I was greeted by Rolando Bravo Vargas, a middle-aged man with cheerful eyes and a self-assured but non-prepossessing demeanor. He led me up a flight of stairs to a modest-sized room that serves as his office, waiting area and examination/treatment facility.

Dr. Bravo is a psychologist by training, but for several years now he has practiced a made-in-Mexico alternative therapy known as biomagnetismo médico, or medical biogmagnetism.

He is not alone. Ask for an estimate of the number of biomagnetism practitioners in Mexico and you´ll often hear the number 1,000. Just how many patients are being treated by all these biomagnetic healers is hard to know for sure, but there´s little doubt that the number has skyrocketed since the turn of the century. "They´re lining up," Dr. Bravo said.

By way of explaining his discipline, Dr. Bravo patted his examining table and invited me to lie down. The table was roomier than what you usually find in a conventional physician´s poke-and-nod chamber, and considerably more comfortable.

Along one edge were several short stacks of well-worn, puck-sized magnetized disks, looking for all the world like weight plates for a leprechaun´s barbell. These are Dr. Bravo´s tools of the trade, the power source he says can cure pretty much any disease, including cancer, AIDS and arthritis.

"We use no medicine but these," he said, pointing to the low to medium-intensity magnets.

But for diagnosis - determining what needs to be treated - Dr. Bravo left the magnets aside. Instead, he took both my ankles, raised them a half a foot or so above table-level, and told me he was going to mention the names of some internal organs.

"If one has any pathology, your leg is going to contract," he said.

He did as promised, firmly voicing, without barking, the leadoff organ: "Capsula renal!"

Bingo. The glands above my kidneys must have been responding negatively. "Your leg contracted," Dr. Bravo said. "If I pull on your legs they´re not even."

The reaction was the same with the next mentioned organ, the bladder. On a roll now, Dr. Bravo called out the names of several more members of the urinary tracts, like a doorman announcing the arrival of ball guests. "Ureter!" Pause. "Urethra!" Pause "Kidneys!"

"You have a urinary infection," he pronounced. "That´s why you feel discomfort in your kidney area." (This wasn´t a shot in the dark; I had mentioned the discomfort earlier).

This part of the procedure is not biomagnetism per se, but a related field called bioenergetics. "I could have done the diagnosis with magnets, but it would have taken much longer," Dr. Bravo said. "What I do instead is ask your body what´s wrong with it."

Here I glanced though the Venetian blinds at the traffic on Avenida Adolfo López Mateos below, and began to think about the Starbucks down the street. I also wondered how best to translate "You´re pulling my leg" so that the double meaning would come through.

Dr. Bravo sensed the vibe and smiled patiently. "Magnets are energy, and so is the voice," he explained. "The information reaches the cerebral cortex and the organs respond via the nervous system."

He placed a negatively charged magnet between me and the bed surface behind one kidney. My leg remained contracted, I was told. "When I place the other, positive magnet on the other side, your legs return to normal," he said. "That means the magnets are working on the problem."

He positioned more magnet pairs over other complaining organs, and said they´d stay put for about 20 minutes. Anticipating my next question, he added, "It takes more than one session to get rid of the infection. This isn´t magic."

NO PAIN, NO CANE

Some months earlier, another man had relaxed on the same table. An economist who lives nearby in Satélite, he had come down with an infection after heart surgery, causing painful ulcerations in the ankles. The infection was brought under control, but not the sores. He had to walk with a cane, and undergo excruciating daily washing procedures.

After 12 months, six specialists, countless treatments and even more medications, he sought out Dr. Bravo. "I had read up on biomagnetism so it didn´t seem as strange to me as it might have," said the economist, who asked that his name not be used. "There was improvement after one week, which made it easier for me to stay with the treatment. In six months, the sores were gone completely." No pain, no cane.

How do magnets cure? Biomagnetism advocates point to several theories more or less emblematic of their discipline. One is the conviction that almost every disease is caused by microorganisms - bacteria, viruses, fungi and parasites. According to Bravo, waves of magnetic energy, strategically directed, can kill microbes by altering their DNA.

But there´s more to it than that. The bugs thrive when the body´s alkaline-acid ratio (pH) is askew, or in areas where the north-south magnetic polarity between two "energy points" in the body is out of balance. Much as in acupuncture theory, biomagnetism researchers have identified about 250 of these points where targeted magnetic waves can correct pH and polarity problems.

As with most alternative approaches, biomagnetism stresses treatment of the underlying condition, not its symptoms. So it´s not as simple as placing magnets wherever it hurts.

"If you have stomach pain, putting them on your stomach may not heal," Dr. Bravo says. "Maybe your stomach hurts because you have hepatitis, which involves the liver, not the stomach."

The economist can vouch for that. "He put magnets in lots of places, but never on my ankles where the sores were," he said.

A QUESTION OF RESULTS

Not surprisingly, few conventional physicians or medical researchers offer much in the way of endorsement for a modality that relies on magnetic energy to cure illnesses diagnosed by talking to organs.

"There is no scientific basis to conclude that small, static magnets can relieve pain or influence the course of any disease," says Stephen Barrett, M.D., who examines what the medical literature has to say about alternative therapies and posts the results on a site called Quackwatch. "In fact, many of today´s products produce no significant magnetic field at or beneath the skin´s surface."

Dr. Bravo shrugs off the skepticism, calmly recognizing that "they don´t believe us." Actually, he doesn´t disagree with the criticism of the magnetic wristbands, belts and other gadgets sold as healing devices. "They have nothing to do with what we practice," he said.

More to the point, biomagnetism is an entirely new practice that doesn´t identify itself with the "magnotherapy" and other magnetic healing approaches that the world has known since the ancient Egyptians.

Dr. Bravo´s practice is based on research first published in 1988 by Isaac Goiz Durán, a Mexican surgeon who still serves as the discipline´s guiding light.

Training under a program directed by Dr. Goiz is required to be recognized as a legitimate biomagnetic healer. The University of Chapingo in Texcoco, State of Mexico, the nation´s alternative medicine epicenter, has such a program. There is also a Centro de Investigación de Biomagnetismo Médico on Insurgentes Sur in Mexico City (Tel: 5591-1000), which might be a good place to start looking if you´re considering giving magnets a try.

Alternative therapies will continue to exist in the face of the official scorn that many (with exceptions such as acupuncture and some herbs) receive from the medical establishment as long as those who use them perceive results.

Whether those results can be attributed to a placebo effect - that is, feeling better because you were convinced going in that you would feel better - or from the effectiveness of the alternative treatment itself is a distinction without a difference to most people.

In the case of biomagnetic medicine in Mexico, more and more people are clearly finding something worthwhile in it. "I´m an economist and what matters to me is results, independent of whatever you may think of the theory," said our friend from Satélite. "In my case, the results were clear. And to me, that´s a blessing."

Kellyg@prodigy.net.mx