Power Balance ‘Energy Bracelets’ – Success or Scam?

Cristiano Ronaldo, LeBron James - what have the world's biggest sports stars got in common? An 'energy-emitting' bracelet that has sportsmen and sceptics all aflutter.

By Emmet Purcell

Not since Lance Armstrong’s Livestrong bracelets have wrist accessories caused such a stir among celebrities and sports star alike. Although to be fair, Lance’s creations were fundraising bracelets that never purported to provide any scientific gain, unlike the Power Balance silicone wristbands, which currently adorn the wrists of sports stars Cristiano Ronaldo, Darren Bent, David Beckham, LeBron James and even celebrities such as Gerard Butler and Robert De Niro. F1 driver Rubens Barrichello can’t shut up about it either.

So just what can you expect for your £29.99 accessory, or is the bracelet nothing more than a 2010 pet rock?

The Power Balance energy bracelet is essentially a stretchy silicone band worn around the wrist, which features a hologram attached to it. Its promise? According to Power Balance’s promotional material, the accessory will ‘dramatically improve your balance, strength and flexibility by as much as five times’ by tapping into your bodies’ ‘energy field’ and determining what the optimum frequency should be.

Apparently when the hologram, printed on mylar,comes in contact with your body’s energy field, 'it begins to resonate in accordance with each individual’s biological, creating a harmonic loop that optimises your energy field and maintains maximum energy flow while clearing the pathways so the electro-chemical exchange functions like the well-tuned generator it was meant to be.' Wait, what?

According to Steven Nissen, head of cardiology at the Cleveland Clinic, the bracelet is “utter nonsense”. Speaking to Busines Week a few days ago, he claims that the current phenomenon is gaining strength through the placebo effect, not through the authenticity of the bracelet wearer’s claims. “Unfortunately, we’ve not done a good job as a society in keeping people from selling snake oil."

"If you come in to see me as a patient and tell me that you have a terrible headache, and I give you a placebo sugar pill and tell you that it's going to relieve your headache, there's a 35 to 40 percent chance that it will relieve your headache," Nissen told the magazine in a telephone interview. "That's called the placebo effect. It's very powerful, and that's what allows quackery to exist."

Famous followers

Not that such claims, truthful or otherwise, are affecting the judgement of Power Bracelet devotees. New York Yankees right fielder Nick Swisher states that “If you are tricking your mind, you’re winning half the battle,” and has no reservations if he basically paying for a placebo effect. Sunderland striker and Twitter enthusiast Darren Bent has also recommended the accessory to his 25,000 followers, recently tweeting:

‘Not made many changes for this season but my @PowerBalanceuk1 band is helping the good start. Was wearing it for my first england goal too!’

A week later, the convinced Bent tweeted directly to the company, asking ‘does it make a diff if you wear 1 or 2?’ The company’s founders, brothers Troy and Josh Rodarmel, only set up Power Balance in 2007 yet sold over 2.5m of the accessories in 2009 alone, with the company also launching Power Balance Ireland in the near future. You can email the Dublin-based version of the group here if you’re interested.

Whether or not Power Balance’s claims are dubious or not (and we doubt you’ll find many scientists claiming that the bracelet’s hologram emits ‘electrical frequencies that respond to your body’s natural energy field’), the simple truth is that for many athletes, a notoriously superstitious lot, the power of belief will always trump scientific claims to the contrary. If you think that the Power Balance bracelet helped you score a weekend hat trick, you’ll be less willing to take it off for your next match.

The company may or not be selling an illusion (one Aussie programme decided the latter), yet while its famous adherents grow in stature and visibility, expect to hear the name Power Balance mentioned and thanked in equal measure for years to come.