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Plain English Summary
Can sending healing thoughts to someone actually help their body recover from surgery? This NIH-funded study put that question to a rigorous test with 72 women undergoing plastic surgery. Participants were split three ways: some received distant healing intention (basically, experienced healers spending 20-plus minutes a day focusing healing thoughts on them for eight days), some got nothing, and a third group knew they were being thought about. The key measure was refreshingly concrete — tiny implants under the skin tracked how much collagen (the protein your body produces to repair wounds) actually formed. The headline result: no difference between groups. Healing thoughts didn't measurably speed up wound repair. But then things got weird in the deeper analysis. People who believed most strongly in distant healing actually reported worse mental health — the opposite of what you'd expect. And here's the real head-scratcher: when healers felt the strongest sense of connection with their patient, those patients produced less collagen and had worse moods. That's the reverse of what any healing model would predict, echoing similarly puzzling findings from a major prayer study called STEP. One bright spot emerged: breast cancer reconstruction patients who unknowingly received healing intention showed significantly better mood than cosmetic surgery patients. The study is important because it used an objective biological measure rather than just asking people how they felt, making it harder to explain away the null results.
Actual Paper Abstract
Background: 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.
Research Notes
One of few DHI clinical trials with an objective biological endpoint (collagen deposition). The counterintuitive negative belief-outcome correlations parallel the Benson STEP findings and complicate simple interpretations of distant healing efficacy. Central to controversy #5 (distant healing/prayer).
A three-arm NIH-funded RCT examined whether distant healing intention (DHI) affects surgical wound healing in 72 women undergoing plastic surgery. Participants were randomized to blinded DHI (n=23), blinded control (n=24), or unblinded expectancy (n=25), with 40 experienced healers providing 20+ minutes/day of DHI for 8 days post-surgery. The primary outcome, subcutaneous collagen deposition via IMPRA implants, showed no significant group differences (F(2,62)=0.79, P=.46). However, post-hoc analyses revealed that participants' prior belief in DHI negatively predicted mental health (rho=-0.27, P=.04), and healers' perceived connectedness negatively correlated with mood change (rho=-0.57, P=.001) and collagen deposition (rho=-0.30, P=.04). Breast cancer reconstruction patients receiving blinded DHI showed significantly improved mood compared to cosmetic surgery patients (P=.004).
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Related Papers
Cites
- Study of the Therapeutic Effects of Intercessory Prayer (STEP) in Cardiac Bypass Patients: A Multicenter Randomized Trial of Uncertainty and Certainty of Receiving Intercessory Prayer — Benson, Herbert (2006)
- The Efficacy of "Distant Healing": A Systematic Review of Randomized Trials — Astin, John A (2000)
- Prayer and Health: Review, Meta-Analysis, and Research Agenda — Masters, Kevin S (2007)
- The Effect of the 'Laying On of Hands' on Transplanted Breast Cancer in Mice — Bengston, William F (2000)
Same Research Program
- Compassionate Intention as a Therapeutic Intervention by Partners of Cancer Patients: Effects of Distant Intention on the Patients’ Autonomic Nervous System — Radin, Dean (2008)
- Remote Mental Influence of Electrodermal Activity — Braud, William G (1993)
- Consciousness Interactions with Remote Biological Systems: Anomalous Intentionality Effects — Braud, William G (1991)
Companion
- Nonlocality, Intention, and Observer Effects in Healing Studies: Laying a Foundation for the Future — Schwartz, Stephan A (2010)
- Effects of Healing Intention on Cultured Cells and Truly Random Events — Radin, Dean (2004)
- Music, Imagery, Touch, and Prayer as Adjuncts to Interventional Cardiac Care: The Monitoring and Actualisation of Noetic Trainings (MANTRA) II Randomised Study — Krucoff, Mitchell W (2005)
- Two Meta-Analyses of Noncontact Healing Studies — Roe, Chris A (2015)
- Integrative Noetic Therapies as Adjuncts to Percutaneous Intervention During Unstable Coronary Syndromes: Monitoring and Actualization of Noetic Training (MANTRA) Feasibility Pilot — Krucoff, Mitchell W (2001)
Also by these authors
Experimental Investigation of Precognition in Yoga Practitioners
Observer Influence on Quantum Interference: Testing the von Neumann-Wigner Consciousness-Collapse Theory
Who's Calling? Evaluating the Accuracy of Guessing Who Is on the Phone
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Effects of Intentionally-Treated Water on Cell Migration of Human Glioblastoma Cells
Water, Wine and the Sacred, An Anthropological View of Substances Altered by Intentioned Awareness, Including Objective and Aesthetic Effects
Transcriptional Changes in Cancer Cells Induced by Exposure to a Healing Method
Infrared Spectra Alteration in Water Proximate to the Palms of Therapeutic Practitioners
Crossing Disciplinary Boundaries: Going Beyond Even Meta-Analysis of Distant Intention Effects
📋 Cite this paper
Schlitz, Marilyn, Hopf, Harriet W, Eskenazi, Loren, Vieten, Cassandra, Radin, Dean (2012). Distant Healing of Surgical Wounds: An Exploratory Study. Explore. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.explore.2012.04.004
@article{schlitz_2012_distant,
title = {Distant Healing of Surgical Wounds: An Exploratory Study},
author = {Schlitz, Marilyn and Hopf, Harriet W and Eskenazi, Loren and Vieten, Cassandra and Radin, Dean},
year = {2012},
journal = {Explore},
doi = {10.1016/j.explore.2012.04.004},
}