Healing Jewellery

Both men and women have adorned themselves with jewellery in its many forms for thousands of years. The earliest known human jewellery has recently been discovered in a Blombos cave on the Indian Ocean shoreline in South Africa. About 75,000 year ago, someone living in the cave bored holes in a set of shells and strung them as beads. These newly found beads are more than 30,000 years older than any other known human jewellery. The previously oldest known human ornaments are perforated teeth and eggshell beads from Bulgaria and Turkey, aged approximately 42,000 years ago, and ostrich shell beads from Kenya approximately 40,000 years ago.

Beads are used in many traditional societies to provide information on the age, social class and ethnic group a person belongs to. In ancient Greece, beads shaped as natural forms like shells, flowers and beetles were made on a large scale. The Greeks were making multi-coloured jewellery and using emeralds, garnets, amethysts and pearls by 300 BC.

As early as 3000 BC gold was used to make magnificent bracelets, pendants, necklaces, rings, armlets, earrings, diadems, head ornaments, pectoral ornaments and collars, in ancient Egypt, the land of the Pharaohs. Gold was their favourite metal for jewellery because it was rare, did not tarnish and was malleable.

In today's world, women, and men to a lesser extent, want jewellery that is artistic, individual in design and craftsmanship, and of a material that is non-toxic. They want the jewellery to be safe and not cause allergenic responses to the wearer or to pose health hazards to the people involved in the manufacturing process. Those who are environmentally-aware want jewellery that is produced by manufacturing processes that are environmentally friendly and cause little pollution.

Gold is usually alloyed in jewellery to give it more strength. Other metals may be toxic or create allergenic responses. Cadmium and nickel are often found in jewellery and both are toxic. Although gold is not thought to have a negative environmental impact by itself, the extraction of gold ie gold mining can have very negative environmental consequences.

Nickel is a metallic element and in its pure state, is a hard silvery white metal. Nickel has properties that allow it to be combined with other metals to form mixtures called alloys. It is used in alloys to increase ht strength and hardness as well as to make the alloy resistant to corrosion and heat. The most common adverse health effect associated with wearing jewellery that contains nickel is a type of skin irritation called allergic contact dermatitis. Sweat from the skin acts as a corrosive to metals, which allows nickel in jewellery to be in direct contact with the skin. Once a person develops an allergic reaction to nickel it usually lasts their lifetime. Nickel is used with other metals to make earrings, body rings or studs, watches, rings and bracelets. It may also be present in white and yellow gold jewellery in varying proportions, including wedding rings.

Magnetic jewellery can relieve the pain of many conditions. Conventional painkillers such as paracetamol, codeine, and anti-inflammatory medications reduce pain by blocking the pain message from the site to the brain. They do not treat the cause of the pain, which is inflammation around the site, they only treat the symptom temporarily. Magnets treat the cause of the problem. They reduce the inflammation at the site. Research by the Arthritis Research Campaign and the University of Exeter showed that wearing a magnetic device helps to reduce pain in people with hip and knee osteoarthritis.

The therapeutic value of magnets is not new. Magnets have occupied a central role within Chinese medicine for over 2,000 years. Magnetic wave therapy has its roots in the oriental understanding of health according to Chi.

Crystals and crystal jewellery have long been recognised for their healing benefits. Crystal healing in some form has been practiced by almost every society on earth, many of which had deeply rooted belief systems that supported holistic ideas and methods. The beauty of power of crystals and other stones have always been prized for their beauty and their healing and spiritual properties.

Every crystal and stone (eg rose quartz, fluorite, hematite, amethyst) has its own particular healing properties, and they have been incorporated into all kinds of jewellery. Healing stones have the ability to absorb and balance the energy in the body's charkas. They cannot directly cure diseases but they can provide spiritual guidance to shine a light in the right direction so that a person can take steps towards a cure.