Willis Judd Australia Magnetic Therapy Titanium Bracelets ad: Tingling in your hands… what’s really going on?

I sat in my pickup truck and watched my best friend's funeral procession ride past me. 42 motorcycles. I should have been the second one back. I drove the F-150 instead. And what happened three weeks after that funeral is the only reason I'm writing this. Because if Ray hadn't died - if Frank hadn't been at that wake - I'd still be sitting on my back porch listening to other men ride past my house on Sunday mornings. I want to say something to every man my age who's quietly given up on something he loved. Because I almost did. — I bought my first Harley in 1991. A Sportster. Used. Broke down on me twice the first month. I didn't care. I rode it to work every day from April to October for fourteen years. I rode to the Black Hills every August. 24 years in a row. Ray and me and four other guys - we'd leave from the diner at 5am on the second Saturday and we'd be in Sturgis by Tuesday afternoon. 24 years. That's not a hobby. That's who I was. — I ran a small machine shop. Retired four years ago. The day after I retired, I bought a 2018 Road King. Black on black. The bike I'd been promising myself for 30 years. I rode it home from the dealership and pulled into the driveway and my wife came out and said "well there he is." She meant it nicely. I knew what she meant. The plan was simple. Retire. Ride. Take the grandkids out on Saturdays when they got old enough. Do the Black Hills run with Ray every summer until one of us couldn't. That was the plan. — The first time I noticed something was wrong, I was tightening a fitting on a hose in my garage. Saturday morning. October. I'd just come back from a 90-minute ride. I picked up a 1/2 inch wrench and my right hand wouldn't close around it. Like a switch had flipped. I just stood there in the garage looking at my own hand like it belonged to somebody else. I shook it out. Ran some hot water over it. It loosened up after about 20 minutes. I told myself it was just a long ride. Cold morning. I was 58. These things happen. — But it kept happening. It happened the next Saturday. Then the Saturday after that. Then it started happening on weekday mornings before I'd even ridden anywhere. I'd wake up at 6am and lie in bed flexing my right hand under the covers trying to make the joints work. The base of my thumb felt like it was full of broken glass. I started pre-heating my coffee mug in the microwave. Not the coffee - the mug. So when I picked it up the warmth would loosen the joint enough to grip it. I never told anyone I was doing that. It felt like an old man thing to do. I was 59. — By the next spring it was bad. I'd grip the handlebars at 7am for the morning ride and 20 minutes in my right hand would start cramping around the throttle. I'd shift my position. Stretch the fingers out at red lights. Try to ride one-handed for stretches to give it a break. The boys started noticing. Ray pulled up next to me at a gas station outside Mansfield and said: "you alright over there?" I said yeah. Just a cramp. He looked at me for a long second. He didn't say anything else. But I knew he knew. — I went to my GP. He looked at my hand and said the words I'd been dreading. "Looks like CMC joint arthritis. Base of the thumb. Pretty common in guys who use their hands for a living." He prescribed Meloxicam. I took it for six months. It helped a little. It also gave me an ulcer. I had to stop. — Then I started the parade. Don't laugh. You probably did the same parade. I tried over-the-counter ibuprofen. Three a day. Stomach turned to acid in two weeks. I tried a wrist brace from CVS. Felt better wearing it but I couldn't ride with it on - couldn't get good throttle control. And when I took it off, the wrist had gotten weaker. So that was a wash. I tried a cortisone shot. The orthopedic guy stuck a needle right into the joint. Hurt like hell. But for about three weeks I felt 25 years old. Then it wore off. He said I could get one more, maybe two, but cortisone breaks down the cartilage long term. He said: "you don't want to be doing these every six weeks." I tried glucosamine and chondroitin. The big bottle from Costco. Took it religiously for four months. Maybe a tiny difference. Hard to say. I tried turmeric capsules because my niece swore by them. Nothing I could feel. I tried CBD oil - both the topical and the gummies. Spent like $180 on a bottle of the topical because my buddy said it was "the real stuff." Nothing. I tried hot wax dips. Compression gloves. A TENS machine I bought off Amazon for $89. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. — I'd seen the copper bracelet ads. I'd scrolled past them a hundred times. Every time I saw one I'd say the same thing out loud: "what a load of garbage." Copper bracelets are something women in the 1970s wore. Something my grandma had in a drawer. Snake oil for old people who'd given up. Not me. I was a machinist. I'd worked with metals for 35 years. I knew copper. Copper is for wire and pipe and decorative pots. Copper is not medicine. I would never have bought one. Not in a million years. — By the time I was 61 I was not riding anymore. Not really. I'd take the bike out of the garage on Sundays and ride for 20 minutes around the block to keep the battery up. Then I'd put it back. I missed the Black Hills run that summer. First time in 25 years. I told the guys it was because my wife had a thing. She didn't have a thing. I just couldn't grip the bars for the 18 hours of riding it would take to get there. I cried in the garage that Saturday morning while everyone else left at 5am. I don't tell people that. I haven't told my wife. I'm telling you because I think there's somebody reading this who's done the same thing. Sat in your garage on the morning your boys left without you. — I listed the Road King on Marketplace twice. Both times I took it down before anybody messaged me. I couldn't bring myself to sell it. But I couldn't ride it either. So it sat there. Eight thousand miles on a 2018. You don't see that on a bike that belongs to a man who's been riding for 30 years. That bike was a tombstone in my garage. — And then in November Ray died. Heart attack. He was 64. He was on his bike when it happened. Pulled over to the shoulder of Route 30. Made the call to 911 himself. Was gone before the EMTs got there. The boys planned the procession for the funeral. 42 bikes. From the funeral home to the cemetery. 90 minutes through three towns. I was supposed to be second back, behind Ray's son. The night before the funeral I sat in my garage and tried to grip the handlebars of the Road King for 30 seconds. I couldn't. After 15 seconds my right hand was a claw. I drove the F-150 to the funeral. I parked it on the side of the road outside the cemetery and I sat there and I watched 41 bikes ride past me. 41 because mine was the missing one. I cried in that truck. For Ray. For me. For the man I used to be who was dead too - just nobody had buried him yet. — After the service there's a wake at the VFW. I'm standing in the corner with a cup of coffee I can't grip properly. A guy walks up to me. Big guy. Beard. Late 50s. Riding gear under his suit jacket. He sticks out his hand. "Frank Kowalski. I rode with Ray's brother in the 90s." I shake his hand. I notice he has a copper bracelet on his right wrist. I notice it the way you notice things you've been dismissing your whole life. He sees me notice. He says: "you're Mike, right? Ray told me about you. Said you were having hand trouble." I say yeah. He says: "what kind?" I tell him. CMC joint. Base of the thumb. Bone on bone now. He nods. He says: "I'm a hand surgeon. I work out of the orthopedic group on East Main. You should come see me Monday." He hands me a card. I'm thinking great. Another guy who's going to tell me about cortisone or fusion surgery. I almost throw the card away in the parking lot. I don't know why I didn't. — Monday morning I'm sitting in Frank's exam room. He's not in scrubs. He's in jeans and a flannel. He looks at my hand for about two minutes. Pushes on the joint. Has me grip his finger. Watches me try to twist a doorknob he keeps in his desk drawer for testing range of motion. He sits down across from me. He says: "alright. Let me tell you what I'd tell my own brother." He held up one finger. "You have stage 3 CMC arthritis. Bone on bone. 30 years of gripping handlebars and machine tools. The cartilage is gone. It's not coming back." I felt my stomach drop. Then he held up a second finger. "Surgery is an option. I'd do it if I thought it was your best option. But I'm going to tell you something most surgeons won't. For guys like you - riders, guys who use their hands hard - surgery on the CMC joint trades a known pain for an unknown outcome. About 60% of riders I've operated on say they wish they'd waited. The grip strength after surgery is permanently reduced. You wouldn't be back on a Road King doing 18 hour days. Not the same way. So if you're asking me, I'm telling you I'd do it last. Not first." I said okay. Then he held up a third finger. He said: "the next thing I'm going to tell you most doctors won't say. Most doctors won't say it because they can't bill for it and they can't prove it in a study yet. But I've been a hand surgeon for 23 years. And I've watched too many of my patients walk out of here, dismiss my advice, and come back six months later with less pain than I could have given them. So I track what works." He pulled up his sleeve. The copper bracelet on his right wrist. "This is mine," he said. "I've been wearing it for four years. And I tell every single one of my CMC patients about it. Not because I sell it. I don't. Not because I have a study to wave at you. I don't. But because the data I have - my own patients, hundreds of them - is too consistent to ignore." — I just stared at him. He said: "let me tell you what I think is happening. I don't fully know. But here's what I know." He drew a circle on his notepad. "Your CMC joint is inflamed. Chronic, low-grade inflammation. The cartilage is gone. Every time you grip something - handlebars, a wrench, a coffee mug - bone rubs on bone, the inflammation goes up, the joint stiffens, you lose more range of motion, and you grip harder to compensate. Which makes the inflammation worse." He tapped the circle. "Cycle. It feeds itself. That's what you've been living in for four years." He continued. "Your pills. Meloxicam. Ibuprofen. Those work by blocking the chemical signal of inflammation. They don't reduce the inflammation itself. They mute the alarm. They don't put out the fire. And they trash your gut and your kidneys doing it." I thought about my ulcer. "The wrist brace. It immobilizes the joint, which gives the inflammation a chance to drop. But it also makes the muscles around it weaker, so when you take it off, you're worse than before. And you can't ride with it on." I nodded. "The cortisone. Cortisone is a hammer. It crushes inflammation for three weeks. Then it wears off and the joint comes back angrier - and the cortisone itself accelerates cartilage breakdown. I do them. I do them sparingly. They are not a long-term solution." He paused. "The supplements - glucosamine, turmeric, CBD. There's some signal in the literature. Tiny effect. Months to feel it if at all. None of them are doing anything significant for stage 3 CMC." He looked at me. "Everything you've tried addresses one piece of this cycle. Or zero. None of them break it. So the inflammation keeps cycling. The grip keeps weakening. The joint keeps degrading. And four years go by." I sat there. I had nothing to say. Because I'd just heard the first explanation in five years that actually made sense. — I asked the question. "So what does the bracelet do?" He smiled. Like he was waiting for it. He said: "I'll give you the honest answer. Three things are probably happening. Maybe one. Maybe all three. The science isn't settled, and I'm not going to lie to you and pretend it is." He held up one finger. "Trace copper absorption through the skin. Copper is an essential mineral. It's a cofactor in the enzymes that build collagen and reduce inflammation. People with arthritis tend to be low in copper. Wearing pure solid copper against the skin appears to deliver trace amounts trans-dermally. Modest. Real." Two fingers. "Magnetic field interaction with local circulation. The neodymium magnets in a real medical-grade copper bracelet - not the cheap plated stuff - appear to dilate micro-vessels around the joint. More circulation, less inflammation, more debris cleared. There are studies on this. They're not slam-dunk. But they're not nothing." Three fingers. "And honestly - there's probably a placebo effect on top of both of those. And I want you to know I do not care. Because here's the thing every doctor learns and most won't say out loud. Placebo isn't fake. Placebo is your nervous system deciding to dial down a pain signal. That's a real biological event. If a $30 piece of copper convinces your nervous system to release the chronic guarding response in your hand, the cartilage doesn't care why. It just gets a break." I laughed. First time in two months. He said: "I'm a surgeon. I trust what I can cut into. But I also trust 4,000 hand patients telling me the same thing for 23 years. So when I have a guy like you - stage 3, riding, surgery is the wrong first step - I tell you to try this for three months before we talk about anything else." — I said: "but every copper bracelet I've ever seen looks like junk." He said: "they are junk. 95% of them." He opened his desk drawer. He pulled out a small box. He said: "the only one I've found that's worth a damn is this brand. Pure solid copper - most of the ones online are copper-plated zinc and they turn your wrist green in a week and they don't do anything because zinc isn't copper. This one is solid copper through and through. With actual neodymium magnets, not the weak stuff. Premium build that holds up to manual work. Comes with a sizing tool - you can adjust it yourself." He set it on the desk. The brand was called Willis Judd. I'd never heard of it. He said: "wear it 24/7 for three weeks. Don't take it off. Then I want you to take it off for one full day in week four and tell me what happens." I asked why. He said: "because that's how you'll know if it's doing something. The removal test. If the pain comes back when you take it off and goes away when you put it back on, you have your answer. If nothing changes, send it back. They have a 60 day money back guarantee. You're out the time it takes to mail it." I ordered it from his office on my phone. — Week one. Honestly? Not much. I kept waiting to feel something. I don't know what I was expecting. A tingle. A hum. Nothing. Maybe my hand felt slightly looser in the morning. Maybe I was imagining it. I almost took it off twice. But Frank's voice was in my head. Three weeks. Don't judge it. So I kept it on. — Week two. Tuesday morning. 6am. I came down to the kitchen to make coffee. I picked up the mug. Cold mug. No microwave. And I gripped it. Just like that. I stood in the kitchen holding a cold coffee mug and I started crying. Because I'd forgotten that pre-heating the mug wasn't a normal thing. I'd forgotten what it felt like to grip something cold first thing in the morning without flinching. It came back to me in that one second. My wife came in. Saw my face. She said "what's wrong?" I held up the mug. I said: "nothing. Nothing's wrong." — -Week three. I went into the garage. I pulled the cover off the Road King. I sat on it. Both hands on the bars. I gripped the throttle. I held it. 20 seconds. 30 seconds. A minute. It didn't claw up. I sat there in the garage with my hands on the bars of a bike I hadn't really ridden in 18 months and I realized I was shaking. I started it up. Took it down the driveway. Around the block. Came back. Hands felt fine. — Week four. I did the test. Saturday morning. Took the bracelet off. Left it on my dresser. Drove to the lake with my wife. Spent the day fishing. By 2pm my right hand was cramping again. By 4pm I couldn't grip the steering wheel without shifting my grip every five minutes. We drove home. I put the bracelet back on at 6pm. By 9pm I was fine. That was the moment I knew. It wasn't placebo. Or - fine. Maybe it was. I don't care. It worked. That's all I care about. — Week six. I rode the Saturday morning loop with the boys. Two hours. Three of the four guys are still alive. We rode past the cemetery where Ray is buried. I waved. Felt stupid. Did it anyway. When we pulled into the diner I got off the bike and I shook out my hand and it was fine. Tom looked at me from the next bike. He said: "you're back." I just nodded. I couldn't say anything. — Week eight. Two months ago last Tuesday. I rode to the Black Hills. I made the boys leave a day later than usual so I could go. Five days. Eighteen-hour ride days. My grandson rode behind me on the back seat for the first time. He's 14. His mom - my daughter - texted me a picture of us pulling out of the driveway at 5am. Two helmets. The Road King. The sun coming up. She wrote: "dad you look like you again." I cried in a gas station in Iowa reading that text. I'm a 62 year old man crying in a Casey's at 9am. I don't care. — I'm writing this six months after Ray's funeral. I'm wearing the bracelet right now. I haven't taken it off in 178 days except for that one day at the lake and a couple of times to shower. My hand is not perfect. The cartilage is still gone. I still have stiffness if I really push it. But I'm riding. I'm gripping wrenches in the garage again. I opened a pickle jar on Sunday. My wife was in the kitchen. She just looked at me when I handed it back to her open. She said "well look at you." I winked at her. I haven't winked at my wife in four years. — I'm writing this because I almost gave up. I almost sold the Road King. I almost spent the rest of my riding years sitting on the porch listening to other men ride past. And the only reason I didn't is because Ray died and Frank was at the wake and I happened to take the card. I want there to be one less Mike in a pickup truck at his buddy's funeral procession. If you're reading this and your hand is the reason you're not riding anymore - or your shoulder is the reason you don't golf anymore - or your wrist is the reason you don't garden anymore - I'm not telling you copper is magic. I'm telling you this is what worked for me. And the worst case is you're out the time to mail it back. — It's called Willis Judd. Pure solid copper. Real neodymium magnets. Comes with a sizing tool so the clasp doesn't fight you. 60 day money-back guarantee. I checked. They actually honor it. Frank's patients have tested. Wear it 24/7 for three weeks before you decide. Then take it off for a day in week four and see what your body tells you. That's the test. — I'm not a doctor. I'm not a salesman. I'm a 62 year old retired machinist who almost gave up and didn't. Ray didn't get any more rides. I did. Don't sit in your truck while your buddies ride past. Don't list the bike on Marketplace twice and take it down twice. Don't tell yourself this is just what 60 looks like. Try the thing. Wear it for three weeks. Take it off for a day. Let your body tell you what your nervous system already knows. I rode 1,400 miles last month. A year ago I couldn't grip a coffee mug. That's all I have to say.