Magnetic therapy is the hottest trend among professional athletes. But the idea of using magnetic fields to increase blood circulation in injured tissue and encourage healing by stimulating the nervous system goes back thousands of years to ancient Greece and Egypt. The original Olympic athletes might have used magnets.

And in the same way that today's top athletes influence fashion and language, their eagerness to embrace alternative healing techniques is influencing the public: consumers will spend more than £500 million this year on magnetic pads, bracelets, shoe inserts, back wraps and seat cushions, the magnet companies say.

Pro Bowl linebacker Romanowski began using magnets seven years ago while a member of the 49ers but didn't take them seriously. The team trainer had recommended them, but it was not until Romanowski had off season surgery that he adopted the idea. "I'm a believer, definitely," he says. "The first time I tried them, I got pain relief. It wasn't mental. I know it wasn't mental because I know my body."

Because they know their bodies, it's natural that top athletes would be attracted to alternative therapies, says Dinnie Pearson, a Cranial-Sacral therapist with the Mind/Body Center in King of Prussia, Pa.

"Athletes use a lot of mental imagery, visualizing the correct muscle movements for their sport," Pearson says. "They can use that same powerful tool for healing, contacting injured areas to focus on that tissue to help it in the natural healing process."

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A double-blind study at Baylor College of Medicine, published last November in Archives of Physical and Rehabilitation Medicine (Vallbona 1997), concluded that permanent magnets reduce pain in post-polio patients, and the results were heralded in The New York Times and on Bryant Gumbel's Public Eye. PBS's Health Week and Time magazine recently reported on the growing use of magnets by champion senior golfers and other professional athletes to relieve pain. Magnetic pain relief products are now sold in many golf shops, and ads for them appear in national golf and tennis magazines. Long a significant component of the health industry in Japan and China, magnetic therapy is becoming a more and more visible part of the alternative-medicine boom in the United States and Europe.