Distant healing

[Sly Saint]

Blog Edzard Ernst: Prof Walach’s studies of distant healing: do they reveal the difference between a scientist and a pseudoscientist?

"Amongst all the many bizarre treatments so-called alternative medicine (SCAM) has to offer, distant healing is probably one of the least plausible. Essentially, it involves healers sending healing ‘energy’ to far remote patients. This energy is then supposed to stimulate the patients’ ability to heal themselves."

2008: Effectiveness of Distant Healing for Patients With Chronic Fatigue Syndrome: A Randomised Controlled Partially Blinded Trial (EUHEALS) Harald Walach 1, Holger Bosch, George Lewith, Johannes Naumann, Barbara Schwarzer, Sonja Falk, Niko Kohls, Erlendur Haraldsson, Harald Wiesendanger, Alain Nordmann, Helgi Tomasson, Phil Prescott, Heiner C Bucher

Background: Distant healing, a form of spiritual healing, is widely used for many conditions but little is known about its effectiveness.

Methods: In order to evaluate distant healing in patients with a stable chronic condition, we randomised 409 patients with chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) from 14 private practices for environmental medicine in Germany and Austria in a two by two factorial design to immediate versus deferred (waiting for 6 months) distant healing. Half the patients were blinded and half knew their treatment allocation. Patients were treated for 6 months and allocated to groups of 3 healers from a pool of 462 healers in 21 European countries with different healing traditions. Change in Mental Health Component Summary (MHCS) score (SF-36) was the primary outcome and Physical Health Component Summary score (PHCS) the secondary outcome.

Results: This trial population had very low quality of life and symptom scores at entry. There were no differences over 6 months in post-treatment MHCS scores between the treated and untreated groups. There was a non-significant outcome (p = 0.11) for healing with PHCS (1.11; 95% CI -0.255 to 2.473 at 6 months) and a significant effect (p = 0.027) for blinding; patients who were unblinded became worse during the trial (-1.544; 95% CI -2.913 to -0.176). We found no relevant interaction for blinding among treated patients in MHCS and PHCS. Expectation of treatment and duration of CFS added significantly to the model.

Conclusions: In patients with CFS, distant healing appears to have no statistically significant effect on mental and physical health but the expectation of improvement did improve outcome.

So, Walach first conducted an RCT and found that patients who were told that they received the healing experienced improvements. These improvements were therefore due to the expectations of these patients and had nothing to do with the distant healing per se. Next Walach conducted a study with diabetics and found that distant healing might have some significant effects. This study not only lacked a control group but its sample size was also tiny. Therefore, he called it a ‘pilot study’ and never followed it up with a proper trial with diabetic patients – all in the good old SCAM tradition of abusing the term. Finally, Walach conducted a multi-centre RCT with 409 CFS-patients and found that distant healing is ineffective. Subsequently, he seems to have stopped initiating further studies of distant healing.

full blog
https://edzardernst.com/2020/07/pro...ce-between-a-scientist-and-a-pseudoscientist/

 

[wdb]

Yet more proof the combination un-blinded treatment with subjective measures produces misleading data. If distant healing had happened to be a type of therapy that couldn't be blinded then the results might have looked very different.

 

[wdb]

I'm disappointed in Edzard's supposed skepticism in this piece two posts earlier. He has no problem with using odourless distilled water as a control in a subjective aromatherapy study. It seems like as is so often the case bad methodology is fine if the results are palatable.

The intervention included inhalation of 6 drops of 40% damask rose essential oil in the damask group, and six drops of distilled water in placebo group one hour before dressing change. The control group received no additional intervention. All groups also received standard care...

The authors concluded that inhaled aromatherapy with Damask rose essence reduces subjective pain intensity and state anxiety in burned patients...

These are interesting findings for sure. Aromatherapy is far less implausible than many other so-called alternative medicines (SCAMs). It furthermore has the advantages of being safe and inexpensive.

I have no reason to doubt the validity of the study.

https://edzardernst.com/2020/07/aromatherapy-improves-pain-intensity-and-anxiety-in-burned-patients/

At least he later acknowledges it in the comments.

the way I understand it, only the clinicians evaluating the outcome were blinded.
this of course means that patients’ expectation could have caused part or all of the effects.

 

[Hoopoe]

The essential oils I know have a strong scent. No way distilled water is an adequate control treatment.

 

[Midnattsol]

The essential oils I know have a strong scent. No way distilled water is an adequate control treatment.

My thoughts as well. I wonder if fragrance oils could be used instead.

 

[Trish]

A series of different smells to be inhaled in the same way, to test whether it's the particular oil that is significant, or the distraction of a nice smell. And with both the patients and the person administering the smell not having any idea which one is the 'active' smell being tested.