Energy medicine is a practice where a healer uses their hands to channel energy into a person’s body to help restore balance and improve health. This approach, which has roots in ancient traditions like Vedic and Chinese medicine, has recently caught the attention of researchers.
Popular energy therapies like Reiki and Therapeutic Touch have been found to help with various health problems, including cancer, chronic pain, anxiety, and depression. Research shows that energy medicine can be especially effective for chronic pain—a widespread issue that not only causes discomfort but also leads to other problems like fatigue, sleep disturbances, and mood changes.
However, the effects of energy medicine can vary greatly from person to person, and we’re not entirely sure why. Could it be due to individual differences, such as age, income, heart rate, or nerve function? Or perhaps environmental factors, like cosmic weather or quantum noise fluctuations, play a role?
In our latest paper, we carried out a study to investigate what factors might affect the results of energy medicine.
How we did the study
Hand and wrist pain, often caused by carpal tunnel syndrome, is a common type of long-term pain. Carpal tunnel syndrome happens when the median nerve gets compressed, leading to pain, numbness, and tingling. Although research on using energy medicine for carpal tunnel syndrome is limited, the results have been promising. This led us to focus on this condition in our current study.
We conducted a pilot clinical trial to explore the effects of a 30-minute energy medicine session – using various techniques such as Reiki, Healing Touch, and others – on 190 participants with hand and wrist pain. The energy medicine practitioners either used light touch or no touch at all. We wanted to know whether the energy medicine session changed how much pain the participants reported, and the nerve conduction velocity (NCV) of the affected wrist—a key diagnostic measure for carpal tunnel syndrome, as nerve compression can impede signal transmission. We also measured heart rate variability, sleep quality, and well-being, collecting data before the session, immediately after, and three weeks post-session.
We were also interested to know whether personal or environmental factors influence how well energy medicine sessions work on pain and nerve function. For example, does the gender of the practitioner matter? Does the age, gender, or income of the participant matter? Does energy medicine work better for people with certain personality traits or beliefs about energy medicine?
Since we are interconnected with our environments, we also wanted to see if environmental factors might affect the results of energy medicine. So, we looked at cosmic and environmental variables, like sunspots, weather conditions, water infrared absorbance, and quantum noise levels to explore their potential influence.
Lastly, we did an analysis to see how much these different factors, like personality, health, or environmental conditions, affect energy medicine results to help us understand which are the most important or influential.
What we discovered
While we didn’t see an overall change in nerve function, we did find that male practitioners and younger participants were associated with slower nerve conduction speeds. However, participants generally reported feeling a significant reduction in pain from before the session to after the session, and this improvement continued three weeks later. Notably, those with a middle income ($75K to under $150K) and people who are more open-minded reported the most pain relief. On the other hand, some groups, like male participants, those in fair general health, and those treated with touch, reported experiencing more pain.
Understanding how much variation is explained in the results is important because it tells us how well the different factors, like personality or the environment, account for changes in pain and nerve function after the energy medicine sessions. If a factor explains a high percentage of the variation, it means that factor has a strong influence on the outcomes. For example, we found that subjective factors like health status and personality explain 29% of the variation at the 3-week follow-up, meaning these personal factors play a significant role in how much pain relief and nerve improvement participants experience. On the other hand, if a factor explains only a small percentage of the variation, it means that factor has less influence. For example, geocosmic variables explained 9% and ECG variables explained 17% of the variation from baseline to three weeks. We also found that the combined model of all variables only explained about 54% of the variation in pain and nerve function from baseline to three weeks, leaving some unexplained differences. Knowing this helps researchers identify which factors are most important in determining the effectiveness of energy medicine sessions and guides future studies to focus on the most impactful variables.
Finally, factors like heart-related stress signals from ECG data, the number of sunspots, solar wind speed, and changes in the Earth’s magnetic field were connected to shifts in pain levels. This suggests that both environmental and physiological factors might influence how we experience pain.
What do our findings mean?
Our study delves into the fascinating and complex world of energy medicine, revealing that a multitude of factors can influence its effectiveness on pain and nerve function. While the overall benefits were clear, with many participants experiencing significant pain relief and psychological improvements, the variations between individuals were striking. Factors such as the practitioner’s gender, participant’s age, income, and personality traits all played a role, alongside intriguing environmental influences like cosmic weather conditions.
As the study was exploratory and one of the first of its kind, we can’t yet explain some of the more fascinating findings, such as why female participants generally had better pain outcomes, or why the use of touch by practitioners surprisingly resulted in higher pain scores, or why environmental factors like sunspots and local weather conditions showed correlations with pain changes. Our findings highlight the need for more research to understand the nuances of these influences fully and to answer these compelling questions.
This exploratory study opens the door to deeper investigations and suggests that energy medicine holds a valuable place in holistic health practices. As we continue to explore and understand these connections, we move closer to harnessing the full potential of energy medicine for pain relief and overall well-being. The interplay of personal and environmental factors in this healing process remains a captivating frontier, promising many more discoveries in the future.
Read more about this study and the results in the paper “A Holistic Approach to Energy Medicine Trial Data: Exploratory Analyses” published in Biostatistics and Biometrics.
