Does the nano-technology software instructions programmed into the 
LifeWave Energy Patches really work on the human body? Do the LifeWave 
Patches really increase energy levels and improve stamina for athletes
the way it says it does at http://www.lifewave.com/contactplus

There was apparently a study at Morehouse College that found the patch
to be more effective than a placebo. Note, however, that only 44
individuals participated in this study:

http://www.jaredstory.com/energy_morehouse-study.html

There are a lot of things wrong with Lifewave.  Lets make a list.

1. It's a multi level marketing scheme.  While this doesn't have any
direct correlation to the efficacy of the product, it gives one a good
reason for skepticism.  In fact, depending on your views on MLM, this
may be a reason to reject the product outright.

2. The various claims make no sense.

a. "The LifeWave Technology patches use the electronic and magnetic
features of the body like a cellular radio to transmit information
from the patches into the body to enhance the production of energy and
stamina. This technological discovery applies research from many
fields of science."

What does electricity and magnetism have to do with the production of
energy?  These are chemical processes, so, nothing.  Magnetism claims
have been visited in studying therepeudic uses of weak magnets, and
are pretty shallow.  Your body just isn't magnetic.

b. Claims to use nanotech to achieve this end.  Nanotech is still
largely at an experimental level, and, to the best of my knowledge,
has only been able to build simple molecular structures thusfar.  Has
Lifewave circumvented standard scientific literature and made
leaps-and-bounds advances in nanotech?  Doubtful.

c. All the claims include "it is believed."  This is pretty
transparent.  A lot of things that are presented here simply make no
sense, and have no justification.

3. As a supplement, the product is subject to no oversite by the FDA
or FTC.  Therefor, there's no guarantee that what they claim to be in
the product is actually in the product.

4. There's only one actual study linked on the site, that involves 44
atheletes in 3 groups.  This is not sufficient study.  All of the
other 'scientific' sources is written by people from Lifewave.

That said, I have a few in the mail that I'll test personally.  I'll
try to remember to post my results here.

In my experience, the answer to your question is "No." However, it is
impossible for me to say whether or not the patches will work for any
other individual. I have had the opportunity to try the patches myself
and experienced no noticable change in energy levels.

I must also say that I tend to agree with jonwell's comments. The
company's "explanations" of how the product works are misleading at
best.

As they say, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

I know for a FACT that they work. I have been doing tests at the local
Nautilus Fitness Center and they are reporting some excellent results.
Improvement at all levels. I'll be happy to post some testimonials.
This is a brand new science so I understand the skeptics out there. I
was one too til I tried 'em.
The inventor, David Schmidt tore up an 8 million dollar contract with
GNC in order to market them thru network marketing which is an
excellent way to market a product like this. What's more there will be
other patches introduced soon for other purposes. Like a patch for
sleeping, a non-surgical face lift, for building muscle mass and more.

I don't care how many subjects were used in their studies.  These
patches DO WORK.  How else can you explain doing a 185 lb. bench press
8 times and then 5 minutes later with the patch doing it 15 times?

All of you skeptics out their should do some more research before
commenting.  I realize its hard to believe and how to explain but the
bottom line is it does work!!!

It MIGHT really work!  There is a simple way to know if it does.  TRY IT.

That's exactly what a  writer for Esquire Magazine did, as she
describes in the November 2004 Esquire.  Susan Casey wrote, "But do
they work? I wore the patches for a month. During the first week, I
put them on my wrists and felt nothing but irritation. Plus, they kept
falling off. Then I switched to the chest placement and had some of my
best workouts in recent memory. I also wore them throughout a
physically demanding overseas trip and could absolutely feel a steady
increase in energy. (Bonus: They seemed to help overcome a bad case of
jet lag exacerbated by no sleep, plenty of stress, and copious
alcohol.)

In short, I'm all for the patches." 

Based on that, and that alone, I bought some.  Tried them for a week
for when I play tennis.  Energy enhanced?  Some, but nothing
spectacular.  So I whined a little bit to LifeWave.  A distributor
suggested I wear them for four days straight rather every ohter day. 
On the third day, my energy level rocketed.  I found I could paly
twice as much tennis without tiring.  The price was that I was sore
the next day, and, alas, it did not improve my technique.

Would I like to know and understand how and why it works?  Yes, but
lacking the knowledge, I will accept the fact that it does work (for
me) and spend more time doing what I enjoy.

I personally have been trying the patches for over 2 months and I can
definitely feel the difference when wearing the Lifewave patches. My
son who is 35 and plays on a men's soccer team has more energy for a
game (after a full days work) and a quicker recovery for any injuries.
You can read my testimony and more information at
http://home.hawaii.rr.com/coralisles/lifewave.html

Absolutely!  I cannot believe the increase in natural energy I get
from the patches.  I asked a friend who is a football coach to try
them.  He was naturally skeptical like all the rest of us were but
after trying them he said "wow, how do these things work?  I love
them" He said much more too but for this purpose just sufice it to say
his skepticism vanished when he actually tested them during his
regular workout. Also there are many veterinarians using them on
horses and the same result is recorded.  Now horses do not know
anything about the placibo effect so far as I know!   Try them for
yourself as recommended by the company and see if they work for you. 
We Americans are ususally skeptical of things we don't understand but
we had better get used to products being marketing by network
marketing.  Do you really like to be addressed by voice mail services
or customer service reps who live in another country or would you
rather speak to a live human being when you buy a product?  Direct
marketing is the wave of the future.  Get used to it.

It's a scam. The fact the patches don't work is irrelevant, a plus,
actually, because it's a MLM scam, and a real product would just get
in the way.

Think about it for a minute: the patches basically contain salad
dressing. How does this suddenly become a miniature battery, connected
to a miniature FM radio, broadcasting a special code over teeny-weeny
(ie NANO) antennas to more teeny-weeny antennas and radio receivers
inside your body which is ready to act on the coded signal, despite
the fact that the body does not communicate this way normally (the
body communicates via hormones which is why steroids DO work) and
therefore has no reason to possess such receivers.

But the people buying into this stuff do not care about the bad
science - if it works in practice, who cares if it works in theory?
And they are only too willing to kid themselves that it works in
practice because there are BIG $$$ out there for flogging
distributorships.

As for some of the testimonials:
A) Morehouse College did not conduct the "double blind study". It was
(apparently) conducted by someone in the Phys.Ed. department (the head
trainer). Someone who has no academic credentials to perform such a
study and now acts as a distributor himself. Go to the Morehouse
College website home page, and use their search engine to find
"LifeWave" internally. You will come up dry!
B) NCAA approved - right - the NCAA found that the patches were
useless and therefore had no reason to ban them. Somehow the failure
to ban became approval which one might naively interpret as
endorsement. In fact the NCAA now requires LifeWave to print a
disclaimer indicating that NCAA does NOT endorse LifeWave.
C) Patent Pending - Go to the LifeWave home page and you will read
that they have a patent pending. Further down the page they claim
(erroneously, but these things happen) that the technology IS
patented. In fact (since 1997) patent pending means NOTHING except
that a patent has been applied for (at a cost of $75) - the patent
office makes no assurance of efficacy of the invention.

Yada Yada Yada

The endless testimonials are a mixture of outright lies, wishful
thinking and placebo effect. Ultimately it is impossible to prove they
are effective (because all such proofs are fake) or prove they aren't
(the LifeWave people would claim THOSE proofs are fake) so your best
recourse:
CAVEAT EMPTOR

Wynsten

I just read all the comments and an interesting pattern is evident here.

Those who have tried them all say that they work to some degree or another.

Those who haven't tried them all say it's a scam to one degree or another.

Everyone is of course entitled to their opinion, no question about
that; but whose opinion is more reality based? People who've tried
them or people who haven't but are sure they are right that they can't
work because there's no science to prove it?

Duh.... this is a no brainer.

Look, for all you people who want to argue that they can't work
because there's no science to prove it, just wait a while. Science
needs to catch up to reality.

Here's a real life analogy. As recently as about 30 years ago the top
physicists were in an embarassing position because according to their
"laws" and theoretical calculations, bumblebees shouldn't be able to
fly.

It seems their body mass was too large in proportion to their wing
surface area to be able to be lifted. So for years it was a curious
anomoly that bees could fly when the calculations said it was
impossible.

When high speed cameras were invented the mystery became clear. It was
always assumed by these top scientists that bees flapped thier wings
up and down like birds and other insects but when the film was
inspected frame by frame it was revealed that the bees have an
entirely different take on the flying thing.

The bees rotate their wings very rapidly in a backwards circular
motion (think of how you swim doing the backstroke)which has the
effect of scooping air from their sides and moving it out in front of
themselves thus giving a temporary increase in boyancy (that
compensates for their lack of wing surface area) to a small area in
front that they then scoot onto.

No one argued that bees couldn't fly just because there was no science
behind it. Obviously they flew just fine.

It's the same thing with the patches albeit a bit more indistinct. 

They work, alright. Science will have to invent some new equipment
that can measure the "how" of it though before certain people will
feel comfortable enough to believe it.

Here's my prediction on what it's going to come to: the patches
intercede with the body's processing of light. Current science that
sees the body as a strictly biiochemical machine will have to come to
grips with the fact that there are many other more subtle interactions
with light and vibration that are just as important to the bopdy's
functioning as the ones taking place on the biochemical level.

In the meantime, personal bests and world records are being surpassed
on a monthly basis. People are feeling younger and having more energy
to enjoy their lives. Chronic aches and pains are going away and
surplus pounds are being shed.

There are a few people out there who were naysayers like some of the
folks here. They tried the patches to prove that there was no effect
and ended up changing their stripes when they felt something and had
more energy.

Imagine that.

The best way to ascertain the products' value is to simply try it
yourself.  I'd be very surprised if they didn't come with at least a
30-day money back guarantee.  Like most alternative wellness products,
there are many people who say they work; others say they don't.

However, there seems to be a wrinkle that needs ironing that has
NOTHING to do with the quality of the product.  Apparently there's
talk that both Morehouse and Troy State University have disavowed the
alleged clinical trials.

Although it's a dubious source, Worldwide Scam Network claims that
Troy State University's Senior Vice Chancellor has notified them to
cease and desist claiming that TSU ever did any such studies. 
Evidently the coach who conducted the study wasn't authorized to do so
on behalf of TSU.  Morehead's response was allegedly the same.

This needs to be viewed in context:  this has nothing to do with
whether or not this product will do what it says it will do.  It does,
however, point to an overzealous desire to have the product validated.
 Those studies should never have been publicized on their website
unless they were completely valid.

Lastly, the comments about MLM show an obvious (and illogical) bias on
the part of the commenter.  MLM isn't on trial:  it's a proven
distribution/marketing model that allows companies to put a quality
product in the marketplace without having to spend millions in
pre-sales advertising.

In other words, the only time an MLM company has to pay for
advertising is AFTER a sale is made.  That's a huge advantage for
companies who have good products but don't have millions of dollars to
blow on TV, magazine or billboard advertising.

With that said, yes, there are poor products in the MLM industry.  But
there are tons of poor products on the retail shelves at your local
superstore, too, so what's your point?

Judging a product by its marketing model is like criticizing a doctor
because of what kind of car he drives.  It's irrelevant to the
discussion about whether the product will do what it says it will.

Tony Rush

Does any advocate here really know what the placebo effect is?  I can
guarantee that this product produces real results.  Your energy will
go up, especially after you read all of the testimonials.  The stupid
part is that Scotch's "Magic Tape" has the same effect, and it's
easier to acquire and more economical!  It works best when you stick
it to your chin.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Placebo_effect