New Haven Independent

Prof Mines “Ki” Mystery

by Abram Katz | June 25, 2009 11:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (11)

Gloria A. Gronowicz doesn’t believe in mysterious powers or healing from afar. That leaves her with a dilemma.

Results of a vigorously designed three-year study that she conducted suggest that test-tube cells grew better when people trained in reiki touch therapy passed their hands over the containers.

They did not touch the test tubes, or warm them, or affect them physically in any known way, Gronowicz said.

She was stunned. And puzzled.

The tightly controlled study suggests that patients could physically benefit from some sort of energy emanating from the skilled human hand.

“This is quite astonishing to me,” Gronowicz said. “How do humans interact with biofields?”

The University of Connecticut Health Center study was financed by the National Institutes of Health center for complementary and alternative medicine, and published in the Journal of Orthopedic Research.

Gronowicz presented the study this spring during an NIH meeting in Austin, Texas. A professor of surgery at UConn with a doctorate in molecular biology from Columbia University, she was one of the last people who expected to find evidence of human non-touch therapy.

In reiki, the hands of the practitioner never touch the patient. Rather, the hands are believed to manipulate “ki,” or “life energy.” The technique was developed long ago in Japan and become popular in the U.S. in the 1970s as patients searched for alternatives to regular medicine.

The therapy is not part of any religion. Practitioners must be certified at one of several reiki institutes and centers.

According to a 2007 NIH survey, “energy-healing” therapy is used by more than 1.2 million adults and 161,000 children annually.

“Clients may experience a deep state of relaxation during a reiki session. They might also feel warm, tingly, sleepy or refreshed. Reiki appears to be generally safe and no serious side effects gave been reported,” the NIH concluded.

Studying people is difficult, because the presence of a person could raise the patient’s spirits and ease his pain. So Gronowicz used cells in discarded bone chips, and from skin and tendons.

The cell cultures received two 10-minute treatments a week for two weeks.

One set of treatments was performed by people trained in reiki. The other set was carried out by untrained people.

When all of the hand waving was done, Gronowicz examined the cells.

The results showed that reiki had no effect on bone cancer cells, but that the process improved bone cell growth by a statistically significant percent. Skin and tendon cells also grew under the reiki regimen.

“We saw a dose-response curve,” Gronowicz said, an effect noted in tests of drugs and other conventional therapies.”The practice of energy medicine has been around for thousands of years,” she said. Most previous studies of reiki were small and “under-powered,” but did show a slight effect, she said.

Nonetheless, response to the work has not been overwhelmingly positive. Reiki is already available at Yale-New Haven, Waterbury, Griffin, Hartford and the University of Connecticut Hospitals. All offer reiki as part of an overall treatment plan.

“If the mind-body effects balance health, why not use it?” she said.

Gronowicz said she has come to accept the idea of biofields and would like to collaborate with a physicist to study them.

So far there are no takers.

“Are there receptors? There must be a biofield that affects health. Maybe I’ve lost it, but what if it’s true? That would represent a whole new avenue of medical treatment,” Gronowicz said.

Gronowicz has spent 25 years researching bones, and has published about 50 papers. The reiki paper has prompted doubt and scorn among some scientists, but she is not worried.

“I feel like I ought to be doing risky science at this point in my career. Science requires risks. I would urge others to do the same tests,” she said.

“I would like to spend the rest of my career working on this,” she said.

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Comments

Posted by: anthony | June 25, 2009 1:33 PM

wow, i always completely dismissed reiki as weird new age crap. guess i was wrong. foot-in-mouth. man, im blown away. thanks for the article!

Posted by: eddie | June 25, 2009 3:02 PM

I'm still skeptical, but if the results withstand rigorous scrutiny and can be repeated, I suppose there's a chance that this can open up new lines of inquiry and possibly new treatments.

I still think people put way too much trust in so-called "alternative medicines." No doubt some of them do work as advertised, but it's foolish to trust any potential treatment that has not undergone double-blind testing, and for which the mechanism is not understood.

Posted by: Shaman Lady | June 26, 2009 12:16 PM

http://www.barbarabrennan.com/
Barbara Brennan was a physicist at for NASA at Goddard before she also became involved with healing energy.
Theraupetic Touch also incorporates healing touch as well.
In the past I have used both Infrared and kirilian photography in motion to document this ability this phenomenon. You may also be interesed in exploring the use of not just the white light of Reiki, but use of the specific using various colors in energy healing.
Blessed Be

Posted by: Ned | June 26, 2009 12:47 PM

Do I hear ducks quacking???

Posted by: William Kurtz | June 26, 2009 4:48 PM

Interesting. I suppose a more thorough review of the methodology by an expert in the field would be called for, but if the evidence is suggestive, why not pursue the research? Germ theory was quackery once, too.

Posted by: Skeptic | June 28, 2009 7:10 PM

This is a clear case of something called "publication bias". If 20 people do studies on complementary and alternative therapy, odds are that at least one of these studies will be "statistically significant." The positive study, i.e., the study that shows a "significant" difference in outcomes is the one that will likely be published, whereas the 19 other bins will be relegated to the circular file of science.

Here's an example that you can do at home. Take a coin and flip it 20 times. Then, flip it 20 times while thinking, "Heads! Heads! Heads!" Have 19 other friends do this also. Guaranteed that at least one friend will have more heads than tails when they flip the second time. Is this because of some unforseen psychic power? Absolutely not. Chance. And if you were to publish only that friend's story, well, there is publication bias.

There are many other studies, well conducted studies also, that have shown the opposite of Dr. Gronowicz' study.

****

In addition, simply agitating cells and warming them slightly could increase the yield of cells in culture. As with any study, confirmation by independent researchers is needed. I remain quite skeptical.

Posted by: Bill | June 29, 2009 9:02 AM

I don't find that study listed on the link provided.

If there is a "life force energy", it seems the first thing to do it measure it. If it can't be measured, it most likely doesn't exist. Science has the ability to detect subatomic particles and would be able to detect and measure this "life force energy", if it existed.

Posted by: Rose Jimenez | July 1, 2009 6:51 PM

Hmmmm, and people actually used to believe the world was FLAT!

As Dr. Oz has said, "Reiki IS the "Energy Medicine of the New Millennium".

Posted by: Garry Williams | July 1, 2009 8:42 PM

In response to Skeptic, I would like to ask if he or she reviewed the methodology in this specific case, and if so, what is Skeptic's qualifications for review? I would also appreciate pointers to 19 other rigorous studies that had negative results. The thing about science is that when you make a claim, whether positive or negative, you need to back it up with evidence. Presumably the experimenter mentioned in the article has made her evidence and methodology available. Where is Skeptic's evidence and methodology so that we can make a comparison?

I cannot help but be skeptical of Skeptics, since they superstitiously disbelieve as strongly as New Age weirdos superstitiously believe. Scientists examine evidence and use logic.

Posted by: Garry Williams | July 1, 2009 8:47 PM

To Bill: along the lines of measurement of "life forces", suggested reading might be _The Body Electric_ by Robert O. Becker, MD and Gary Selden, ISBN 0-688-06971-1, as well as _Energy Medicine, The Scientific Basis_ by James L. Oschman, ISBN 0-443-06261-7. Hope that helps!

Sincerely,

Garry Williams

Posted by: lugh | July 8, 2009 6:46 PM

Skepticism is simply a product of the human ego, and is based on fears and the greatest hinderance to spirit;intellect. Science is just now starting to accept what has been known for ages, and will be spending many more decades to even catch up with the spiritual world.

Want some "proof" of this? Look up the caduceus, which was used by Hermes/Mercury, and even the Hindus lay claim to being the disocerers of this thing. Oddly, it looks very similar to a certain building block of all life called DNA, which we have only known about for a few decades now.

Looks like the ancients were a bit ahead of the curve....

...and we still have yet to figure out the Sphinx, or even how those damn huge triangles were built in the desert.

Prof Mines “Ki” Mystery

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