This story originally appeared in the May/June 2022 issue as “Healing With Touch.” click here Subscribe for more articles like this.
At 14 months old, my son’s breathing sounded like a diesel engine. He choked on eating the peas, was unable to clear the mucus from his throat and struggled to breathe properly. Jack has a double aortic arch, a condition in which an extra branch from his heart narrows his airway like a vise.
During surgery to split the arch, doctors damaged some nerves, causing Jack’s lymph system to leak. After days of restricted food and water, he looked like a caged animal. His frantic pleas of “wow wow” played on loop throughout the ward and echoed in my heart.
Instead of water, doctors administered a powerful cocktail of drugs to sedate him. After 48 hours of no improvement, the nurse suggested I try Healing Touch. This is a complementary therapy that is said to help the body heal through closeness and physical contact.
Desperate and with little to lose, I ignored the alarms in my mind and accepted the session. I sat in a recliner with Jack in my arms and watched as Lisa Thompson, a pediatric nurse at Rady Children’s Hospital in San Diego, began moving her hands a few inches above us. Within a few minutes, the machine’s beeping went silent. Jack’s heart rate stabilized. For the first time in ten days, we both breathed together and Jack fell asleep. Thompson’s hands never even touched Jack’s body during the 30-minute session. I felt equal parts confusion and relief.
Developed by Colorado nurse Janet Mengen in the early 1980s, Healing Touch is based on the idea that close or light touch can support the body’s ability to heal. Although still on the fringes of mainstream medicine, the Mayo Clinic, Memorial Sloan Kettering, and more than 30 percent of America’s Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) hospital systems are adding a healing touch to conventional treatments to reassure patients. – Incorporating therapy.
Still, scientists can’t fully explain the mechanisms behind this behavior or the consequences like the one my son experienced. But some doctors, psychologists, and controlled studies are making compelling speculations about what’s going on beneath the surface.
In ancient times, the “laying on of hands” was the treatment of choice for people who were suffering. Today, these same energy regulation practices are beginning to be incorporated into modern medicine, where effective treatments remain elusive.
The term “biofield therapy” was coined at a 1992 National Institutes of Health meeting. This suite of treatments includes ancient Chinese therapies such as acupuncture and Qi Gong, as well as more recently developed therapies such as Reiki (originating in Japan) and Healing Touch. . “These treatments are based on the idea that the body has a biofield system, similar to the circulatory, nervous, and lymphatic systems,” says Mimi, a cardiologist and president of the San Diego Academy of Integrative Health Medicine.・Mr. Guarneri says.
(Credit: Kelly Yeager/Discover)
Biofields don’t exist as much as you think. In modern medicine, doctors use electroencephalograms (EEGs) to study brain waves and electrocardiograms (EKGs) to assess heart health. Both tests measure parts of the biological field by placing electrodes in different areas of the body and interpreting the electromagnetic output. There are even devices that measure body temperature a foot away from the skin.
The biofield description also includes what Shamini Jain, a psychologist at the University of California, San Diego and founder of the Consciousness and Healing Initiative, calls “subtle energy.” prana and Chi, a term that has been translated as “life force” in India and China for thousands of years. Studying this type of energy is more complex and difficult to measure.
“If I was wearing my hard-core scientist hat, I wouldn’t know what was going on,” Jain says. “However, when using Healing Touch, patients see positive changes in their mood and physiology that are important to them.” The study found that those changes ranged from a reduction in self-reported pain and anxiety to a decrease in self-reported pain and anxiety during cancer treatment. This ranges from increasing natural killer cell function.
A 2021 study of 120 women with osteoarthritis found that International Journal of Rheumatic DiseasesFor example, we found that people who received energy healing reported significantly less pain than those who did not. Jain also reported positive results in a randomized, placebo-controlled trial published on October 1, 2006. cancer When 76 breast cancer survivors were divided into three unique groups, those who received energy healing showed a statistically significant reduction in fatigue. In the same group, cortisol rhythms also improved significantly compared to the group that received sham healing and no treatment.
These studies, and others with similar results over the years, explore the question, “Is it all in the recipient’s head?”
Despite more than 400 clinical studies on biofield therapy, including more than 125 randomized controlled trials, many members of the academic and medical community remain skeptical about the benefits of biofield therapy.
To avoid the placebo effect, Xin Lin, a biomedical scientist and director of the Institute for Mind-Body Signaling and Energy Research at the University of California, Irvine, is trying to figure out how energy affects cells in a petri dish. was analyzed. He says that by applying a direct current electric field of about 1 volt per meter (about the range that the human body can generate) using a battery, the cells on the plate change and move. A similar effect of electrical energy can be seen when the hair stands on end after brushing a woolen sweater with dry hands. While the power may work when we touch someone, it is impossible for the energy from a human healer to exert enough power to change a patient’s physiology without physical contact. , says Lin.
In his view, “the positive research findings on Healing Touch are a product of the placebo effect, meaning that the treatment may work, but only because people believe it works.” ” Studies have confirmed that placebo treatments can cause measurable physiological changes. These can include changes in heart rate, blood pressure, and cortisol levels, all of which are catalyzed by our minds. But the question remains: how does that apply to the mind of my son, who is only a year old?
Other experts suggest a different mechanism may be at work in biofield therapy, along with a number of placebo-controlled studies. One of them is regulating the body’s stress and relaxation responses. We know that the body is designed to heal itself, but there are barriers such as anxiety, malnutrition, and lack of sleep that prevent even the best treatment. “[Healing Touch] This allows people to calm down and put their bodies in the best place for healing,” says Guarneri.
Thompson says the most common outcome for her patients is a sense of calmness. “A lot of people actually fall asleep,” she says. In this relaxed state, even modern treatments are more effective.
A 2020 study of 39 veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder found that mental trauma lends potential support to this theory. In this study, veterans who received a series of 10 Healing Touch treatments, similar to what Jack received, experienced clinically significant reductions in symptom severity and various physical and psychological symptoms. reported that it had a positive effect.
When Jack was hospitalized, Rady Children’s Hospital offered Healing Touch classes to parents at a discounted price. During his 30+ hours of training over two weekends, I learned techniques and practiced them on other students. The truth is, I don’t know if I did anything on a biological level. But I’m sure I looked weird.
Nevertheless, I began to rely on Healing Touch to calm feelings of helplessness when a loved one was unwell. I used this technique on Jack post-op. I used it when an infection entered his father’s heart, and later when his father was dying. Even my skeptical husband said he felt less stressed after the session. In both cases, I felt closer to those who were suffering. I’m not alone here either. Research shows that nurses who practice biofield therapy experience reduced stress, improved immune function, and a stronger sense of connection to their patients.
When the stomach bug hit our home recently, I found myself in a place I know well: a children’s hospital with one of my sons. This time, I didn’t feel powerless, and I didn’t care that I looked stupid. I remembered the tree, planted my feet on the ground, and moved my hands.
