses. So there is some support for that. So that’s different from this bio resonance that I’m talking about. Although some marketers are using bio resonance in their language when they’re talking about PEMF and photobiomodulation. So you have to sort of read through that.
And then not in my field, though, there is transcranial electromagnetic stimulation, which uses strong magnetic fields to modulate neural activity. So certainly outside my scope of practice. But there is some suggestion that there is some legitimate claim for use in areas such as depression and neuro rehabilitation from that.
But there are no peer-reviewed veterinary studies showing objective improvements attributable to the bio resonance ⁓ and any perceived benefits for bio resonance devices currently sit in the realm of the effects being due to placebo for the handler, but also maybe because of the relaxation, the gentle handling and the warmth provided by some of these
devices, but overall it is because of owner expectation effects. Now, I am not against running a study if we could create a ⁓ device that was a sham device and we used it on chronic conditions. And at the time of use, the owner was fully aware that they had either a sham device or an, I’m not going to say an active device, but a device
as per the business that is selling them. I would be happy to run that study. Well, obviously it would cost to run it, but I think we could do it relatively inexpensively because the devices aren’t thousands and thousands of pounds like the high intensity PEMF devices or radio frequency devices. So, I am always open to studying these things.
But at the moment, there is nothing to support this idea of bio-resonance devices changing pain levels, relaxing muscles, changing energy flow or supporting recovery after training. yeah, that’s sort of, I should say it’s my position statement. Currently I’m skeptical about bio-resonance. I wish it were true. It would be absolutely amazing.
but that’s the state of the evidence at the moment. So thank you very much for listening. And if you do want to discuss it further, I’m totally open to that. ⁓ And as I said, if anybody was willing to help me, support me, set up a trial where we could measure the effect of these devices, I would be happy to do so too.
