Using magnets as blood thinners

CNET : Currently the only method for thinning blood, and thus reducing the risk of heart attacks and strokes, is through drugs such as aspirin. But physicists at Temple University in Philadelphia have been working on a procedure that uses magnets. Rongjia Tao and coworkers were able to use a magnetic field of 1.3 tesla (roughly equivalent to what is used in magnetic resonance imaging) to polarize red blood cells, which contain iron, thereby causing those cells to link together in short, streamlined chains, writes Elizabeth Armstrong Moore for CNET. The blood then flowed more smoothly through the blood vessels, and the friction along the walls was reduced. The researchers found that after just 1–12 minutes of exposure to the magnetic field via a 1000-pound magnet, blood viscosity decreased by 20–30% for several hours. Eventually, blood viscosity returned to previous levels. Unlike the ionizing radiation found in CT scans, Tao’s method is not expected to have any harmful biological effects. The study is to be published in the journal Physical Review E.