Many schools of energy healing exist using many names, for example, biofield energy healing, spiritual healing, contact healing, distant healing, Qi Do, therapeutic touch, Reiki or Qigong.
Spiritual healing occurs largely in non-denominational and ecumenical contexts. Practitioners do not see traditional religious faith as a prerequisite for effecting cures. Faith healing, by contrast, takes place within a traditional religious context.
While early reviews of the scientific literature on energy healing were equivocal and recommended further research, more recent reviews have concluded that there is no evidence supporting clinical efficiency. The theoretical basis of healing has been criticised as implausible, research and reviews supportive of energy medicine have been faulted for containing methodological flaws and selection bias, and positive therapeutic results have been dismissed as resulting from known psychological mechanisms.
Edzard Ernst, formerly Professor of Complementary and Alternative Medicine at the University of Exeter, has warned that "healing continues to be promoted despite the absence of biological plausibility or convincing clinical evidence ... that these methods work therapeutically and plenty to demonstrate that they do not". Some claims of those purveying "energy medicine" devices are known to be fraudulent and their marketing practices have drawn law-enforcement action in the US.
History
There
is a history of association or exploitation of scientific inventions by
individuals claiming that newly discovered science could help people to
heal: In the 19th century, electricity and magnetism were in the
"borderlands" of science and electrical quackery was rife. These concepts continue to inspire writers in the New Age movement. In the early 20th century health claims for radio-active materials put lives at risk, and recently quantum mechanics and grand unification theory have provided similar opportunities for commercial exploitation.
Thousands of devices claiming to heal via putative or veritable energy
are used worldwide. Many of them are illegal or dangerous and are
marketed with false or unproven claims. Several of these devices have been banned.
Reliance on spiritual and energetic healings is associated with serious
harm or death when medical treatment is delayed or foregone.
Classification
The term "energy medicine" has been in general use since the founding of the non-profit International Society for the Study of Subtle Energies and Energy Medicine
in the 1980s. Guides are available for practitioners, and other books
aim to provide a theoretical basis and evidence for the practice. Energy
medicine often proposes that imbalances in the body's "energy field"
result in illness, and that by re-balancing the body's energy-field
health can be restored.
Some modalities describe treatments as ridding the body of negative
energies or blockages in 'mind'; illness or episodes of ill health after
a treatment are referred to as a 'release' or letting go of a
'contraction' in the body-mind. Usually, a practitioner will then
recommend further treatments for complete healing.
The US-based National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health
(NCCIH) distinguishes between health care involving scientifically
observable energy, which it calls "Veritable Energy Medicine", and
health care methods that invoke physically undetectable or unverifiable "energies", which it calls "Putative Energy Medicine":
- Types of "veritable energy medicine" include magnet therapy, colorpuncture, and light therapy. Medical techniques involving the use electromagnetic radiation (e.g. radiation therapy or magnetic resonance imaging) are not considered "energy medicine" in the terms of alternative medicine.
- Types of "putative energy medicine" include biofield energy healing therapies where the hands are claimed to direct or modulate "energies" which are believed to effect healing in the patient; this includes spiritual healing and psychic healing, Therapeutic touch, Healing Touch, Hands of light, Esoteric healing, Magnetic healing (now a historical term not to be confused with magnet therapy), Qigong healing, Reiki, Crystal healing, distant healing, intercessory prayer, and similar modalities. Concepts such as Qi (Chi), Prana, Innate Intelligence, Mana, Pneuma, Vital fluid, Odic force, and Orgone are among the many terms that have been used to describe these putative energy fields. This category does not include Acupuncture, Ayurvedic medicine, Chiropractic, and other modalities where a physical intervention is used to manipulate a putative energy.
Polarity therapy founded by Randolph Stone is a kind of energy medicine based on the belief that a person's health is subject to positive and negative charges in their electromagnetic field.
It has been promoted as capable of curing a number of human ailments
ranging from muscular tightness to cancer; however, according to the American Cancer Society
"available scientific evidence does not support claims that polarity
therapy is effective in treating cancer or any other disease".
Beliefs
A Reiki practitioner
Energy healing relies on a belief in the ability of a practitioner to
channel healing energy into the person seeking help by different
methods: hands-on, hands-off, and distant
(or absent) where the patient and healer are in different locations.
Practitioners say that this "healing energy" is sometimes perceived by
the therapist as a feeling of heat.
There are various schools of energy healing, including biofield energy healing, spiritual healing, contact healing, distant healing, therapeutic touch, Reiki, Qigong, and many others.
Spiritual healing is largely non-denominational; traditional religious faith is not seen as a prerequisite for effecting a cure. Faith healing, by contrast, takes place within a religious context. The Buddha is often quoted by practitioners of energy medicine, but he did not practise "hands on or off" healing.
Energy healing techniques such as Therapeutic touch have found recognition in the nursing profession. In 2005–2006, the North American Nursing Diagnosis Association approved the diagnosis of "energy field disturbance" in patients, reflective of what has been variously called a "postmodern" or "anti-scientific" approach to nursing care. This approach has been strongly criticised.
Believers in these techniques have proposed quantum mystical invocations of non-locality to try to explain distant healing. They have also proposed that healers act as a channel passing on a kind of bioelectromagnetism which shares similarities to vitalistic pseudosciences such as orgone or qi. Drew Leder remarked in a paper in the Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine
that such ideas were attempts to "make sense of, interpret, and explore
'psi' and distant healing." and that "such physics-based models are not
presented as explanatory but rather as suggestive." Beverly Rubik, in an article in the same journal, justified her belief with references to biophysical systems theory, bioelectromagnetics, and chaos theory that provide her with a "...scientific foundation for the biofield..." Writing in the Journal of Bodywork and Movement Therapies, James Oschman introduced the concept of healer-sourced electromagnetic fields which change in frequency. Oschman believes that "healing energy" derives from electromagnetic frequencies generated by a medical device, projected from the hands of the healer, or by electrons acting as antioxidants.
Physicists and sceptics roundly criticise these explanations as pseudophysics – a branch of pseudoscience which explains magical thinking by using irrelevant jargon from modern physics to exploit scientific illiteracy and to impress the unsophisticated.
Indeed, even enthusiastic supporters of energy healing point out that
"there are only very tenuous theoretical foundations underlying
[spiritual] healing."
Scientific investigations
Distant healing
A
systematic review of 23 trials of distant healing published in 2000 did
not draw definitive conclusions because of the "methodologic
limitations of several studies". In 2001 the lead author of that study, Edzard Ernst,
published a primer on complementary therapies in cancer care in which
he explained that though "about half of these trials suggested that
healing is effective" he cautioned that the evidence was "highly
conflicting" and that "methodological shortcomings prevented firm
conclusions." He concluded that "as long as it is not used as an
alternative to effective therapies, spiritual healing should be
virtually devoid of risks."
A 2001 randomised clinical trial by the same group found no
statistically significant difference on chronic pain between distance
healers and "simulated healers".
A 2003 review by Ernst updating previous work concluded that more
recent research had shifted the weight of evidence "against the notion
that distant healing is more than a placebo" and that "distant healing
can be associated with adverse effects."
Contact healing
A
2001 randomised clinical trial randomly assigned 120 patients with
chronic pain to either healers or "simulated healers", but could not
demonstrate efficacy for either distance or face-to-face healing.
A systematic review in 2008 concluded that the evidence for a specific
effect of spiritual healing on relieving neuropathic or neuralgic pain
was not convincing. In their 2008 book Trick or Treatment, Simon Singh and Edzard Ernst
concluded that "spiritual healing is biologically implausible and its
effects rely on a placebo response. At best it may offer comfort; at
worst it can result in charlatans taking money from patients with
serious conditions who require urgent conventional medicine."
Evidence base
Alternative medicine researcher Edzard Ernst has argued that although an initial review of pre-1999 distant healing trials had highlighted 57% of trials as showing positive results, later reviews of non-randomised and randomised clinical trials conducted between 2000 and 2002
led to the conclusion that "the majority of the rigorous trials do not
support the hypothesis that distant healing has specific therapeutic
effects". Ernst described the evidence base for healing practices to be
"increasingly negative".
Ernst also warned that many of the reviews were under suspicion for
fabricated data, lack of transparency, and scientific misconduct. He
concluded that "[s]piritual healing continues to be promoted despite the
absence of biological plausibility or convincing clinical evidence ...
that these methods work therapeutically and plenty to demonstrate that
they do not."
A 2014 study of energy healing for colorectal cancer patients showed no
improvement in quality of life, depressive symptoms, mood, or sleep
quality.
Alternative explanations for positive reports
There are several, primarily psychological, explanations for positive reports after energy therapy, including placebo effects, spontaneous remission, and cognitive dissonance. A 2009 review found that the "small successes" reported for two therapies collectively marketed as "energy psychology" (Emotional Freedom Techniques and Tapas Acupressure Technique)
"are potentially attributable to well-known cognitive and behavioral
techniques that are included with the energy manipulation." The report
concluded that "[p]sychologists and researchers should be wary of using
such techniques, and make efforts to inform the public about the ill
effects of therapies that advertise miraculous claims."
There are primarily two explanations for anecdotes of cures or improvements, relieving any need to appeal to the supernatural. The first is post hoc ergo propter hoc, meaning that a genuine improvement or spontaneous remission
may have been experienced coincidental with but independent from
anything the healer or patient did or said. These patients would have
improved just as well even had they done nothing. The second is the placebo
effect, through which a person may experience genuine pain relief and
other symptomatic alleviation. In this case, the patient genuinely has
been helped by the healer – not through any mysterious or numinous
function, but by the power of their own belief that they would be
healed.
In both cases the patient may experience a real reduction in symptoms,
though in neither case has anything miraculous or inexplicable occurred.
Both cases, are strictly limited to the body's natural abilities.
Positive findings from research studies can also result from such psychological mechanisms, or as a result of experimenter bias, methodological flaws such as lack of blinding, or publication bias; positive reviews of the scientific literature may show selection bias, in that they omit key studies that do not agree with the author's position. All of these factors must be considered when evaluating claims.
Bioresonance therapy
Bioresonance therapy (including MORA therapy) is a pseudoscientific medical practice in which it is proposed that electromagnetic waves can be used to diagnose and treat human illness.
History and method
Bioresonance
therapy was invented in (Germany) in 1977 by Franz Morell and his
son-in-law, engineer Erich Rasche. Initially they marketed it as
"MORA-Therapie", for MOrell and RAsche. Some of the machines contain an
electronic circuit measuring skin-resistance, akin to the E-meter used by Scientology, which the bioresonance creators sought to improve; Franz Morell had links with Scientology.
Practitioners claim to be able to detect a variety of diseases
and addictions. Some practitioners also claim they can treat diseases
using this therapy without drugs, by stimulating a change of
"bioresonance" in the cells, and reversing the change caused by the
disease. The devices would need to be able to isolate and pinpoint
pathogens' responses from the mixture of responses the device receives
via the electrodes.
Transmitting these transformed signals over the same electrodes is
claimed by practitioners to generate healing signals that have the
curative effect.
Scientific criticism
Lacking any scientific explanation of how bioresonance therapy might work, researchers have classified bioresonance therapy as pseudoscience.
Some scientific studies did not show effects above that of the placebo effect.
WebMD
states: "There is no reliable scientific evidence that bioresonance is
an accurate indicator of medical conditions or disease or an effective
treatment for any condition."
Proven cases of online fraud have occurred,
with a practitioner making false claims that he had the ability to cure
cancer, and that his clients did not need to follow the chemotherapy or
surgery recommended by medical doctors, which can be life-saving. Ben Goldacre ridiculed the BBC
when it reported as fact a clinic's claim that the treatment had the
ability to stop 70% of clients smoking, a better result than any
conventional therapy.
In the United States of America the U.S. Food and Drug Administration
(FDA) classifies "devices that use resistance measurements to diagnose
and treat various diseases" as Class III devices, which require FDA
approval prior to marketing. The FDA has banned some of these devices
from the US market, and has prosecuted many sellers of electrical devices for making false claims of health benefits.
According to Quackwatch the therapy is completely nonsensical and the proposed mechanism of action impossible.
