Distant Healing of Surgical Wounds: An exploratory study
Marilyn Schlitz, Harriet W. Hopf, Loren Eskenazi, Cassandra Vieten and Dean Radin
(published in Explore, July/August 2012, Vol. 8, No. 4)
Authors:
Marilyn Schlitz, PhD, Institute of Noetic Sciences, Petaluma, CA
Prof. Harriet W. Hopf, MD, Department of Anesthesia and Perioperative Care, University of California, San Francisco, CA
Loren Eskenazi, MD, FACS, Plastic Surgery Associates, San Francisco, CA
Cassandra Vieten, PhD, Institute of Noetic Sciences, Petaluma, CA
Dean Radin, PhD, Institute of Noetic Sciences, Petaluma, CA
Summary: Distant healing intention (DHI) is one of the most common complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) healing modalities, but clinical trials to date have provided ambivalent support for its efficacy. One possible reason is that DHI effects may involve variables that are sensitive to unknown, uncontrolled, or uncontrollable factors.
Objective: To examine 2 of those potential variables— expectation and belief—we explored the effects of DHI on objective and psychosocial measures associated with surgical wounds in 72
women undergoing plastic surgery.
Design: Participants were randomly assigned to 1 of 3 groups: blinded and receiving DHI (DH), blinded and not receiving DHI (control), and knowing that they were receiving DHI (expectancy). Outcome measures included collagen deposition in a surrogate wound and several self-report measures. DHI was provided by experienced distant healers. No differences in the main measures were observed across the three groups.
Results: Participants’ previous belief in the efficacy of DHI was negatively correlated with the status of their mental health at the end of the study (P=.04, 2-tailed), and healers’ perceptions of
the quality of their subjective “contact” with the participants were negatively correlated both with change in mood (P=.001) and with collagen deposition (P= .04). A post-hoc analysis found that among participants assigned to receive DHI under blinded conditions, those undergoing reconstructive surgery after breast cancer treatment reported significantly better change
in mood than those who were undergoing purely elective cosmetic surgery (P= .004).
Conclusion: If future DHI experiments confirm the post-hoc observations, then some of the ambiguity observed in earlier DHI studies may be attributable to interactions among participants’ and healers’ beliefs, their expectations, and their motivations.
Two excerpts from this study:
- Post-hoc findings suggested that the motivation for having surgery may play an important role in modulating DHI effects. Participants’ change in mood was substantially improved in the DH condition in women receiving reconstructive surgery after breast cancer treatment but not in women receiving cosmetic surgery [...] This finding does suggest that motivation for surgery may be a worthwhile variable for further study
- One explanation why meta-analyses are providing ambivalent conclusions about the efficacy of DHI is that distant healing effects do not exist. From that perspective, the occasional positive report of a properly conducted DHI study is best attributed to a statistical false positive or to selective reporting. An alternative explanation is that DHI effects do exist, but the relevant variables that modulate these effects are not well understood and interact in complex ways. Ultimately, future empirical studies or development of new theories will be required to help decide which of these explanations is closer to the truth
