Semi-precious stones and their effects on human health

[river-wind]

I used to think that there was absolutly nothing to crystals, gems, etc. Until one guy I went to college with showed me the results to an experiment he did in Highschool under the direction of a very skeptical professor.

The back story was this:
The guy wanted to prove that gemsstones have a noticable effect on health (and certain other stones can have a negative effect). His teacher said basically that he could do that experiment as his senior thesis if he wanted to, but if he failed to show any positive results, then he would have to do another experiment, or fail.
So the experiment goes ahead, using generic pea plants.
The control group grows normally.
The "healing gems" plants have a 40% average increase in growth (length of longest plant section)
The "hurting stones" plants have a 60% reduction in growth (length).

I looked over the paper, and it seemed valid (no noticable problems in the stat analysis or the procedure as described. His teacher ended up giving him an A.

Now, I haven't veryfied his data; he could have rigged the whole experiment, or he could have even made the whole thing up and just shown me a bogus paper.
But for now, the whole "crystals" thing is solidly in my "I have no f'ing clue" catagory.

 

[Gravity]

Every material has it's own charge or decharge, this makes the material unique. It's a magnetical field. Compare stone with a magnet and you wil find a great difference in charge. Every living being has also it's own magnetic field (aura) and are unique. Some magnetical fields have their effects on living organism.

"Magnetical"?! Heh! Yep, that mysterious invisible magnetic force is usally an excellent thing to pin all kinds of theory's on.

Heres a question: an MRI has several hundred-thousand times the magnetic force of all the natural magnets on the planet combined . . . .man that must really HEAL all problems instantly? Or it should instantly kill you!

Snake oil vendors who claim that magnetics affect blood flow also have not thought about the simple MRI comparison, if a little 50 gauss magnet on your wrist changes blood flow at all . . . being in a 1,000,000 gauss magnetic field should make you explode!

Placebo effect, it is real - if you believe in something - it WILL make you feel better than if you don't have anything. Of course, REAL medicine will usually work even better.

 

[Saith]

Even if our blood did respond to it, it still wouldn't make any sense. I would imagine that if you put a magnetic ring around a tube that had a magnetic fluid running thru it, that the fluid would slow down if anything.

 

[Kumar]

Could well be the placebo effect.

If homeopathic effect proved, then it can be same. Can radiations passing through these stones or radiation from of stones effect?

Btw, is there any differance in effect of naturally occuring & synthetic(similar) stones?

 

[Gravity]

Homeopathic "effect'' is the same as the placebo effect. Radiations of the right types can indeed alter a material they encounter, though probably not in some magical "the stone is now a healing-ray-emitting rock" way. A stone which was emitting radiation certainly could effect you, probably not in any ways that you would like (don't keep U-235 pebbles in your pockets next to your personal pebbles . . . )

The main difference between say a natural ruby and a synthetic ruby is that the synthetic ruby is even more perfectly *ruby*, no contamination of other materials. Though that ''contamination'', and the "imperfections" in a natural stone are usually part of its beauty.

But as far as magical healing-ray power I would assume a more pure stone would be even more powerful right? So synthetics should . . . like . . . harmonize and resonate more with your inner cycles and vibrations . . . man . . .