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Balanced Physical Therapy

Ethel Said:

How does Healing Touch Therapy actually heal?

We Answered:

Therapeutic touch and healing touch were once a topic of interest for many many people. Even the US government paid for several studies and trained some nurses to use it on patients in the recovery room who were just post-op. There was no data to suggest it worked but they did it anyway, thinking that there could be no harm from trying. Then, an eleven year old girl using a piece of cardboard with two holes in it proved that it didn't work, I kid you not. Check the source.

From Wiki:
In 1998, Emily Rosa, at 11 years of age, became the youngest person to have a paper accepted by the Journal of the American Medical Association for her study of therapeutic touch, which debunked the claims of TT practitioners. Her study consisted of testing 21 practitioners of TT to determine their ability to detect the aura they claim surrounds everyone. The practitioners stood on one side of a cardboard screen, while Emily stood on the other. The practitioners then placed their hands through holes in the screen. Emily then flipped a coin to determine which of the practitioner's hands she would place hers near (without, of course, touching the hand). The practitioners then were to indicate if they could sense her biofield, and where her hand was. Although all of the participants had asserted that they would be able to do this, the actual results did not support their assertions. After repeated trials the practitioners had succeeded in locating her hand at a rate not significantly different from chance. They were right 44% of the time, slightly worse than chance.[15][16][9] Upon publishing the results, JAMA editor George D. Lundberg, M.D, recommended that patients and insurance companies alike refuse to pay for TT or at least question whether or not payment is appropriate "...until or unless additional honest experimentation demonstrates an actual effect." Dr. Lundberg also commented that TT practitioners are ethically obligated to share the results of this study with patients.

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