New study reviews science behind efficacy of biofield therapies – Reiki, therapeutic touch and healing touch. Biofield therapies, which claim to use subtle energy to stimulate the body’s healing process, are promising complementary interventions for reducing the intensity of pain in a number of conditions, reducing anxiety for hospitalized patients and reducing agitated behaviors in dementia, over and above what standard treatments can achieve. However, longer-term effects are less clear. Dr. Shamini Jain, from the UCLA Division of Cancer Prevention and Control Research, and Dr. Paul Mills, from the Department of Psychiatry at the University of California, and the Moores Comprehensive Cancer Center in San Diego, US, publish their review1 of the science behind biofield therapies online this week in Springer’s International Journal of Behavioral Medicine. A significant number of patients use biofield therapies – Reiki, therapeutic touch and healing touch – despite very little research proving that they work. These techniques have been used over millennia in various cultural communities to heal physical and mental disorders. They have only recently been under the scrutiny of current Western scientific methods.
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