November 2020

FOE Diabetes Research Center scientists from the University of Iowa have discovered a safe new way to manage blood sugar non-invasively. Exposing diabetic mice to a combination of static electric and magnetic fields for a few hours per day normalizes two major hallmarks of type 2 diabetes, namely reducing blood glucose levels and preventing insulin resistance. These new findings were published Oct. 6 in Cell Metabolism.

The use of electromagnetic fields is ubiquitous in modern society. Telecommunications, navigation and mobile devices all rely on electromagnetism to function. Medicine has also harnessed this fundamental force for diagnostic technologies, most notably MRI. While the diagnostic use of EMFs has rapidly expanded, therapeutic applications remain narrow due to a poor understanding of the biological effects. Drs. Calvin Carter, Sunny Huang, Val Sheffield, E. Dale Abel et al. study the biological effects of electromagnetic fields and have made a groundbreaking discovery. The team demonstrates that a specific set of EMFs, approximately 100x that found at the Earth’s surface, remotely controls blood sugar in animal models of type 2 diabetes. The treatment effects are rapid, reversing insulin resistance within three days and are equally effective when applied for just 7 hours per day during sleep. The treatment was safe, and caused no obvious side effects in these animals studies. The team found that electromagnetic fields activate "magnetic antennae” that are present in mammalian cells, to rebalance the body’s response to insulin. These findings represent a breakthrough in our understanding of how the body responds to EMFs and open a new field of inquiry into the therapeutic use of EMFs for the noninvasive management of type 2 diabetes. Drs. Carter and Huang have formed a startup, Geminii, Inc. to translate this novel discovery into a wearable device for the noninvasive management of diabetes.