Meet a Helfgott Researcher: Agatha Colbert, MD

Part of the fun of working at the Helfgott Research Institute is being able to hang out with and learn from all of the talented scientists who spend their days trying to unravel the mysteries of natural medicine. One of these scientists, Agatha Colbert, MD, is directing a program of research at Helfgott that focuses on electromagnetic fields and how they influence the body to heal itself.

Dr. Colbert completed her medical training at the University of the West Indies, her specialty training in Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation at Ohio State University, and her NIH post doctoral research fellowship at the Oregon Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine. Her interest in electromagnetic fields began when she studied acupuncture with Kiiko Matsumoto in Boston in the mid 1990s. During her training, she became acquainted with magnetic therapy researchers, and heard about a new magnetic mattress pad that she thought might be good for fibromyalgia patients.

Because it was a relatively untested practice, Dr. Colbert decided to conduct a small clinical trial to see if the mattress pad would work for these patients. She got funding from a magnet manufacturer, recruited 25 people with fibromyalgia, and found that there were some small improvements in sleep and pain. In the meantime, Dr. Colbert was using magnets on acupuncture points in her practice for pediatric rehabilitation patients, was seeing results, and wanted to know why. The convergence of these events got her hooked on research, and when she moved to Portland, Oregon she quickly obtained a post-doctoral position at the Oregon Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine at the Kaiser Permanente Center for Health Research.

Since then, Dr. Colbert’s research has expanded to include a wide range of scholarly pursuits. As a post-doctoral fellow, she studied skin impedance (impedance is defined as the opposition to the flow of current in a circuit) at acupuncture points as a potential biomarker for acupuncture. This project expanded, and Dr. Colbert and her team recently obtained NIH funding to develop an instrument that will measure skin impedance at multiple acupuncture points simultaneously. Dr. Colbert hopes to use this instrument to test the theory that acupuncture points are linked by connective pathways, or meridians. She hypothesizes that these connections are electrical in nature and will test this theory by placing electrodes on meridians, then stimulating a theoretically related acupuncture point to see if changes in impedance occur that are unique to the point being stimulated.

Dr. Colbert is also the principal investigator on another NIH-funded study on the effects of magnet therapy for carpal tunnel syndrome. This is a dose-ranging study to determine which strength magnet is likely to give a therapeutic benefit. This study is still recruiting for participants, and is expected to reach target enrollment in late September of this year. Additionally, Dr. Colbert has produced a number of literature reviews, including a joint paper with Harvard researcher Andrew Ahn, MD, that reviewed the literature on electrical properties of acupuncture points, and a paper on the use of magnets on acupuncture points.

As if this doesn’t keep her busy enough, Dr. Colbert is also working on establishing a psychophysiology lab at the Helfgott Research Institute. Her goal is to have a fully equipped lab to use to initiate studies of autonomic nervous system changes associated with giving and receiving CAM interventions including acupuncture, magnet therapy, and Reiki.