We have shown that heat will result in alterations in the body, which will diminish pain and chronic inflammation”, says Thomas Lundeberg, associate professor in physiology at the Karolinska hospital (ref; The Swedish journal Health “Hälsa” nr 9, 2000). A doctor interested in this subject is Dr Rose-Marie Brinkeborn, who has conducted a clinical study on the efficacy of Back on Track braces together with colleagues and physiotherapists.
The study included 120 patients who had experienced pain caused by either arthritis of the knee or tennis elbow for a period of at least 3 months. The subjects were randomly separated into two equal sized groups, and their levels of pain were immediately evaluated on a scale ranging from little pain to considerable pain. One group of patients were required to use the braces for a three week period, then stop using them and revert to their own previous methods of pain management for the next three weeks. Simultaneously, the other half of the patients, who had been instructed to rely on their normal methods of pain management for the first three week period, were now instructed to use the braces for the ensuing three weeks.
The overall results of the study are not yet finalized, but it has been established already that more than half of them had less pain when they were using the braces. Those with tennis elbow often went back to normal, and some of the patients with knee arthritis, who had been living with pain for a long time and were booked for prosthesis surgery, felt so relieved from pain that they could exercise again, and chose to postpone their surgery!
In the daily paper Svenska Dagbladet (January 25th, 2003), Dr Xyao Huishen who worked at the rehabilitation medical clinic at Karolinska hospital expressed: “These braces have no adverse effects if the right size is used”. In a later paper, Massage and Bodycare 1/2004, Dr. Huishen, after gathering additional knowledge of the products, states: “In principle, besides drugs, there is nothing else that offers such reproducible results on patients who have inflammation generated pain.”
An example of how the study subjects evaluated pain on a scale (visual analogue scale). Movement capability was also evaluated in a different diagram. “So far there is no subject who has not had some kind of improvement with these ceramic braces”, says Dr Brinkeborn to the journal Allas early on in the study.