Biofield tuning?
What on earth is this new SCAM?
Do I really have a ‘biofield’?
How can I tune it?
And what effect does it have?
Here is an article that explains all this in some detail; enjoy:
While western science has yet to describe and measure this energy, other cultures, especially ancient Indian or Vedic cultures describe it extensively. The term “chakra” (wheel) in Sanskirt, refers to spinning energy vortices which are seen as structures in the body’s subtle energy anatomy. Not coincidentally, within the body at each chakra location there is a corresponding large cluster of nerves or plexuses.
One way of understanding subtle energy is through the analogy “subtle energy is to electromagnetism as water vapor is to water.” Just as we do not measure water vapor with the same tools we use to measure water, we can’t use the same tools to measure subtle energy we would use to measure electricity. Subtle energy is higher, finer, more diffuse and follows slightly different laws.
Another word for this energy is “bioplasma.” Bioplasma is a diffuse magnetic fluid which surrounds all living beings. Like a fluid, it can be of varying viscosities and densities. In Biofield Tuning (also known as “sound balancing”, we see the human biofield as a bioplasmic toroid-shaped (doughnut-shaped) bubble which surrounds the body at a distance of about five feet to the sides and two-three feet at the top and bottom; bounded by a double layer plasma membrane much like the protective boundary which defines the earth’s upper atmosphere.
During a Biofield Tuning session, a client lies fully clothed on a treatment table while the practitioner activates a tuning fork and scans the body slowly beginning from a distance. The practitioner is feeling for resistance and turbulence in the client’s energy field, as well as listening for a change in the overtones and undertones of the tuning fork. When the practitioner encounters a turbulent area he/she continues to activate the tuning fork and hold it in that specific spot. Research suggests the body’s organizational energy uses the steady coherent vibrational frequency of the tuning fork to “tune” itself. In short order, the dissonance resolves and the sense of resistance gives way. This appears to correspond to the release of tension within the body.
Practitioners work with the “Biofield Anatomy Map“, a compilation of Biofield Tuning’s founder, Eileen Day McKusick’s 20+ years of biofield observations. Areas of dissonance can be pinpointed to a specific age and type of memory. For example, one might find a strong sense of sadness at age 12 or birth trauma at the outer edge of the biofield.
Holding an activated tuning fork in the area of a traumatic memory or another difficult time period produces repeatable, predictable outcomes. The sound input seems to help the body digest and integrate unprocessed experiences. As the biofield dissonance subsides, clients generally report feeling “lighter” and a diminishment or resolution of their symptoms.
The Sonic Slider is a custom-made weighted tuning fork that harnesses the power of therapeutic sound to help you feel and look younger and healthier.
Users report a wide range of benefits including more energy, greater well-being, weight loss, increased muscle tone, smoother skin, reduced pain, improved circulation and more.
Did I promise too much? Surely, you must agree, this is FANTASTIC!
I am so glad that someone has closely studied my instructions and followed them almost to the dot – my instructions as to HOW TO BECOME A CHARLATAN. In case you have forgotten, I repeat them here:
1. Find an attractive therapy and give it a fantastic name
Most of the really loony ideas turn out to be taken: ear candles, homeopathy, aura massage, energy healing, urine-therapy, chiropractic etc. As a true charlatan, you want your very own quackery. So you will have to think of a new concept.
Something truly ‘far out’ would be ideal, like claiming the ear is a map of the human body which allows you to treat all diseases by doing something odd on specific areas of the ear – oops, this territory is already occupied by the ear acupuncture brigade. How about postulating that you have super-natural powers which enable you to send ‘healing energy’ into patients’ bodies so that they can repair themselves? No good either: Reiki-healers might accuse you of plagiarism.
But you get the gist, I am sure, and will be able to invent something. When you do, give it a memorable name, the name can make or break your new venture.
2. Invent a fascinating history
Having identified your treatment and a fantastic name for it, you now need a good story to explain how it all came about. This task is not all that tough and might even turn out to be fun; you could think of something touching like you cured your moribund little sister at the age of 6 with your intervention, or you received the inspiration in your dreams from an old aunt who had just died, or perhaps you want to create some religious connection [have you ever visited Lourdes?]. There are no limits to your imagination; just make sure the story is gripping – one day, they might make a movie of it.
3. Add a dash of pseudo-science
Like it or not, but we live in an age where we cannot entirely exclude science from our considerations. At the very minimum, I recommend a little smattering of sciency terminology. As you don’t want to be found out, select something that only few experts understand; quantum physics, entanglement, chaos-theory and Nano-technology are all excellent options.
It might also look more convincing to hint at the notion that top scientists adore your concepts, or that whole teams from universities in distant places are working on the underlying mechanisms, or that the Nobel committee has recently been alerted etc. If at all possible, add a bit of high tech to your new invention; some shiny new apparatus with flashing lights and digital displays might be just the ticket. The apparatus can be otherwise empty – as long as it looks impressive, all is fine.
4. Do not forget a dose of ancient wisdom
With all this science – sorry, pseudo-science – you must not forget to remain firmly grounded in tradition. Your treatment ought to be based on ancient wisdom which you have rediscovered, modified and perfected. I recommend mentioning that some of the oldest cultures of the planet have already been aware of the main pillars on which your invention today proudly stands. Anything that is that old has stood the test of time which is to say, your treatment is both effective and safe.
5. Claim to have a panacea
To maximise your income, you want to have as many customers as possible. It would therefore be unwise to focus your endeavours on just one or two conditions. Commercially, it is much better to affirm in no uncertain terms that your treatment is a cure for everything, a panacea. Do not worry about the implausibility of such a claim. In the realm of quackery, it is perfectly acceptable, even common behaviour to be outlandish.
6. Deal with the ‘evidence-problem’ and the nasty sceptics
It is depressing, I know, but even the most exceptionally gifted charlatan is bound to attract doubters. Sceptics will sooner or later ask you for evidence; in fact, they are obsessed by it. But do not panic – this is by no means as threatening as it appears. The obvious solution is to provide testimonial after testimonial.
You need a website where satisfied customers report impressive stories how your treatment saved their lives. In case you do not know such customers, invent them; in the realm of quackery, there is a time-honoured tradition of writing your own testimonials. Nobody will be able to tell!
7. Demonstrate that you master the fine art of cheating with statistics
Some of the sceptics might not be impressed, and when they start criticising your ‘evidence’, you might need to go the extra mile. Providing statistics is a very good way of keeping them at bay, at least for a while. The general consensus amongst charlatans is that about 70% of their patients experience remarkable benefit from whatever placebo they throw at them. So, my advice is to do a little better and cite a case series of at least 5000 patients of whom 76.5 % showed significant improvements.
What? You don’t have such case series? Don’t be daft, be inventive!
8. Score points with Big Pharma
You must be aware who your (future) customers are (will be): they are affluent, had a decent education (evidently without much success), and are middle-aged, gullible and deeply alternative. Think of Prince Charles! Once you have empathised with this mind-set, it is obvious that you can profitably plug into the persecution complex which haunts these people.
An easy way of achieving this is to claim that Big Pharma has got wind of your innovation, is positively frightened of losing millions, and is thus doing all they can to supress it. Not only will this give you street cred with the lunatic fringe of society, it also provides a perfect explanation why your ground-breaking discovery has not been published it the top journals of medicine: the editors are all in the pocket of Big Pharma, of course.
9. Ask for money, much money
I have left the most important bit for the end; remember: your aim is to get rich! So, charge high fees, even extravagantly high ones. If your treatment is a product that you can sell (e.g. via the internet, to escape the regulators), sell it dearly; if it is a hands-on therapy, charge heavy consultation fees and claim exclusivity; if it is a teachable technique, start training other therapists at high fees and ask a franchise-cut of their future earnings.
Over-charging is your best chance of getting famous – or have you ever heard of a charlatan famous for being reasonably priced? It will also get rid of the riff-raff you don’t want to see in your surgery. Poor people might be even ill! No, you don’t want them; you want the ‘worried rich and well’ who can afford to see a real doctor when things should go wrong. But most importantly, high fees will do a lot of good to your bank account.
___________________________________________________
I must say, it is truly satisfying to see one’s advice taken so literally!
207 Responses to ‘Biofield tuning’: a new and fantastic SCAM
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These instructions haven’t aged a bit, and are still as relevant as they were in 2012 for aspiring quacks. Especially love the Q&A in the original post!
thanks
Hello Dr. Ernst,
…I’m wondering if you’ve actually had any therapeutic Biofield Tuning sessions? I’ve had at least 10 and do self-tuning therapy on myself at home as well. I’ve actually had fantastic results with this modality and I think you might want to go to Eileen’s Website and request a practitioner and try at least 3 sessions to see for yourself. Choose someone she has directly trained. You will be amazed. Or perhaps you might want to try training with her in person before you write such things. Just for the record Eileen has singlehandedly changed the “pain body” universe for many and instead of debunking her you should just see for yourself. Eileen’s contribution is genius and she deserves respect and credit not pot shots from someone that can’t actually attest to anything. Her prices are reasonable in the scheme of things….I might ask what you charge?
https://edzardernst.com/2012/11/what-is-and-what-isnt-clinical-evidence-and-why-is-the-distinction-important/
Wow. You seem quite bitter and biased for being so concerned with evidence and science. It’s unfortunate that you appear to be so closed off and close-minded. You will continue to attract negativity into your life when that’s all you project. There’s a whole beautiful world of health, healing, love and positivity that you’re missing out on. Western Medicine and big pharma are by far the greatest detriment to our collective health and healing. We are fatter, sicker, weaker, more depressed and more sleep deprived than ever before. If western medicine and pharmaceuticals work, then why is that? If you ever have doubts about something all you have to do is follow the dollar. It’s quite simple, there is no money in a healthy educated society. Yet, there are trillions to be made off of a sick, unhappy, and desperate one. I truly hope that you have the chance to discover the incredible power of sound therapy that is both deeply based in science and quite magical. Just because you don’t understand it doesn’t mean that it’s “quackery”. Sound Healing is an extremely beneficial modality that has helped thousands of people for thousands of years.
thank you for packing so many logical fallacies into one single paragraph!
I agree wholeheartedly!!
SLR
I am not sure from your post whether you are agreeing wholeheartedly with Judith or with Edzard. Could you please clariy?
Are you one of these masonic doctors , so guess what the biggest killer in the world is , doctors , prescribed medicine , can we address this problem , lot of doctors are waking up to this situation , hmmm medicine made from petro chemicals etc , your so brainy , research who did a audit on medical teaching practices in the 1920 what happened after that , who benefitted , your probably in love with the shickler family is it the opiate scandal of the century oh vey what can i say , your a shil
thank you for this revealing demonstration of your mindset
Thanks for your revealing demonstration of your mindset, Edzard.
I haven’t had any luck with conventional medical treatment lately. My primary physician just tells me there’s not any problems! So I get where you are coming from and I agree whoelheartedly!!! What happened if you can’t say something nice keep your MOUTH SHUT!!!!
SLR
Again I am unsure what position you are taking here. Steve P’s post is quite incoherent and to my mind quite rude. I am at a loss to understand what point(s) he is intending to make. If you understand him then I think several readers here would welcome an explanation. Or is he the one whom you feel should keep his mouth shut?
This is so on point, funny his response!
Dr. Ernst I’m quite sure you are one of those allopathic Dr’s who believe the fact that nutrition by way of food is medicine is pure quackery. I’m in the medical field I eat mostly a plant based diet and at 63 I have no health issues I take no poison “so called medicine” and I look like I’m in my 40s. I myself have used Herbals, Acupuncture, reflexology, light therapy and other healing modalities that actually work and I am just learning about tuning forks and their ability to heal through frequency which is actually how all healing practices truly work perhaps you should do your own research. Free your mind and the rest will follow.
Somehow, I am not totally convinced that, as you say “all healing practices ” work through the use of “frequencies”. Really? So if I understood your statement and logic correctly, conditions like salmonella i
infections, parasitic infections like trichinosis and the various types of cancers or even metabolic /genetic disorders like hemophilia can be “traeted” using some sort of frequency?
I am not being critical of so-called Biofield treatments, however I do question the assertion that any and all forms of healing are somehow frequency-related.
Do you also have any bridges to sell me? LOL
Try it and you may I say.
Once again the “sheep” skeptics don’t know what they are talking about. Has this author had first hand experience with a biofield tuning session? I think not. The most accurate and concrete evidence one can provide to anything in life is when one has had first hand experiences. If you have not had first hand experience then you should not be making false claims that a healing technique is a scam or pseudoscience. Come on so called doctors and get your heads out of the prehistoric medical science sand and get with the new updated, fact checked, proven science. I’m losing all faith in the medical community as a result of their close minded thinking and vintage healing techniques.
@Amy
Well done. It’s quite an achievement to get so much wrong in such a short space and in such a hubristic, pompous and high-handed manner. I congratulate you.
So.
You use these words. I do not think you understand what they mean. Would you be so kind as to provide us with some links to some published, fact-checked, proven science which you believe supports your vapid assertions?
We’ll wait.
Oh, and prepare to be laughed at.
No thanks. Small closed minds such as yourself are not worth the effort and time it would take to provide you with information. It’s not my job to prove anything to you. If you truly want to know the science behind Biofield tuning then research it yourself. And if you don’t then you are just another sheep following the cattle. Thanks for providing me with a laugh at your ignorance.
Amy
You made the claims, it’s up to you to prove them. That you are unable to speaks volumes. Run along, now.
@Amy
https://www.azquotes.com/quote/1126182
The problem with personal experiences is that they can be extremely misleading, mainly for two reasons:
– If you experience something (e.g. relief from medical complaints), it is often impossible to tell what caused this experience. Most medical complaints go away or improve by themselves after a while. If this happens shortly after you visited a bioresonance practitioner, then this improvement will almost certainly – but erroneously – attributed to the ‘treatment’.
– Then there is the good old placebo effect. If the bioresonance practitioner is a friendly, self-assured and perhaps even charismatic person who patiently listens to your story, then chances are that you will almost instantly (sometimes within minutes) feel a lot better when consulting this person. And what is more: when, after a while, complaints recur, you will of course return to the bioresonance practitioner for another treatment, which most once again will make you feel a lot better. What you are in fact doing here, is conditioning yourself(*) to associate bioresonance treatments with feeling good. So for you, the treatment clearly ‘works’, almost every single time. But, and this is the important bit, this does not prove that it objectively works.
That is the problem: there is no scientific evidence at all for ‘bioresonance’ or its therapeutic value, other than as a placebo treatment.
The existence of bioresonance or a biofield is completely unproven. The proponents of bioresonance mention ‘energy’ and ‘resonance’ and other jargon gleaned from physics, but just mentioning these terms doesn’t prove or explain anything. When I (a biomedical electronics engineer) ask these people to explain in scientific terms what exactly this biofield is, what it is that is resonating, how this biofield or resonance can be detected, how it influences the body’s homeostasis, and how it is manipulated to change this homeostasis in a therapeutic way, all that usually ensues is silence. Or they come up with something about qi and chakras or other esoteric (and wholly unproven) concepts. Sometimes they resort to circular reasoning: “We see it work, so that means that it exists, and if we treat people with it, they get better, which means that it works”.
Certainly, the fact that the existence of something is not yet proven does not mean that it does not exist – if its influence can be reliably detected in an indirect way, then its existence can be inferred, even if it is provisional. The most prominent example of this is dark matter. This mysterious type of matter has never been directly observed in any scientific way, but its existence is assumed because of the unexpected way that galaxies rotate (i.e. way too fast considering their visible mass), and no other explanation for this truly universal anomaly has been found so far.
However, the same does not go for bioresonance. Any therapeutic effects of bioresonance are easily explained by placebo effects as described above, so there is no need to posit any mysterious ‘biofield’ or ‘subtle energy’ or other things for which there is no proof of existence.
As soon as the existence of said phenomena is proven in an objective scientific manner (i.e. that any sufficiently educated scientist can reliably detect them), the scientific body of knowledge shall be updated to reflect this, and regular medicine may incorporate it if it is proven to benefit patients. But no sooner.
*: I conditioned myself to feel good by getting on my bicycle and ride out into the countryside for a few hours. After only a few miles, sensations of exhilaration and freedom kick in. Other people can reliably evoke similar sensations by visiting a sports match or listening to their favourite music, or by going to a restaurant and enjoying haute cuisine. Other people again have conditioned themselves to feeling good when they attend religious events, sometimes to the extent of overwhelming ecstatic emotions (which is also the basis of faith healing).
Sorry but you lost me as soon as I read you saying that chakras are not scientifically proven. They are and have been for quite some time. Newtonian science is outdated and all those who rely solely on it are unfortunately doing themselves a disservice.
that’s wonderful news!
can you show us the actual proof, please?
@Amy
That is odd … I can’t find any scientific papers about this hugely important development in the field of esoteric knowledge. Yes, I can find papers by alternative practitioners casually mentioning chakras, subtle energy etcetera as if they are real phenomena, but these assumptions are nowhere actually substantiated. Could you point to proper peer-reviewed scientific work?
Sorry, but now you lost me. What do you mean by this? Is this a prelude to dragging quantum physics and/or perhaps even the relativity theory into the picture? Then I can tell you that neither has any bearing on medicine, and anyone claiming that their favourite type of quackery works because of quantum effects or the mass-energy equivalence or the likes are only making themselves look foolish in the eyes of real scientists. I have yet to meet the first alternative practitioner or believer who understands even the most elementary principles of these (admittedly rather tricky) scientific subjects.
Hi, I stumbled on your page. I am learning about biofield tuning myself. I had ptsd type symptoms where I would shoot into “fight or flight” mode when I heard loud noises. After two sessions, I did not have the same reaction.
I have done it with my mom who has fibromyalgia and extremely low energy: She has felt a huge increase in energy.
Do I totally understand how it works? No, not really. Are there some weird things associated with it? Definitely. But I know it has dramatically changed my life for the better.
You are entitled to your opinions. But I am not a made up client with a fake story. 🤷♀️
Love it, instructions 1-9 perfectly describe allopathic medicine.
How do you observe (snort) something that extends 2-3 down from your body if There is a floor there? If it’s true, shouldn’t the biofield (snort) fan out at the bottom. Oh, the pesky details
biofielders are clearly not nitpickers
actually, biofielders recognize that the devil is in the details.
That probably depends on what the floor is made of (i.e. how it resonates and whether it contains anything that might disrupt an electromagnetic field).
At 二条城 (Nijou-jou, a castle in Kyoto, former capital of Japan) there are floors made of wooden floorboards resting on metal prongs arranged in pairs that touch each other. The weight of anybody walking on the floor causes the prongs to cross over each other (rather like a plectrum picking at a guitar string) and make a noise. These 鶯張り (uguisubari or “nightingale floors”) made it impossible for a would-be assassin to sneak up on the Shogun. I expect they functioned as a weapon as well as an alarm, disrupting the tuning of the biofield of the intruder.
wrt #3 & #4 this might help
http://sebpearce.com/bullshit/
Do not knock it until you try it.
If you go through the training with EILEEN MCKUSICK, and STILL believe that is has no value, THEN post a comment. I have trained with her, and I can attest not only does it work in person, but this amazing therapy works at a distance AND with animals AND humans. Do you research, have the experience yourself, then comment. This is NOT a Scam. It works!!!
as long as you cannot show me evidence and have to rely on testimonials, it is an unproven SCAM
Just as Galileo had to invent new tools ( a telescope) to research new horizons that people in his time could not see or comprehend ( and likewise suffer the ignorance of naysayers) we too are in an age where we are attempting to use stone age tools fashioned in the limited Newtonian world of particulate physics to measure and observe mechanisms at play in the , as of yet, unmeasuable electro-magnetic world of waves and vibrational quantum physics.
Just like Galileo had much trouble convincing the people of his time of the true behavior of our solar system and the relationship between the Earth, the Sun and Moon and so he had to invent the telescope to prove his observations. We too need instruments that do not exist yet to measure the energetic, vibrational field of the universe that is also mirrored in our inner innate vibrational consciousness.
We need a consciousness telescope that hopefully will not take a 100 years to convince people to look through to be convinced like Galileo had to endure.
Galileo could not use any of the tools available during his time to measure what he “felt” to be true and so had to invent new means to prove his assumptions so too, the new consciousness scientists need new tools to do the same.
We can not use rocks to build a FrPB receiver and we can not use tools built out of stone age material things to measure non-material things when studying the energetic and invisible life-force we call consciousness or the human bio-=eletcrical field that exists in the non-material realm.
It is no longer questioned in the health profession that sound, meditation, visualization, music, and hell even therapy dogs work to speed the recovery of their patient partners and that meditation and the power of positive thinking/visualization and personal conscious intent helps reduce stress and many common illnesses. But how do we go about measuring these phenomena?
Do the tools we have available to us now afford us the ability to measure things unseen? How do we measure the co-dependent relationships that exist in the energetic sphere? How do we quantify the potential of the connections between the heart, inner spirit and consciousness of animals and human beings, and in fact the conscious connectedness of all sentient and non-sentient things in the universe?
Quantum mechanics has shown the entanglement that exits between particles separated by many light years and the effect that simple observation has on the potential behavior of matter at the sub-atomic level but how do we go about measuring the potential or shared energy of these connections when we are using tools built to measure material events borne out of the Newtonian stone age?
Just as in centuries past, new tools need to be developed to measure these new discoveries and we are still in the stone age in terms of measuring events that occur in the vibrational, wave behaviour consciousness energy field.
The tried and true method of personal scientific observation and anecdotal eye witness accounts re all we really have at this moment, much like Galileo and other thought leaders off his time, to measure and record consciousness events and the power of intent and the inner, energetic body.
Our current tools built from and for the Newtonian world are antiquated and we will need to arise out of the stone age and develop new tools of an observational nature to measure the somatic, ethereal energies that arise from our inner, higher conscious selves.
Just like All the discoveries in the past that started as a tinge of feeling or “gut instinct” we are still in the stone age in many ways and until our intellects can catch up or rather align with and be in tune with these higher vibrational patterns we will continue to be slaves of aging, disease, fear, ignorance and suffering.
We are in all ways like young adolescents who are just on the cusp of inner discovery and higher enlightenment. And as quantum computing and mechanics takes over in the next decade new inner discoveries along these lines of the so called quack intuitives who have known what quantum physics is discovering to be true all along will follow.
Just as Einstein, near his death, was beginning to throw out and doubt much of his life work as he realized his colleagues Bohr and Heisenberg were throwing the baby out with the bath water as they discovered what Einstein termed “spooky action at a distance” with quantum entanglement and the horror he had at realizing that Newtonian physics hinged on the constant for dark matter that could NOT account for over 90% of the mass in our universe ( which Einstein and his contemporaries began to realize was also the missing mass in our our own higgs boson particles in our internal atomic make-up.)
As Bohr famously explained after receiving the Noble Prize, ” If quantum mechanics hasn’t profoundly shocked you, you don’t understand it yet because ALL that we are calling real is actually made up of things that are NOT real.”
So,as we develop new tools to measure the TRUE nature of our UN – REALITY(much like the CERN super-collider that has been responsible for peeling away so much of the veneer of the multi-parelled universe we live in) and as we inwardly sample and explore what is REALLY happening on our sub – atomic level in the “sea of all observable potentialities” (Einstein) we will raise our intellectual frequency and find whole new universes that have always been there awaiting us; full of the power of self-healing, regenerative DNA growth, inter-dimensional telepathic communication and travel ( “spooky action at a distance” as Einstein liked to call it) and awareness of our higher parallel beings light years away like Heisenberg, Tesla and Bohr predicted.
And then , what side shall you like to be on?
The conservative naysayers of the entrenched status quo science establishment of the past or the side of the heretical “quacks” who dared to be thought leaders and ushered humankind up a few notches on the ascension ladder?
what a superbly phrased concoction of fallacies, pseudoscience and BS!
congratulations, that is no mean achievement.
Edzard. Not fallacies just misplaced scaffolding! Galileo did not invent the telescope rather iteratively refined it for his advanced stargazing and brought his new refinements it to their fullest expression during his time and thus invented its modern, fullest usage for our purposes.
But no, in true scientific inquiry fashion entanglement has been extrapolated outwards and postulated to work across , even billions of light years and in a recent study at MIT proiven to most likely exist across galaxies and 7.8 billion light years in the past in their studies trying to find a loophole explanation for it in classical particle physics by measuring entanglement of light particles from across galaxies.
http://news.mit.edu/2018/light-ancient-quasars-helps-confirm-quantum-entanglement-0820
And Einstein, being the genius he was and foreseeing the presence of Dark Matter, was bothered by the fuzzy math and large unaccounted for chunks of photonic energy (planks constant) that propped up his and others’ classical physics models in the first half of the 20th century and “intuited” the presence of dark matter in his study of black holes and the gravitational effect on space-time of large unseen celestial forces- dark matter. Meaning, he began to think that gravity was being unseated as the major force in the unviverse -replaced by the something else that was later found to be dark matter. still a sticky point to physicists trying to unify their models of reality.
In simple terms the. universe is 99% blank. empty dark matter space and that is also mirrored on the quanta level in the building blocks that make up our cells and the cells of things in our “perception” of physical reality. ..
so with 99% of our reality empty space and undefined energy….
being educated in the easy manipulation of it by intuitive, energy/medicine doctors through centuries old proven methods like Reiki, QI Gong, chakra cleansing and the newer field of neuro/bio energetics seems like the logical conclusion to the model that quantum physicists are laying out.
John,
Einstein wrote several books explaining his ideas simply without resorting to too much mathematics. They are still in print. You could start by reading them. Also “Why does E=MC squared, and why does it matter? by Brian Cox and Jeff Forshaw – a little bit of maths but nothing beyond A-level.
A recent edition of New Scientist (6th June 2020) carried a feature by Nobel Prizewinner Jeff Peebles, who came up with the ideas of dark matter and dark energy. It is a good summary of where we are so far and an interesting read.
Of course if you want to understand General Relativity and Quantum Theory at a higher level you can’t avoid the maths, but that would be the final year of an undergraduate physics course.
Or you can just wait until you have come down from your trip before posting.
John,
I think you need to brush up on your history of science as a lot of what you are claiming is factually wrong.
Galileo did not invent the telescope. Dark matter was postulated long after Einstein’s death. We have many tools for measuring things that cannot be seen (x-rays, gravitational waves, subatomic particles, ultrasound…). There are also many tools for detecting and measuring quantum effects. Entanglement had been demonstrated for particles several hundred kilometres apart, not light-years. The idea of observation affecting events on an atomic level and the multiple worlds idea are both ways of explaning quantum phenomena but there is no reason to suppose that they are actually true…
Most of what you are saying makes too little sense to comment on constructively.
Dr. Money-Kyrie- yes of course. i misspoke.. Galileo did not invent the telescope rather iteratively refined it for his advanced stargazing and brought his new refinements it to their fullest expression during his time and thus invented its modern, fullest usage for our purposes.
But no, in true scientific inquiry fashion entanglement has been extrapolated outwards and postulated to work across , even billions of light years and in a recent study at MIT proiven to most likely exist across galaxies and 7.8 billion light years in the past in their studies trying to find a loophole explanation for it in classical particle physics by measuring entanglement of light particles from across galaxies.
http://news.mit.edu/2018/light-ancient-quasars-helps-confirm-quantum-entanglement-0820
And Einstein, being the genius he was and foreseeing the presence of Dark Matter, was bothered by the fuzzy math and large unaccounted for chunks of photonic energy (planks constant) that propped up his and others’ classical physics models in the first half of the 20th century and “intuited” the presence of dark matter in his study of black holes and the gravitational effect on space-time of large unseen celestial forces- dark matter. Meaning, he began to think that gravity was being unseated as the major force in the unviverse -replaced by the something else that was later found to be dark matter. still a sticky point to physicists trying to unify their models of reality.
In simple terms the. universe is 99% blank. empty dark matter space and that is also mirrored on the quanta level in the building blocks that make up our cells and the cells of things in our “perception” of physical reality. ..
so with 99% of our reality empty space and undefined energy….
being educated in the easy manipulation of it by intuitive, energy/medicine doctors through centuries old proven methods like Reiki, QI Gong, chakra cleansing and the newer field of neuro/bio energetics seems like the logical conclusion to the model that quantum physicists are laying out.
First of all I think we should take this post back to its original spot as we were debating the efficacy of bio energetic healing..before we got side tracked into unified field theory and bogged down in the quagmire of paradoxes involved in opening up Pandora’s box through quantum mechanics.
And Julian second of all I am very flattered that you think I was on some trip while writing this morning! You are so aptly proving my point so amazingly through direct observation that I could not have wished for a better segue into what I want to educate you both on now!..I don’t do drugs of any sort and drink red wine rarely only on the odd occasion.
I was , however, on a natural high that you obviously picked up on as I spend each morning with about a 1.5 hour session of Yoga, Tai Chi and Qi Gong wrapped up with a half hour of singing bowl meditation, deep breathing and color spectrum visualizations.
.Julian you very intuitively picked up on the effects of the concomitant dopamine and oxytocin rush through my body and suppression of cortisol and adrenaline. I was merely on a morning high of my blood being flooded with these healing enzymes, lowered blood pressure and my heart rate hovering somewhere around 54 bpm.
Let the education of Edzard and Julian begin..
All the above mentioned effects are 100% irrefutably proven to be medically healthy side effects of meditation, bioenergetic work, deep breathing, and auto immune function regulation through Yoga Tai Chi , sound toning and many alternative movement and bioenergetic healing exercises.
All requiring nothing more than the will and desire to heal and stay healthy and an extra hour or so of your morning…. no medicine.. no doctors.. no pharmaceuticals ..just pure, inward directing of the internal energy resources abundant and present in EACH OF US..
Natural energy internal healing mechanisms being activated and released into my bloodstream via simple bioenergetic and biochemical responses to the stimulation of the baroreceptors around my heart and lungs and the Vagus nerve. The simple act of deep breathing and visualization stimulates the parasympathetic nervous system and natural immune functions- no doctors needed.
Vagus nerve stimulation is also done electrically at the Mayo clinic ( and other cancer clinics) for these exact same reasons but why do it intrusively with so many deleterious side effects when it is so easy to do naturally?so.. this takes us right back to the proof of the efficacy of bioenergetic healing and the effect of sonic field vibration and working with the electromagnetic field in and around the body that you failed so very miserably to refute.
And to aid in the furtherance of your education and to completely debunk your claims that bio energetics is a scam or quackery or a hoaxI As we shift from the status quo of looking at life in a biochemical way (and as we also switch to the new models afforded us through quantum physics/mechanics and quantum computing ) we are moving into the understanding of the electromagnetic and subtle electrical charges present in our bodies, organs and cells and how they can be manipulated and restored to their epigenetic origins of proper function.
This bioenergetic field of medicine is starting to supplant the biochemical view of human life, illness and the treatment of disease through manipulation of this subtle energy field all around us. EEG’s and ECG’s have been measuring this subtle bio – field of energy around our brain and heart for many years.
(I dont even want to go down the road of the discovery of how the heart emits the MOST EMF (by around 80%) over the brain and other organs and has a completely autonomous set of self-contained neurons and how the heart sends more commands to the brain and organs than vica-verse- but that is a whole other education for you both!)
So. to keep the focus on the proof of the existence of living beings’ subtle, etheric somatic energy field and efficacy of bioenergetic medicine and subtle energy field treatment VERY simple and digestible for you both, I give you both just two very simple terms with very profound implications surrounding the influence of the EMF (electromagnetic fields) around living organisms and the ability of bio energetic healers to positively effect those vibrational and electromagnetic reactions in our cells tissue and organs…
.Squid ( Or superconducting quantum interference device)
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1360859297800137
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/0953-2048/29/11/113001
and STF ( A new branch of quantum mechanics called the Self field theory mathematically relating the EM qualities of photons, the hydrogen atom and in turn our internal biology. Namely, how protons/hydrogen atoms at our cellular level interact and create matter through excitation via acoustic, magnetic and electrical fields)
https://www.academia.edu/34265667/Self-Field_Theory-New_Photonic_Insights
https://d1wqtxts1xzle7.cloudfront.net/54166906/01fleming.pdf?1502989344=&response-content-disposition=inline%3B+filename%3DElectromagnetic_Self-Field_Theory_and_It.pdf&Expires=1593036184&Signature=DVq0QOHH-TTAOG7v9JjjbM9yB~AQl9rv1fMgRKQuJrQnKGSnMAaVRrNXQPcE6NBceUJ5sZ9sNQzpmBsL8R8NsQSNcQa0NwZTG2qbhuNpjvWWZV4e3hrGqgD4hpyA32d3mc8zCHWm12vkX3j1QH9B3Cpi04uDnAryLwe2RdQhWfDfpWzAAXBuUpNZ3SgoVp3A3uRdwVYdbYa2vPdQ6EiYeYoyOlu8TyBFsZG90YyjeCx-p0QdcQ1RivtBl0XNro8wJpZiY7E03FsyIZdfl9ZpiFZxMQDphzLsO5G~eM1zMlh8TsfJSjjUidtca8Vx~zYVSNjC7bSaTQS2sdggffLFHQ__&Key-Pair-Id=APKAJLOHF5GGSLRBV4ZA
It’s all vibrational not sensational..
And before you delete my posts because your unmerited arrogance is a telling sign of a fragile ego, I both salute and reprimand you both for your steadfast commitment to dying scientific beliefs and the promulgation of Pavlovian pharmaceuticals (not to mention the negligence of your patients – if indeed you are practicing and are not just an armchair Rx!)
John,
Do you know that these levels changed (have you measured them) or are you making an assumption?
They are hormones, not enzymes.
That is one reason why it is easier to measure an echocardiogram (ECG, or EKG in the US) than an electroencephalogram (EEG).
I think you will find that their reasons are quite different.
My education began half a century ago (Jacobstowe School, Cornwall, St. Catharine’s Primary School, Bournemouth, Bournemouth Grammar School, Eton College (King’s Scholar), Trinity College Cambridge (entrance scholarship), University of London, Royal College of Physicians, Royal College of Radiologists), and while I have never stopped reading and observing, and finding connections between things everywhere I look, I find it difficult to fit much of what you are saying into any recognisable framework.
I haven’t got time at the moment to follow your links as I am learning a Bach fugue at the moment (BWV 543) and I need to practice.
I haven’t got time at the moment to follow your links as I am learning a Bach fugue at the moment (BWV 543) and I need to practice.
Julian – Now THAT is music to my ears! Johann is good for you AND our collective consciousness!
Finally, something a scientific materialist and a metaphysical empath can agree on!
Enjoy!
( FYI – A-minor is almost always my favorite go to key for film scoring/composing when I’m sketching up drafts)
I think Bach has something to offer everyone. You can listen to his music in so many ways – the more you analyse it the more remarkable and ingenious it is, or you can just lie back and wallow in it. Unfortunately I can’t really do him justice with my playing, but I really love this piece which doesn’t have to be played with all the stops out and has a sense of deep truth and consolation to it. He is a composer who understood the organ in a way that nobody else ever has, before or since.
“Planck’s” constant. Show a little respect. Einstein’s cosmological constant was a forlorn attempt to save General Relativity by saving the universe from collapse. He came to regret lambda. Prescient it was not but it proved to have great potential.
It was you who regurgitated dated hippy scrambled eggs stuff about eastern religion and physics. How quaintly queer it is to hear all that guff again.
As for Yoga etc you may bang on as much as you please right up to your etheric neck. “Academia.edu” is an outlet for nutters to gratify their prodigious delusions of intellectual grandeur.
That ludicrously long link disappears into the ether. How apt.
Bravo! Thank you!
have any of you naysayers ever even considered, explored/experimented with sound for healing? Have you had a biofield tuning session? I would guess not likely because if you had, you would not be name calling and making judgements based on nothing more than uninformed opinion. This comment excludes Dr JulianMoney-Kyrle as the post contained only interesting information that is clearly in support of frequency medicine which, unfortunately BIG PHARMA/AMA trained doktors get zero education in. That is why their practice of allopathic pharmaceutical poison pill medicine” cures no thing and heals no one and Frequency medicine allows the body to heal as it innately and naturally knows how to do.
musicmama said:
What frequency or frequency of what? Answers to either or both will do.
Eileen’s elegant presentation explains in the most simple way, with a white board and a stick figure, what the biofield is and how and why tuning the biofield works to clear away in minutes, what years of conventional therapies for mental, emotional and physical health could not. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34gcvxtuFGk
That reminds me of ‘Dr’ Charlene Werner: Dr Charlene Werner, homeopath, explains Cosmology and Quantum Physics
Why is it a scam? Did you try it? The us military studied it for over 40 yrs…eastern medicine used it 4 times as long as “proven” medicine… isn’t that same proven medicine the same that comes with a slew of side effects and then a law suit down the line… science fiction just isn’t science fact because we haven’t learned the how… this doesn’t change the truth… you can’t get wet by the word water… call it Biofield, call it god , call it the universe science HAS PROVEN ITS EXISTENCE.
I’ll give you 1 source, be a true skeptic and find more on your own… it’s a dot gov site directly from the US GOVT
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4654779/
did you try it?
THE QUESTION ASKED BY MANY PEOPLE WHO HAVE UNDERSTOOD NOTHING
Edward- One does not need to understand LOVE (for another human, a 4 legged friend or an expanse of magical nature) to know it works. Though many have tried to explain and understand it – Love works. Period. Have you tried it lately? If so, then you may yet one day understand what is not yet easily explained or observed with our stone age materialist tools.
NOT BRIGHT ENOUGH EVEN TO SPELL MY NAME CORRECTLY?
You don’t really have a clue what you linked to, do you Rob?
[rhetorical question]
Rob,
No it isn’t.
Your link is to an INDEXING service, which is hosted by the National Institutes of Health and ultmately by the US Government, but that does not mean that they are responsible for the paper that you reference nor that they endorse it in any way.
I started to read it but gave up after the first two pages. It is abject nonsense; the authors appear to be arguing that quantum effects scaled up to the macroscopic level are important in biology and that the biofield is something explicable in those terms. However, I get the impression that they do not understand either quantum theory or biology terribly well.
Deepak Chopra? Oh please, Rob.
I suggest you look up “Quantum Flapdoodle”. The wikipedia entry relevant to it has a special mention for Chopra. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_mysticism
he is hilarious, isn’t he?
@Rob
Um, no. Science has not proven the existence of a biofield, or anything even close to a ‘biofield’.
Some pseudoscientific adherents claim that they have found evidence for the existence of said ‘biofield’, but their evidence is extremely weak, and has not been corroborated by real scientists at all, let alone in a robust, rigorous and reproducible manner.
But for the sake of the argument let us assume that this ‘biofield’ exists. Do you think that this assumed existence answers any questions? Nope, it does not – quite the contrary: it raises a huge amount of questions, questions that are exceedingly difficult to answer:
– What is the nature of this ‘biofield’? Is it an electromagnetic field? Is is a quantum field? Yes, pseudoscience adherents sprinkle the word ‘quantum’ liberally throughout their incomprehensible ‘explanations’, but real physicists with real insight in quantum physics are not impressed at all, and relegate this gibberish to the realm of fiction. So far, nobody has been able to give a satisfactory description of what a biofield actually is.
– How can one consistently observe the existence of this ‘biofield’? So far, nobody has been able to set up an experiment by which an arbitrary person can observe the existence of a biofield.
– How can one measure the strength and direction of this ‘biofield’? A field is defined as a spatially distributed phenomenon with a particular strength and direction at each point in space. Nobody has come up with a way to perform measurements on a biofield (which of course is because nobody has managed to unequivocally prove its existence in the first place).
– How is this ‘biofield’ related to a person’s health? Even if a biofield would actually exist, this does not necessarily mean that it is in any way related to the state of health of a person. For comparison: every person has a property called ‘weight’ (or more precisely: mass), but barring extreme obesity or emaciation, someone’s weight says nothing in particular about their health.
– If this ‘biofield’ has some relation to a person’s state of health, how is this established? Intricately structured fields (e.g. the distribution of charge or electron quantum wave functions around a larger molecule(*)) only has a nanometer range, with only very localized effects, which by definition cannot be detected at larger than microscopic ranges. OTOH, larger fields such as a macroscopic magnetic field inherently lack a complex structure necessary to explain the highly specific health-related effects claimed by proponents of biofields.
None of these questions is answered in any scientifically acceptable way. Which is why the whole concept of a ‘biofield’ can be safely dismissed until these answers are provided.
*: And this charge distribution in and around molecules is in fact exactly what makes chemistry and by extension biochemistry and pharmacology work. There is no need for any elusive ‘biofield’ at all – and this is yet another argument against its existence: why would evolution consistently fail to take advantage of this ‘biofield’, and instead rely on all that clumsy chemistry with proteins and enzymes and immune cells and whatnot in order to keep organisms healthy?
And oh:
Please explain how I can try to do things with my biofield – without the intervention of a quack, that is. I am quite knowledgeable in several scientific areas, so please tell me how I can observe (and perhaps even control!) my own biofield. After all, as an electronics expert, I can observe any other type of field as well, by just using the appropriate tools and knowledge.
Richard – anything that has an electric current running through it has a magnetic field around it. This is basic science. The human body is no exception. The human biofield is the body’s electrical system in its entirety – both the electric current that runs through it, powering the heart and brain and everything else – and the weak magnetic field that surrounds it. Pretty hard to deny the existence of something so basic!
@plasmadragon: Electricity does NOT “power the heart and the brain and everything else”. ATP does. You’d know that if you knew anything at all.
What bioelectricity (which is just ions moving along a channel) does is provide communication. Nerve impulses, passing from receptor to brain, and from brain to muscle. And while the movement of those ions will generate an electric field (all charged particles in motion do), that magnetic field will be incredibly weak; far too weak to have a measurable biological effect itself.
Which is just as well: if weak magnetic fields did have a serious biological impact then merely existing on this planet (which has a far larger magnetic field) would scramble us all. Because electromagnetism acts equally in both directions, durr.
(And just imagine the horrors of the MRI suite, where patients all pop like balloons!)
Ironically, you sputed your EMR ignorance on a post discussing sound quackery (which is the stupidest part of it all). Which shows that not only do you not know what you’re talking about, you didn’t even bother to read what’s there. Just another idiot amateur priest in love with your own echolalia.
Oh dear. Best back away from your computer now; its EMR is clearly making you dim.
@plasmadragon
I’ve been working in biomedical electronics for over 30 years now, specializing in the interaction between electromagnetic systems and the body, so this concept is not exactly new to me …
Yes, the electrical currents in our body generate tiny electromagnetic fields, and the electrical component can be detected in EMG, ECG and EEG devices, whereas the (tiny) magnetic field components can be picked up by use of MEG, based on special helium-cooled magnetic detectors called SQUIDs. Then of course our body produces electromagnetic radiation in the infrared range, a.k.a. heat. And WP comes up with even more items, see under ‘Medicine’.
So far, so good.
However, these things are not what those quacks and con artists mean when they use the word ‘biofield’. They claim that the human ‘biofield’ is a very special field that not only tells them literally everything about a person’s health, but can just as easily be manipulated to influence the state of health. Both claims are nonsense, and it is easy to see why:
– If we could accurately and comprehensively diagnose a person’s state of health by simply ‘feeling’ or ‘measuring’ said biofield in a matter of minutes, then why is our medical profession still messing around with hugely expensive and bulky MRI and CT machines? Why haven’t all laboratories closed down yet, with their hopelessly outdated, time-consuming and expensive testing methods? Why do doctors spend lots of time asking patients about their complaints in attempts to get an idea what is wrong with those patients, if they can get a full diagnosis in minutes?
– And even if you could argue that electromagnetic phenomena are actually used for diagnostic purposes using the devices and methods mentioned above, there’s still the ‘treatment’ part: the quacks and con artists claim that they can manipulate this ‘biofield’ to produce therapeutic effects. So they claim that the same thing that is used for diagnosis is at the same time the means for treating any ailments and irregularities that were diagnosed. How convenient! Now why didn’t real doctors think of this? Just sticking a thermometer up a patient’s bum not only tells them if the patient has a fever, but can at the same time be used to get rid of the fever (or even the ailment that caused it)! Or when a tumour is found by palpation, it can simply be removed by pressing a bit harder! Or when a patient complains of deafness, the tones that are used to diagnose the hearing loss can also be used to cure it!
I think you get the idea. Yes, the human body produces electromagnetic fields in various strengths and frequencies, and sometimes these can even be used for diagnostic and therapeutic purposes, but no, there is no ‘biofield’ with properties like those SCAM people claim.
And they most certainly cannot diagnose or treat any condition with their fully fictional mumbo-jumbo.
@Richard: Still on the subject of electronics, I believe you dropped this.
Just because science cannot prove it exists does not mean it does not. What science HAS proven is that we see an extremely small amount of color, hear a small range of sounds (also proven by the dog whistle that humans cannot hear but dogs can) and the brain is limited in what it can perceive in the world. Why is it that people that call themselves scientists cannot even allow for ALL possibilities rather than only those that can be witnessed? Until that stops, our global society is going to remain in a modern version of the dark ages in my opinion.
Another question I have is why does everyone ignore the results from placebos? The body is capable of way more than anyone seems to want to give it credit for, and that is why there are so many people starting to realize Western medicine is not always the answer. It has it’s place, as does holistic ways of dealing with health.
“Just because science cannot prove it exists does not mean it does not.”
TRUE
But in healthcare, we tend to rely on those interventions for which we have proof.
[because, if not, it would mean ANYTHING GOES]
Becky wrote: “What science HAS proven is that we see an extremely small amount of color”
You have that backwards. By definition, the portion of the electromagnetic spectrum that we cannot see is not colour.
See also:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIE_1931_color_space
Becky,
It is true that we are quite limited in what we can perceive directly, but one thing that scientists do have are a great many tools which allow us to detect, measure and characterise phenomena that we would otherwise be quite unaware of. These range from something simple like a pair of binoculars for looking at the night sky to particle accelerators such as the Large Hadron Collider and even gravity wave detectors that have enabled us to find merging black holes. Each time a new such tool is invented, a whole branch of science opens up that didn’t previously exist. Sometimes it is hard to conceptualise what is going on in these areas as our brains have evolved to deal with the world on the scale in which we can sense it, and what is going on at other scales obeys quite different rules that run counter to intuition.
I have no doubt that scientists will continue to make discoveries that are so far from what we already know that we will not be able to predict what they will be. However, I think I can be fairly confident that biofield tuning, or anything akin to it, will not be among them.
Just because a notion is attractive and might on the face of it seem plausible (to you) does not make it true and certainly does not mean that you should accept it without considering alternatives. Unfortunately it is not a very natural thing to ask yourself “could I be mistaken?” or “might there be something else going on?” or even “how do I know this?”. However, without such questions it is very hard to avoid being misled and to get to the truth.
@Dr Julian Money-Kyrle
I think it’s also important to note that even science doesn’t immediately jump on every new idea, no matter how interesting or exciting it sounds, without at least a modicum of evidence that there’s really something going on – otherwise scientists would spend their whole life on wild goose chases.
oh maybe the evidence and data , should be like covid test kits hey false positive 94% , your probably a masonic shill , figueres can be manipulated on both sides , its a bent world what makes medical results more truthful , there often altered for profit , Edzard , doctors are scam merchant , who sell drugs for companies that provide nice incentives kickbacks , without worrying about negative reactions from patients , i wish i could have a record of your patients results , is big pharma a scam of course it is , and you are doing sweet fa to fight it ,
very kind of you to provide further confirmation of your mental state; but really, it was not needed at all.
Do your research. You don’t know what you’re talking about. You’re making yourself look stupid.
https://edzardernst.com/2012/12/ad-hominem-attacks-are-signs-of-victories-of-reason-over-unreason/
I have experienced help from alternative therapy since 1990. I went to many doctors and no one could help me but I did get help from chiropractic, Dr. Versendaal therapy and NRT, nutrition, HBLU and the most important God, Jesus.
Now I never experienced Jesus as an intervention and did not quite believe until I had my own experience. The powerful prayer to combat this type of behavior in these comments would be this.
“I call upon the power of Jesus Christ, you are bound and defeated Satan, demons, etc. Leave me now and go to the light!” Say it with powerfully and loudly then see what happens. You do not have to believe and it will work. The dark side always wants you to fight, argue, etc and believe that it is not real so it wins. It seems to be more effective to know and believe that both “doctoring” whether holistic or traditional is custom designed based on whatever the person feels comfortable with. Each one of us has a choice to choose how we want to care for ourselves but to have an open mind to how God, the life force or whatever you want to call it can heal you. The Great Physician, Doctor was Jesus himself. I am not affiliated with any religion but do have first hand experience with the Power of Jesus Christ that I cannot deny and was quite surprised by it so I can understand the many close minded views on here.
Keep your heart, mind and soul open to possibilities or you might miss out on real peace and joy. The only proof that will matter is what you believe to be true inside. Science etc will not alone.
Take note, anything said to me will not bother me since I know within what my truth is at this point so save your breath and focus on yourselves!
I am afraid that I will have to comment without trying it for myself as I have cancer, and Ms McKusick’s Web site clearly states that cancer is a contraindication:
“The reason for this is that Biofield Tuning moves stagnation in the body, resulting in a detox response in up to 50% of those who experience it. This detox can surface as extreme exhaustion, waves of emotion, or other detox symptoms such as body aches, mucus, rashes, etc.”
I was interested to see that another complication is the presence of a pacemaker:
“Biofield Tuning effects the electric rhythms in and around the body and therefore can interfere with the performance of some electric medical devices such as pacemakers.”
This seems to contradict part of the explanation given as to what the biofield is:
“One way of understanding subtle energy is through the analogy “subtle energy is to electromagnetism as water vapor is to water.” Just as we do not measure water vapor with the same tools we use to measure water, we can’t use the same tools to measure subtle energy we would use to measure electricity. Subtle energy is higher, finer, more diffuse and follows slightly different laws.”
A pacemaker is an electronic device designed to sense the heartbeat from the electrical activity of the heart muscle and to deliver an electric shock whenever it senses that an essential component of the heartbeat is missing. It has a battery. It has wires going into the heart, which means that magnetic fields can generate currents in those wires (as they do in any conductor) and it can also be programmed magnetically; most pacemakers are also designed so that if you place a strong magnet over the chest it will switch them to “safe” mode where they stop sensing the heart’s activity and simply pace at 70 beats per minute (this is useful to know if you find somebody who is unconscious due to a pacemaker malfunction as you can revive them with a magnet).
If what you are doing can affect pacemakers then it should be very easy to detect using straightforward electromagnetic sensors (which in effect the pacemaker itself it, in a sense).
I wonder if you could explain that contraindication to me? I would also be very interested to know about any documented cases of a pacemaker being affected by biofield tuning.
Who ever wrote this article ,please excuse me if I offend. First of all ,unless you physically experience any type of situation yourself that want to publish or put on the internet ,your words have no ground to hold on to and makes you sound really ignorant and primitive. I bet you believe in all the main stream science theory’s as if it were solid evidence . We live in a electric universe and everything is electric . Eileen’s evidence is in the thousands of people that she has helped and all her students she has taught that are helping more . That kind of positive energy is what this world needs more of ,and i want to thank Eileen for this. Your negative words unfortunately spreads negative energy which becomes stagnant to our spirits evolution . To Eileen; Your passion and positive energy makes you the most beautiful person on this planet , It would be a dream come true for myself to be in the presence of your energy .
I am a sceptic, however an interested sceptic, so I am going to try it next week. I work hard and if I choose to spend/waste my money in this way then that’s up to me. I like massage, I like Reiki, they leave me in a positive state, who cares if it’s placebo or actual healing. I don’t believe in any wild claims for any of this stuff and that should not be legal without proof. I would rather give my dosh to a practitioner rather than big pharma with their wild claims, now that’s a scam if ever there was one!
please list a few of what you consider ‘wild claims’ from ‘big pharma’.
EE
Here you go…. read it, you might learn sumpthin.
https://medium.com/@BlakeGossard/deceptive-drug-digits-8174ff2647d8
RG,
I followed your link and read the article. They make the very good point that reporting relative risk rather than absolute risk can be very misleading. They give the example of a hypothetical drug to prevent death from heart disease which reduces the risk from 1 in 1,000 to 1 in 2,000. If you call this a 50% reduction in the risk of death, then people might think that it was worthwhile. On the other hand if you frame it that 2,000 people have to take the drug for one of them to benefit, then a lot of people might not bother.
What they don’t point out is that if you treat, say, 100 million people then that is 50,000 lives saved. So a body responsible for public health may well make recommendations that differ from what an individual might choose.
As an oncologist I have often had to talk people through the decision whether or not to have adjuvant chemotherapy. For instance, most people with muscle-invasive bladder cancer are cured by surgery alone, but some of them aren’t, and if you give chemotherapy then there is an absolute risk reduction of about 8%. This means that for every 12 patients treated, most don’t need the chemo because they will be cured anyway, some will die regardless, but for that one person in 12 the chemo makes a life-or-death difference. Clearly if I treat everybody then I know that I am saving some lives, but I don’t know who they will be, and given the toxicity of chemotherapy it is not so obvious that it is the right decision for an individual.
Later in the article they talk about palliative oncology treatment (this is where the intent is to improve quality of life and if possible prolong survival). They give the example of nivolumab (Optivo) which is a monoclonal antibody of the type known as immunotherapy (technically it is a checkpoint inhibitor), which was compared to docetaxel (Taxotere) in a randomised trial, though they don’t say what kind of cancer it was being used for. Apparently Bristol-Myers-Squibb launched a direct-to-consumer advertising campaign saying that Optivo reduced the risk of dying by 41%, whereas in fact the survival benefit in comparison to docetaxel was only 3.2 months. They also made the point that serious adverse reactions occurred in 46% of patients. Finally they quote another trial that found that Optivo does not show any survival benefit in lung cancer in comparison to platinum-based chemotherapy, which is all very well, but docetaxel is not platinum-based chemotherapy so not relevant here.
When it comes to oncology it is quite clear that the authors of this article really have no idea what they are talking about.
I don’t know what they mean by a 41% reduction in the risk of dying in this context because they haven’t specified what point they are referring to – is it 6 months after treatment? one year? five years? On the other hand, reporting a 3.2 month survival improvement is equally misleading, since what happens in practice is that some people don’t respond at all, and others respond very well, and for those responders the survival benefit is much greater. Just taking an average figure doesn’t give you the full picture. It is much better to use a Kaplan-Maier survival curve, which is the standard way of reporting results in cancer trials, but they require a certain amount of training to understand.
I should add that a “serious adverse event” is very often a change in a blood test, and not necessarily something that will impact quality of life. Also the 3.2 month survival benefit would have included those who didn’t finish the course.
I should also add that the current gold standard treatment for metastatic lung cancer is to use a combination of a checkpoint inhibitor, platinum-based chemotherapy and another chemotherapy drug called pemetrexed, and this can give a very substantial improvement in both survival and quality of life.
The main problem is that in the US pharmaceutical companies’ legal responsibility is to their shareholders, not their customers, they are insufficiently regulated, and worst of all, they are allowed to advertise to the public. Particularly when it comes to cancer treatment, advertising to patients, who really don’t have the background and context to understand how one treatment differs from another, or indeed what they can and can’t achieve, creates a demand and probably ends up with people getting sub-optimal treatment (e.g. with the wrong drug).
So the take-home message here is that allowing pharmaceutical companies to advertise to the public is a very bad idea, and is one of the many ways that health care is broken in the US.
I find Eileen Day McKusick’s work to be of high integrity. I have taken to perform the biofield tuning work myself even though I suffer from tinnitus (It helps to be able to hear irregularities in the sound of the tuning fork). I find that the patients can often tell me when I have found a place in their biofield that lets them feel the vibrations. That if I treat those places I can erase this sensitivity they have in the corresponding location. And that this has benefits to the patients.
I find it immensely gratifying to treat people and erase symptoms from problems such as PTSD, Pain from Endometriosis, Irregular Adrenal Response, inflammatory issues, physical, emotional and mental trauma and more…
It hurts to see something I know to be so useful to others to be called a “SCAM”. But I know that some people like to stir the pot just to make themselves seem more important. Well you are important Edzard Ernst. You have infinite value. As Mr. Rogers would say – you’re precious – just the way you are. And in my heart I forgive you for defaming this practice and offending my feelings about this practice whether you want to be forgiven or not.
If you would like to experience it I can perform biofield tuning over the telephone or over the phone on a patient who agrees to be treated in this way.
Oh, by the way check out how Fenbendazole is being found useful in the fight against cancer. It’s found in dog dewormers. You won’t get a fancy “phd” title to add to your credentials for studying this. People might call you a “quack” – but you’ll save people’s lives and for that you’ll earn gratitude.
As to your claim about charging people money. I often do this work for free at a conference in Acapulco I attend. It’s my project RemedyCoin that sponsors my efforts. I think you would be interested in my ideas about giving away medical care in exchange for “forgiveness contracts” that express gratitude amounts with a built in interest rate. Money minted by the practitioner and patient together. I think I’ll build a coin called Remedy.Health where these contracts will commute their value to. The new money will need to commemorate something good for humanity. Recognizing the value of sacrifice toward the needs of others in the new money we might use.
“in my heart I forgive you for defaming this practice”
you are just too generous for words – however, I do not ‘defame’, I criticise the lack of evidence.
PLEASE SHOW ME SOME EVIDENCE.
I think you need to look up the legal definition of defamation.
In any case, the purpose of this blog is neither to offend nor to spare anybody’s feelings. If you take offence at being asked to provide evidence to support your claims then you have a very strange notion of how academic discussions normally proceed. And if you come up with nonsensical notions you shouldn’t be surprised when people don’t believe you.
I’m saving this as a classic example of the self-delusional twaddle spouted by SCAM merchants.
As Feynman said: “The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool”
Joseph would do well to heed these words.
Dr. JMK
Doc, I appreciate your analysis… as always.
I won’t make any attempt to argue the statistics. Statistics can be twisted around to prove almost anything.
The bottom line is that Big Pharma, and in many cases SBM over-promises and under-delivers.
Yes, there truly are many pitfalls of the US healthcare system. In my view, the biggest reason that the system fails is because it it not a true free market system…. not even close. Simi-capitalism just doesn’t work well.
This is something that people say when they mean that numbers aren’t important because they don’t understand them.
Though maybe you are using the word “statistics” in a different way from me. Statistics is a branch of mathematics which concerns the behaviour of random numbers, and provides powerful tools for analysing data in order to separate what is random from what is not.
The word is used in a much looser sense by to refer to numerical data of all kinds, and of course people can lie about numbers just as they can lie about anything else. Unfortunately mathematical education isn’t very good to the point where many people are numerically illiterate, and it is easy to be fooled if you don’t understand the way numbers behave. It doesn’t help that our intuitions in this area are very misleading if not outright wrong.
As a medical doctor, how do you explain TMS, currently used in Psychiatry & approved as a method to heal depression & anxiety in most major hospitals.
Also, your views on the difference between TMS & Biofield Tuning??
https://www.mayoclinic.org/tests-procedures/transcranial-magnetic-stimulation/about/pac-20384625
I’m afraid I am an oncologist, and this is completely outside my area of expertise.
TMS is a way of inducing electric currents within the brain. Any fluctuating magnetic field will produce an electric current in a conductor (this is called inductance, and is the principle behind transformers and radio antennae, among other things). Electric currents can be used to stimulate nerves, and one way of doing this is to implant electrodes into the body. A less invasive (though not very precise) method is to generate a magnetic field which is strong enough to induce electric currents in part of the brain, and so stimulate a group of nerves. I know that this is used in brain research, and until I read your post I wasn’t aware that it was now used by psychiatrists. It has been approved by NICE in the UK (who are notoriously hard to convince, though their main remit is cost-effectiveness) so presumably there are data showing that it is safe and also that there is a benefit in depression.
Biofield tuning is completely different. It is based on the postulated existence of an energy field associated with living things which nobody can detect except for the therapists themselves, who use a simple tuning fork. They claim that life experiences can damage this field, that this is the main cause of illness, and that they can repair the field (and so cure illness) by waving the tuning fork around. There is no evidence that this is true, and in fact it goes against much of what we know about physics and biology.
So TMS is at least supported by some evidence, though the results of a quick Google search suggest that there are people trying to spin it into a moneymaker. Biofield tuning is simply a con.
Read the following..then read again your reply above.
“Medicine is in transition. Conventional biomedicine is giving way to an expanded, integrative medical model that emphasizes healthcare as well as illness care, treats people not just diseases, and incorporates multiple therapeutic approaches, old and new, to offer patients greater choice”
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4654789/
OK, I’ve followed your link and read the paper by Rubik et al. It mixes established science with religious history and New Age claptrap without distinguishing between them or providing any convincing evidence. The links to some of the references are dead-ends (I’m not going to the trouble of having a library chase up print-only journals) and others are exploratory studies. Yet others reference out-of-date ideas about embryonic development.
I am afraid it will take more than a wishful belief in magic to overturn the findings of rigorous research.
If you want to know about electricity, magenetism and biology you could enrol in a biophysics course. You could start by reading about the seminal work of Alan Hodgkin (head of my college when I was an undergraduate) and Andrew Huxley in the 1930’s on the nature of the nerve impulse, for which they won a Nobel Prize in 1963. Once you understand how they used microelectrodes and voltage clamps to measure the flow of sodium and potassium ions across cell membranes, and following on from that the discovery of resting and action potentials, voltage-triggered ion channels, glucose-powered ion pumps etc. perhaps you will realise that physiology is more complicated than simply waving a tuning fork around, and in the process you may get some insight into the true beauty of life.
Your original question in any case was on how TMS differs from biofield tuning, and I think I gave you a satisfactory answer in the first place, even if you didn’t like it.
Ahh mainstream thought… such brain washing… there is more to life than we’ve been told my friends. Just consider the miracle our body is! How it functions… all the parts, and you think that we cannot be affected by energy such as sound therapy? Wow… minds need to be opened. “They” have brain washed us folks. Expand your mind, and realize that “science” cannot prove everything. This doesn’t make something illegitimate. Period.
it seems to me that, with all your openness of mind, your brain might have fallen out.
Wow, Edward, Edzard, whatever your name is, you are an angry, mean-spirited person. Have no fear this therapy will not work on those with a black heart. Just what the world needs, another ancient-minded science bully… Congratulations! You are the biggest A-hole on this thread. This can be backed up with evidence.
thank you Ron; insults are very fine and show how bright you are, but do you also have any arguments on the subject?
Well, I have just listened to a Mozart piano concerto on the radio, and I have to say that I feel better for it.
America’s Test Kitchen did a test on eating chocolate and listening to music to show if there was any difference.
Both plates were the same chocolate and when testing they played classical on one and rock music on the other.
The tester who is very skilled at chocolate tasting picked one over the other! Sound does have an effect.
Look it up
https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=americas+test+kitchen+on+music+and+chocolate&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8
I’m off to her “school” in May. I’ve been a student of the esoteric arts for over thirty years. This seems to me to cover: the human aura,chakras,assemblage points, meridians,emotional code clearing, string theory, Tesla, ether,plasma,a shamans drum etc. If these forks can be used to detect the effects of physical/ and emotional issues (current or past) and be used to positively effect people, I’m in. Luminous vibrating energy beings trying to be in harmony with the universe
Some studies show promising response to certain sound frequencies. Some beleive this is especially true when produced by the patient via singing and humming.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6130417/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4325896/
As a biologist I can tell you the majority of work is focused on a molecular view of life. The biological role of light, sound and electric charge in the body has been ignored and will form the basis of our future understanding of biology. Dismissing pioneers as “pseudosience” is hubris.
I like the way you call yourself a ‘critical thinker’!
@”Critical Thinker”
Biologist??
I don’t know what biology you have studied or where, but from your short communication, it almost seems like you may have missed about a centuries worth, or so, of research and accumulated biological and physical knowledge?
The roles of light, sound and electric charge in most biosystems are very well known and documented, among them the human physiology. If you know of or have made personal discoveries in addition to established and proven knowledge in these fields, I highly recommend presenting such findings here.
I have not been trained in BT nor have I experienced a treatment. I do however have an open mind. I am a practicing RN in an acute setting and western medicine is not the be all and end all. Frankly, Dr., you sound arrogant. Chemo is given to stage 3 and 4 cancer patients and it isn’t going to cure them but it does make a lot of money for oncologists now, doesn’t it? How is that any less a scam; preying on people who are frightened and desperate. All the degrees in the world do not make you any more an authority on such matters as those who claim it works. Remember, the world is not flat!
be careful: if your mind is too open, your brain might fall out.
I was going to say that! You forced me to waste time on a fuller response that is unlikely to change the mind of someone who is prepared to believe anything that appeals to them without examining it.
sorry!
I replied in another thread 2 times and only 1 was published about chocolate which I find very interesting.
The one that was not published must have scared or threatened you.
The Great Physician, Doctor Jesus Christ should be published with out editing it out by you.
People need to see other points of views and make up their own minds on what works for them.
“I call on the power of Jesus Christ, you are bound and defeated Satan, demons, etc. Leave me now and go to the light!”
It works no matter what, even if you do not believe. All I can say is try it and see what happens. Many people have been healed and I never believed until I experienced it myself.
please forgive me for not being on the computer 24/24
[and leave you conspiracy theories where they belong (in the dustbin)]
@Joanne
The problem is that personal experience does not mean anything. There are several mechanisms that can contribute to a very strong illusion(*) that something works:
– the placebo effect (you expect to feel better – and so your brain indeed makes you feel better)
– regression to the mean – people tend to seek treatment when they feel particularly bad; chances are that things get better from then on, also without treatment
– the ailment naturally resolving just when you received the treatment
– social reciprocity in interaction with practitioners: people tend to mirror the mood and behaviour of someone they trust – so if the practitioner is optimistic, their patients tend to report more progress than actually happened.
*: This illusion can be so strong that very smart people and even sceptical scientists fall for it.
The best way to really see if something works is to treat one group of people with the real treatment, and another group with a fake treatment under fully blinded conditions, and see if the treatment group shows better results. If both groups have the same outcome, then the treatment does nothing. I am quite certain that the latter will also be the outcome for ‘biofield tuning’ or ‘bioresonance’.
I suggest you talk to some of your colleagues in your local oncology department who will be able to put you right.
Chemotherapy is used in several situations:
1. Adjuvant – the tumour has a reasonably good chance of being cured by the primary treatment (usually surgery or radiotherapy) and chemotherapy increases the probability of long-term cure (or reduces the risk of it coming back, which is the same thing). Examples include breast cancer, colorectal cancer and urothelial tumours.
2. Neoadjuvant – the chemotherapy is given prior to surgery to improve the chance of success, or to make an inoperable tumour operable. Examples include inflammatory breast cancer and muscle-invasive bladder cancer.
3. Primary – Here chemotherapy is the main treatment modality and is curative on its own. Examples include metastatic testicular cancer (chemotherapy alone almost always results in long-term cure) and haematological malignancies such as acute leukaemias and high-grade lymphoma.
4. Palliative. Here it is accepted that the disease is incurable, and chemotherapy is one of the treatments used to improve the situation, e.g. by prolonging life or by easing or preventing distressing symptoms. Here the toxicity of treatment needs to be carefully weighed against the benefits and it is essential that the treating team and the patient work together to reach an informed decision. It is also essential that the treatment is stopped if it doesn’t appear to be working or if the toxicity is excessive.
I live in the UK where most chemotherapy is given by the National Health System, where oncologists are paid a fixed salary and not according to how much treatment they give. Indeed, we are well aware of the limited resources available to treat our patients and we are discouraged from spending money unnecessarily.
I should add that I have had to stop working myself roughly three years ago when I developed an incurable malignancy, and without palliative treatment I would be long dead.
I generally confine my comments to areas where I have expertise, training and experience. Where something is simply my opinion I make this clear. Perhaps this makes me sound arrogant to people who have no idea what they are talking about, but my intention is to educate and inform, and to correct dangerous misinformation. In any serious discussion of academic matters it is expected that the participants pay careful attention to what the others are saying and challenge anything that is inconsistent or can’t be supported by evidence.
Brain-washed allopathic idiots. I am sorry you will never experience the truth because you are unteachable on purpose. The elite keep this for themselves. Please get an original thought.
please try to get a functional brain cell!
something tells me that you wouldn’t read the very many studies even if they came across your desk because they’ll throw your very small-minded world views into a tailspin, and you’d just find reasons to discredit them too, instead of admitting that you know very little about the world of bioenergetics.
You can’t say the right thing to the wrong person… but there is research out there, should you care to dive into it. I don’t have the patience to try and open your mind. Good luck with that.
I am so glad to see that you are excellent at critical thinking and analysis.
SJP,
So what you are saying is that you do have evidence supporting this treatment, but you aren’t going to tell us what it is? How is that helpful?
Have you ever received a Biofield Tuning?
It seems like something you should experience, once, before you tear it apart. I don’t get how someone can be so bitterly against something they haven’t tried. You sound fearful.
Conventional medicine can do amazing things, but it’s biggest flaw is that it thinks it is the best and only way. There are many modalities that bring people comfort and assist their bodies with healing. I don’t get it, you would think a well educated person, such as yourself, would have room for considering any tool that could, non invasively, help your patients and support your commitment to keeping your patients healthy.
Renee,
It’s funny how many people are against chemotherapy without having tried it. Mind you, there is a lot of evidence that chemotherapy works. I have yet to see any evidence in favour of biofield tuning.
.Your definition of Evidence bothers me. Simply ignoring peoples own testimony is rude, inhumane, and is setting up mankind for extinction.
I knocked my head against the wall trying to get “decision makers” to examine how ozone therapy was useful to ease and eradicate symptoms of the thing they call Covid-19.
Still they cannot show me evidence that it is a communicable disease.
Joseph Baker,
If you are unused to academic discourse you may find people’s directness, and the requirement to justify any assertions that you make, are apparently rude. However, that is how it works. The purpose is to arrive at the truth, not to avoid hurting people’s feelings. If you think a scientific discussion is rude, you should try being cross-examined by a barrister in a Court of Law.
The testimony of an individual has been shown time and time again to be unreliable. They may have misinterpreted their experience, or misremembered it, or be lying. A testimony may be usedful as the starting point of an investigation but to accept it as evidence is likely to lead you up the garden path.
Why are you bothered by the requirement for evidence to be objective and repeatable? Anything else is surely hearsay.
Then you were taling to the wrong people. It is not the role of decision makes to examine therapies – this is the job of medical scientists, who are trained in how to examine them properly before reporting their findings to the decision makers.
Ozone is useful as a disinfecting agent as it kills microbes, including viruses. However, it is also hazardous to health, and it would be reckless to administer it to sick patients except in the context of a properly designed and controlled clinical trial. Do you know the outcome of of any such trials that have been conducted? If not, then on what basis are you recommending it?
The epidemiology (i.e. who gets it) shows very clearly that Covid-19 is a communicable disease. You don’t need to know anything about viruses, for instance, to establish that this is the case. We knew, for instance, that AIDS was a communicable disease and how it was spread long before the HTLV-3 virus (now known as HIV) was discovered.
What evidence would convince you? Perhaps a statistics course?
Im sad for you that you are so arrogant in your beliefs and so hostile in your need to be right.. I am evidence that Biofield Tuning is extremely beneficial. But like chemo, or medication, it might not be the correct choice for everyone and that is okay. I was extremely sick for 5 years. After a case of pneumonia, Conventional docs said I had rheumatoid arthritis, and anxiety and depression and CFS. They put me on steroids, pain killers and antidepressants- And gave me plenty of psych referrals. I got progressively worse and herniated C5 through C8 just turning over in bed on my sleep. The emergency room refused to give me xrays, or help, convinced I was a med seeker. (Sadly it was the hospital I worked for) My docs pushed for cervical fusion and gave me more opioids and gabapentin. I developed horrifically painful capsulitis in both shoulders and debilitating, painful, stiffness in both hips and my thumbs. I went from working as a healthcare practitioner to living sub functionally, unable to work, care for my child or pay my mortgage. I finally sought out an Integrative Medicine doc (an MD trained in prestigious medical facilities on both the east and west coast) who practiced outside of third party payers so he could actually treat as needed not as dictated by insurance. He gradually got me off all the meds, among other things, he identified alarmingly high viral levels (via standardized testing, Quest labs- (which none of my previous docs had offered / thought/ been allowed (?)to do) , and significant nutritional deficiencies in my body. After 3 months under his care I began to see steady improvement that continued for a year and a half. I began working again part time, but still struggled with a milder malingering form of the joint pain and stiffness, anxiety, exhaustion etc. I tried many alternatives. Biomagnetics, acupuncture, CBT, RET, acupressure, talk therapy, psychotherapy (they dx’s with PTSD and offered me more meds lol) it wasn’t until I tried Biofield tuning that I was able to heal the rest of the way. I felt a positive change after my first 90 minute session. It was intense and surprising (I went in very much a skeptic) I’m back at work (although I left conventional medicine) I can sit on the floor and play with my kid again, I can pay my mortgage. My integrative medicine doc is now very excited about the benefits of Biofield tuning for some of his patients.
So I don’t need a study to tell me Biofield Tuning is beneficial. Sometimes you just have to try somethings (Although a previous comment mentioned there are studies out there . You could, just for fun, read about nitric oxide and healing as it pertains to sound healing and tuning forks. John Beaulieu has spent years studying the effects of sound on the body using anechoic chambers. – might be something that’s interests you… or not. )
I won’t be checking back for your response. You have, frankly, sucked up enough of my time. I appreciate critical thinking and healthy skepticism but your need to be belittling and right doesn’t interest me. Light and love to you. Be well.
Anecdotes are no evidence.
A wall of text is not convincing.
John Beaulieu is a pseudoscientic shaman.
@RPGNo1
Are you making some claim that what Rener attested to didn’t happen ?
RG,
I doubt very much that it happened the way that she describes it.
@Dr. JMK
OK… doc
Just remember, you too can be accused of being a liar. Anybody can throw those accusations around, but mostly those that have a motivation hurl such poison. I doubt Rener has a motivation to lie here. He/She vanished as fast as arrived.
I could easily doubt your recovery…. but I would never suggest that it did not occur as you testified.
RG,
I am not accusing Rener of lying. But there are elements that seem implausible except perhaps within his / her belief system, and some which suggest that he / she has been lied to by charlatans.
In my experience many people believe things that aren’t true. That doesn’t make them liars.
@RG
Oh no, it happened to Rener. But it had nothing to do with biofields or any other pseudomedical treatment.
Spontaneous healings have long been known in medicine. And it is also known that a positive psyche or attitude to life can alleviate many problems.
@RPGNo1
Then you misunderstood his testimony.
You glossed over the fact that Rener is a healthcare practitioner, that means he is well familiar with evidence based medicine science and protocols. You also glossed over the fact that for five years he sought out, and complied with all the demands and therapies of his EBM practitioners…. only to leave him in WORSE condition and unable to work.
Truthfully, five years is more than adequate attempts. How much worse condition is a patient expected to tolerate before seeking out another alternative ? … please do tell.
Rener had 5 years to experience a “spontaneous healing”. The odds that it would only occur within 90 minutes of him receiving treatment of another type would be very very low…. sir.
I have one question for you, does spontaneous healing only occur after being treated with CAM ?
“Survivorship bias or survival bias is the logical error of concentrating on the people or things that made it past some selection process and overlooking those that did not, typically because of their lack of visibility. This can lead to false conclusions in several different ways. It is a form of selection bias.
Survivorship bias can lead to overly optimistic beliefs because failures are ignored, such as when companies that no longer exist are excluded from analyses of financial performance. It can also lead to the false belief that the successes in a group have some special property, rather than just coincidence …”
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias
@Pete Attkins
Yes, I followed the link to survivorship bias, this is equivalent to correlation equals causation arguments…. no ? If not, something close.
I again argue that Rener sought out EBM solutions for FIVE years, with no benefit, in fact progressed for the worse. What idiot would not seek out another path ? hmmm
The odds that beneficial response would come almost immediately after beginning the new therapy, and continue for many months would be difficult to explain away as chance.
RG,
Not so.
Take the analogous situation of a lottery, where the odds are easy to calculate. In the UK National Lottery, for instance, the chance of an individual ticket winning the jackpot is about 1 in 14 million. However, the chances of SOMEBODY winning the jackpot is closer to 1 in 2 (if nobody wins, then the prize is carried forward to the next week). You can’t really argue, however, that a jackpot win is not due to chance.
Since we have no idea how many people with chronic problems have biofield tuning without an immediate response, we have no way of calculating in advance what the chance of this happening is in an individual case, or indeed happening at all. However, even if we could, these are the wrong questions. What we actually want to know is what is the chance that biofield tuning was responsible for the outcome in this case, rather than a different explanation, and more generally, what is the probability that biofield tuning is an effective treatment for chronic conditions.
We can look at a jackpot winner and say with 100% certainty that the increase in their fortunes was due to their choice of numbers on the ticket. We can also say with certainty that lotteries are a very bad way of trying to get rich, since on average each player loses more than they win.
Indeed, there are sufficient lotteries worldwide that it is almost inevitable that somebody somewhere will win a jackpot twice. However, whenever this has happened it has always raised accusations of fraud from people who don’t understand probability.
@Dr. JMK
Doc…. I don’t give a damn about your science based trials, they mean very little.
First of all, many of them are designed to obtain a specific study group, patients that are more likely to meet the endpoints. Beyond that, the studies in some cases are open to interpretation, and data categorized in ways to show maximum benefit. Did I mention that sometimes safety data is not revealed ? … oh, well I’m sure I have mentioned that in other threads.
So, a study was able to prove that 55% of the study group met the endpoints … doc, why not one hundred percent ? You already gave me the answer not long ago…. because not everybody responds the same to ANY therapy ! So if a given synthetic drug is given approval, it doesn’t mean that it will benefit all patients. Therefore, studies that fall short of being able to benefit all patients do not mean the therapy is not valid at all, it means the therapy is beneficial for a smaller number of patients than the powers that be require to give it the stamp of approval. This magic stamp of approval apparently mean to and you your EBM cohort that it is SCIENCE and therefore it must be revered and accepted. And if any given therapy does not acquire that magic stamp of approval from the powers that be, the therapy is completely invalid. HOGWASH !
So going back to your lottery example…. that is complete BS. You can leave such mathematics at the casino.
Rener, did not experience a placebo effect, because 18 months later the therapy is still giving the benefit.
Yes, I know Doc, you are contending that Rener experienced a spontaneous healing.
I will ask you the same question that I received no reply from RPGNo1.
Does spontaneous healing only occur after patients are treated with CAM ? We know it occurs. We know that MD’s attribute spontaneous healing phenom when they can’t explain why a patient recovered, by why is I never ever never ever hear MD’s assume that a patient experienced a spontaneous healing after treating them. Do MD’s just always assume that their magic powers and magic pills were effective ? …. lol…. You would think they would know better. I think you know what I’m talking about.
BTW Doc
I wasn’t aware you are also experiencing heart issues.
You better stay far from the Wuhan Virus.
RG,
However little they may mean, they are our best route to the facts.
These don’t sound like the trials that I have been involved in. Though I agree with you that there are a lot of bad trials, and a lot of trials where the statistical analysis leaves a lot to be desired.
It is true that biological systems (including humans) are complicated and highly variable in their response. You have only to consider how different people resonse to alcohol to realise this. However, usually the reason not all subjects in a study reach the endpoint is mathematical, not biological. For instance, if the endpoint is survival, then usually the trial is analysed after the median survival is reached (i.e. half of the subjects have reached the endpoint). If you waited for 100% it could be decades longer.
The branch of mathematics dealing with probability was originally developed in relation to gambling, but it is applicable to any situation where there are random influences. This is very much the case when it comes to the behaviour of disease, and indeed many more areas of life than most people are aware of.
I never suggested that it was a placebo effect.
In answer to your question, I would say generally not.
Doctors are very much aware that most conditions are self-limiting and will resolve given enough time. Much of what they do is to try to work out which ones won’t, and when a patient’s symptoms might indicate something more serious. Usually this means investigating and treating a lot of people who don’t need it for the sake of those that do.
Thank-you for your concerns. I have been keeping myself as isolated as possible since March as I have multiple myeloma, which is a much bigger risk factor for a poor outcome with Covid-19 than coronary heart disease, at least according to my haematologist, who has lost a number of patients to this infection. It is very frustrating as my wife and I love to travel, and we also want to see our grandchildren in New Zealand. Luckily we live in the country, where we can get out of the house, walk the dog and watch the wildlife without encountering anybody else.
lol, I appreciate you honesty.
Your existence sound like many of us. I’m up for traveling, but not so much my wife. I’ll only remain cooped up for so long…. then I’m outta here, rona virus or not.
Say doc, not to be an A-hole, but I was under the impression you were cured of MM. So what are you indicating by stating you have MM ? …. it’s in remission… correct ? Are you still receiving treatments ?
Unfortunately there are no cures for multiple myeloma. After failing to response to the first three lines of treatment (including chemotherapy), I am now on daratumumab infusions every month combined with pomalidomide. This has kept me stable for the last three years, and I feel a lot better than I did in 2017, but I still have extensive involvement of my bone marrow and significant immunosuppression.
@DR. JMK
Sorry to hear doc, but I guess the good news is that you are stable… and alive.
Keep up the prescribed therapy, it sounds like it’s beneficial for you.
I don’t agree with you much, but I like you all the same. You’re a helluva kind man.
Duh! Who needs fancy tuning, remedies or supplements, when removing your loafers is all you’ll ever need?! ?
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28987038/
Things exist without any explanation as to how they do and not much in the way of How it might come to be. But I find that even being a pessimistic individual without having tried it out for yourself 1st shows that he might not have been loved enough as a child you can around a lot of really crappy energy so rather than knocking something why don’t you go get the proof instead of trying to dispute that it’s legit. So here’s what I have to add to it I don’t have anything for you Add event my experience and I can tell you that I been through an awful lot in my life I am also a psychic I am sure you’ll scoff at that to my specialty Is medical O yes that’s right I can literally detect things that are not functioning correctly in a person’s body through sensory of feeling and after 14 years of intensive study inexperience with plant medicine and nutrition I’m being brought on a journey to heal not just my mind for my body after having healed myself a breast and lung cancer while living in my car for last 4 years but of my childhood traumas That surely have something to do including the current ones with the state that I’ve lived in in its not a state of grace on sad to report. I’ve had many and I know that there’s a reason for clearly innocent carried around like Santa Claus for the rest of my life and I am not a young person but I am not old. I am 52 years old my current residence is Walmart parking lot in Indian Trail of North Carolina and ensure you might want to investigate that to just to make sure that that’s not a scam. Personally I am not practicing and I don’t charge anything for my services because after several 1000 people Live written in my car as a ride share driver I have given some pertinent information to help people on their journey to healing. I have had one file field turning session and as that session was happening I could feel things in my body that were changing and moving that I’ve never felt before just like when I’m near someone that has bad energy I can feel that too. I will be going for 2nd session on the 18th. It has made an improvement it is helping me to release things than I’ve been harbouring. I didn’t end up in this parking lot because I wanted to I was dumped by my ex boyfriend who was a narcissist in alcoholic and addicted to pain pills which people like you prescribe he couldn’t get out of it and changed his life and reversed his prostate cancer with his help until he decided to start changing the way he looked at me and when he did that everything changed and not for the better Eventually after 22 hours of infuse in the fast moving vehicle across several state lines I was dumped at a gas station I was grateful at the same time I went Into a full CPTSD reel. It was the icing in the cherry on my cake. I had already been signed up with rideshare platforms. Because part of my therapy was to continually move due to the fact that I don’t imprisoned in the 2 and a 1/2 year relationship with narcissist in all his little goonies that we 9 children and their mates and children I felt I need to continuously move it was a sign of trauma. I couldn’t shake that and I couldn’t stop repeating the same patterns or cycles I also couldn’t release the resentment and in one treatment I felt a lot of benefit. That’s why I schedule the 2nd appointment which I didn’t do immediately I waited 2 weeks. It isn’t cheap and it is an expensive but I’m worth every time I have scars that no one can see from childhood that have been creating in my subconscious behaviours that are self defeating The constant chatter of negative thinking and emotional baggage of feeling not good enough not worthy and even contemplating taking my own life because I feel like or I felt like there wasn’t really any point after having been rejected and abandoned by my own children because it was just too uncomfortable to deal with the reality of the situation in no one was willing Intercede and allow me to collect myself To move forward. Most people are too busy blaming which means there not really seeing things for what that they are I didn’t end up being this way accidentally when I was born I didn’t utter my 1st words wishing that I would grow up to be An aspiring Walmart parking lot resident.according to fuse my children a complete failure as a mother. Or an absolute waste of time in energy as far as in make was concerned having had 2 failed marriages I didn’t wish for those things and I did give my best and my best was not good enough but that doesn’t mean that I waz a piece of garbage and yet as much as I told myself I wasn’t I still managed to feel like I waz. After all these traumas And extensive amount of work that I’ve done on myself extensive amount of work I’ve done with others only having charged a handful of people which meant that I would have to continue To work diligently in order to provide food for myself showers and laundry and keep the maintenance parts labour in repairs on my vehicle which is on its last leg after having gone from start at a 1000 miles to finish at 300000 miles and really just about have barely 2 dimes to rub together. I don’t partake in drugs I don’t drink I don’t overspend I don’t have a shopping addiction I’ve just been thrown awful I am willing to let go of everything that I have been holding on to whether I am aware of it or not in order to be able to move forward I don’t want to be anchored And a place for state of mind body or soul That has already served its purpose and does nothing more than keep me in a cyclic nightmare. S far as proper punctuation sentence paragraph structure I don’t worry myself with those things so if your negative many and all you want to do is pick apart my comment rather than actually Look at it with no bias and allow it to help you to decide whether or not you want to investigate personally rather than just picking people apart or something apart that you have no understanding of I think personally the best thing that you can do is go and have a couple of sessions take notes and like with any medication you might want to wait awhile and continued to keep tracker journal Any changes that you might have noticed. That’s true science but scientists nothing without spirituality and they do go both hand-in-hand regardless of whether you are willing to admit that are not. There’s a lot of information that goes back to the ancients and their findings that has also not been included here and has not been taken in consideration this is not something new this is something that has existed for a very long time and some of those people are instrumental in having shaped the modern allopathic medical system that has been of course bastardised and turned into being legal drug pushers not actual doctors . Because anyone who’s an actual doctor would not send someone home to die that is against the Hippocratic creed, the one that you took before you were able toGet your licence to practice medicine. Not only is that practice on conscionable it is immoral and nothing short of cruel there is no kindness or compassion and anyone who lacks that really does not qualify to be a physician it takes a special individual someone who is willing to stand by that person in their time of need and not Sam sorry but say I may not have the answer but I will find it and I will give my very best to help you to recover. Not insist on suppressing symptoms or removing body parts that clearly were meant to be there in the 1st place that there is some imbalance and things need to be harmonised and it is essentially what my understanding of biofil tuning is is to harmonise What is in discord energy medicine is proven because modern science uses energy in different ways to create certain effects as well but somehow that has slipped people’s awareness.What also like to note that when a person has too much disturbance in their body from something like electromagnetic frequencies which interfere with the harmony of Their physiology as it was when they were born Your immune system is aware that there is a problem whether you consciously are aware of it or not your immune system is doing what it can to mitigate whether your where that are not as well. So just because it’s unseen does not mean it does not exist and this is where the immune system is a perfect example so if you have WI fi and cell phones and smart watches and tvs and durty electric and your getting things from the smart Box like your electricity coming through your electrical outlets and you certain to find that you can’t sleep and you can’t rest in your Covered in toxicity because your entire house is made of toxic materials and now your health is getting worse and worse, Add insult to injury and your eating genetically Modified food Animals that have been abused have been drugged up with chemicals in hormone growth therapy filled with antibiotics and all these things eating diets that are unnatural to them being privy to infections and having some of that in your dairy that has been smoothed over into a gooey cheese By use of fluoride which of course counsel fies the pineal gland and makes you a negative ninny You might not be aware feature body is doing what it can to harmonise all of that nonsense and yet it can’t without some help now your mind body and soul you’re not just body I don’t care if you argue that Your immune system is doing what it can to help and of course it can’t help without getting some help because of this point is overwhelmed and yet you’re gonna say there’s no proof of something that you can’t see or measure and yet it exists and it’s manifesting physically with people having all the serious health issues. There’s no shortage of new medical names of diseases and illnesses
just a D-Nile debate mockery And sheer ignorance
Just because your ego was running the show in your copying you have a shit ton of letters behind your name does not mean that your actually intelligent it just means you think you are and you think that that gives you the right to go around and talk badly about things you have no experience with and have never done your own research on and I mean personal research like going to have file field tuning done and instead of judging either way it for being good or bad seeing if there is some benefit to You because of course were not gonna have a lot of people supporting this type of research and yet there is a body of medical science that Supports this therapy and can even explain it and some of your colleagues are out here doing just that but you want to post this garbage in an attempt to make yourselves feel good and yet you guys will be the ones that turn up with some horrific disease and try to address it with a bandage while its gushing blood like allopathic medicine does not treating the individual meaning yourself as a whole and end up suffering the consequences . I think it’s time for us to quit being so ignorant and start helping ourselves in helping others not by posting trash or trashing someone but by actually Putting our money where our mouth is and surely you make enough money in your fees are not cheap but you sit there and mock someone else? Without having even so much as walked into a fairfie Room to have a session or 2 or maybe 3 before you could actually say for certain whether or not it was quackery? Shame on you that’s what I have to say. And I don’t need to give you proof cause I am my own living testimony . I feel a sense of relief there’s plenty of garbage that needs to be removed In a long long time It’s not placebo either
So matter of fact your personal research can be a tax deduction so I would go each of you who have even commented here in a negative manner take $300 go for 3 sessions and start taking notes every single day about the way you think you feel and you respond when something happens that seems to be different than your normal reaction see if you can’t break free of some of the invisible chains that have bound you I into being so rigid and unwilling to grow, as a Professional and as a layman
Before you even bother to tear this comment apart because I assure you there isn’t anything you can say that would make me feel badly about expressing my opinion
But at least it’s an educated opinion as opposed to an ignorant comment based on nothing
“Things exist without any explanation as to how they do and not much in the way of How it might come to be.”
Sure, but the question how it works is secondary.
the main thing is that we need evidence THAT it works – evidence from good studies and not anecdotes.
Bizarre.
Dr Julian,
I’m not one for social media, blogs or writing replies. I’m a straight forward factual type. The only reason I’ve written this is for you, after noticing your personal circumstances.
I am / was / still a little undecidedly more sceptical than you about any of this energy healing than you can possibly imagine but please read on..,…I found this blog by chance tonight whilst checking the history of so called energy healing.
Without going into personal medical details I’ve been through my fair share of poor health for the past twenty years. I have files of evidence based scientific testing from various countries including UK, Australia, USA, Germany and Switzerland. Throughout this period I’ve met some very good and let’s say very questionable doctors, consultants, therapists etc, from around the world. I’ve tried to keep an open mind to conventional and non conventional treatments. Some helped and others made things worse.
Due to poor health, I moved to Australia in November last year to see if a change in climate and toxic exposure could benefit my health. One of my London doctors agreed this would be an interesting experiment and we agreed a three month ‘test’ period. Due to Covid and common sense to stay away from the virus and with the possible increased risk factor, I’m still in Australia.
A few weeks ago I organised follow up testing to be undertaken by one of the German labs. The tests showed improvements in many levels and not so great in others. The follow up tele meeting with UK doctor started with a daunting “oh you’re still going then…..”, as though, woww, you’re not dead!
Whenever possible I’ve tried to engage the services of conventional NHS trained and qualified (or other countries equivalent), doctors and consultants that have worked and gone beyond the realms of their necessary training into the thought zone, as to why are these practices are frequently not working. At the same time Ive also learnt to engage the help from therapists advising / treating, food, diet and musculoskeletal. Due to being very sceptical I’ve kept away from so called energy healers and the likes, until by chance. I met a new good friend earlier this year whilst in Asia, who is a so called reiki master. Before you laugh (and trust me writing this makes me smile) he refused to discuss anything about it as he was taking a three month break and valued the new found friendship. Anyway to cut to the chase a little. I was curious. He’s no idiot and his life story is very interesting. In chat regarding foods around the world, he suggested I contact someone from a world group listing of health advisers to try and find the best places locally in Australia to buy genuine local organic foods. I contacted a lady from the list.
I arranged a meeting where I realised her naturally inquisitive nature, studies and qualifications were good. Food science is her subject but turns out she also has qualifications in energy healing, reiki primarily. I tried to keep an open mind and asked her to show me. To be honest I don’t think any reiki was actually done but who knows as I was as sceptical as you about these type of events. I’m not sure the difference between these type of treatments but I did notice some weird nerve transitions when touching areas on my feet in some sort of ‘healing’ session.
Anyway, this went on for a couple of sessions along with try this and that advising I should try chi gong, meditation etc etc. Keeping this open mind I’ve tried but it’s probanly as weird to me as it is to you and don’t particularly feel comfortable doing such.
A few weeks ago, the lady practitioner showed me a new machine she bought and asked if I would like to Try. At the time I didn’t know what or how it worked other than it was a so called energy correcting machine. Ive now had a few treatments and all I want to say is, it’s very weird. Weird for the better not worse. Like, as in good results. Last week (2nd session), that night slept pain free and felt, as much as I don’t want to write these words, ‘re energised’ (yes, laugh, I’m smiling again writing it, sounds ridiculous i kmow). The effect was so much I stated researching this thing to look to buying one. The device is made by a company called NES which turns out is in the UK or at least that’s where the company is based. I checked out the founders both with interesting stories. Watching their video clips if I hadn’t have had the good results I would have thought total scam. I’ve been successful in business for many many years and very wary of multi level businesses operations. Sadly I can see there is a mini pyramid approach to the business. If a patient goes down the route of taking the extra add on energised water droplets the practioner gets a financial kickback but in all honesty so do most practioners when prescribing controlled and non controlled pharmaceuticals, minerals etc.
I have honestly changed my views slightly to the idea of all of this. I use the word slightly as let’s hope for the best and give it a few more sessions. In all honestly I can’t say I can remember any such strong positive changes from any conventional or unconventional medicine or other in such a short period of time. Weird is the word.
Please look it up, find someone with the equipment, seems like there are many owners of this equipment in the UK and give it a go. Seriously you have nothing to loose. I can’t overemphasise how genuine I am and how skepticle I can be, but there is something very very weird for the good. If I knew you, I would book, pay and say “there you go, now give it a go”. That’s how weird this process is and how convinced ‘they’ are onto something. 🙂
On a separate thought and please don’t feel obliged to answer as it’s nothing to do with the discussed subject, but is more with your field of work. What are your thoughts on DNA adducts and DNA adduct testing in relation to pre cancer stage alterations to health?
https://edzardernst.com/2012/11/what-is-and-what-isnt-clinical-evidence-and-why-is-the-distinction-important/
Luke,
I can think of many possible explanations for your improvement but I have no way of know which of them, if any, are correct. Our state of well-being is in constant flux and mostly there is no obvious reason for this. I suspect that sub-clinical infections play a part here, based on my own experience of having many more off days since I became immunosuppressed, and then fewer again since Lockdown, but this is anecdotal and it would take a proper trial looking at daily changes in inflammatory and immunie markers in a sufficient number of individuals to investigate properly.
Over the course of my career I have come to realise that most people are very bad at remembering their symptoms accurately, and while they will be able to tell you how much pain they have now, for instance, comparing their recall with documentary evidence of how it was yesterday, or even half an hour ago, shows it to be unreliable. I have also realised that people always attribute any change in their symptoms to something specific that seems plausible to them, regardelss of how well it correlates or how plausible it might be to anybody else.
So I hope you will forgive me if I don’t investigate your energy correction machine any further.
DNA adducts are segments of DNA that bind to specific chemicals, some of which are known carcinogens. This means that they can be used experimentally as markers for exposure. This is not the same as alterations to health, nor do they identify a pre-cancerous state. I would regard a pre-cancerous state as meaning that the cancer is already there, but is not yet large enough to be diagnosed. Most cancers are undetectable unless there are enough cancer cells present together in one place to produce a small lump (something like a small mole or pimple that you wouldn’t necessarily notice on your skin – on a scan this might show as a small non-specific cyst or nodule) this is about a billion cells (1,000,000,000). By this time the cancer has been present for long enough to have double roughly 30 times from the initial transformed cell. In practice this is years or often decades, which is one reason why not many cancers are found in young people. Since most cancers are fatal by the time they reach a trillion cells (1,000,000,000,000), which is only another 10 doublings, what we know as cancer only represents quite a late phase of the process.
I doubt whether DNA adducts will prove to be very useful as a screening test for otherwise undetectable cancers (screening tests, by their nature, show a lot of false positives as they are designed not to miss cases), but this isn’t really my area of expertise. I am sure that there is a lot of money to be made out of convincing the worried well that they are worth testing for, however, considering the value of the market in DNA testing at the moment and that most of the results of such tests aren’t very meaningful.
Have a look at the first two minutes of these two promotional videos for the “NES energy restoring”-whatever…
https://youtu.be/2c-UP-zAALM.
and:
https://youtu.be/tIcKEXUbYpU
In two minutes, both videos provide rock hard evidence that this is a hoax. “Quantum” is the main keyword revealing the scam, butfar from the only simple clues.
I refuse to believe anyone can be sostupid as to believe this joker. Unbelievable, literally.
I am convinced that the “Luke” who writes the deviously promotional comment above, is that same guy as in the videos 🙂
If I were a judge, I’d give him ten years of community service, cleaning public lavatories. Not for the scam only, but also for the videos
I ran out of time adding to the comment. I was saying that he should also serve time for the abysmally daft and badly directed promotional videos 😀
This was the strangest read and none of the points apply to me. In the least…
It amazing how we’re all at different levels of consciousness. What’s critical to your existence sir, is to remain steadfast that it is hooey. Keep on, keepin on.
In my experience as a patient all roads seem to lead to energy healing. I’ve had a GP, a PT and a neurologist all suggest it as treatment for trauma and chronic pain. I haven’t tried it, so I don’t have any bogus anecdotal evidence to offer up, but what do you folks who hate quackery so much suggest a patient does when science fails and the only remaining options lack solid evidence? I’m at a loss…
https://edzardernst.com/2016/07/when-orthodox-medicine-has-nothing-more-to-offer/
There are several things that I hate about quackery:
1. It is based upon deception – the people promoting it are either liars or else they have been lied to themselves.
2. It does not bring about the promised improvements in health – those that occur would have happened anyway.
3. It can be actively harmful, either in itself or by encouraging people to turn away from more effective treatment, and certainly to their wallets.
4. It encourages a world view which confuses what ought to be (which nobody can agree on) with what is.
If science does not hold the answers, then we need better science, by which I mean further research to find the answers. Making something up because it is appealing or seems superficially plausible, and then accepting it without testing it properly is not a very reliable route to the truth and is unlikely to result in effective treatment for anything.
As a doctor I am familiar with the way they are thinking. There are some patients for whom you will suggest anything to get them out of your clinic.
I have something for all you tuning fork quacks out there. YOUR FORKS ARE NOT TUNED AS DESCRIBED AND THEREFORE DO NOTHING.
The stamp on the fork with this or that frequency in HZ, they are inaccurate in my experience of sometimes more than 2 HZ + or -. I am a trained musician and instrument builder of over 30 years. I recently purchased a set of $180 Solfeggio Tuning forks, “Made in USA of the highest quality standards and accuracy.” I took out my most trustworthy tuning instrument, the Peterson Strobe tuner (plus a good backup tuner in case I’m unsure of the results). I took measurements at room temperature, and after warming the forks to body temperature in my hands.
The results were astounding. The forks sound pleasant to the ear in any case, but that’s not proof of any kind that they’re having any real effect on one’s health. Placebo is a wonderful phenomenon that will last as long a fading un-intonated fork. ALL forks I’ve ever tested are ALL out of tune. I had to sand the forks until they were EXACTLY intonated. You can use the web to learn how to do it. At least do this, or you’re a total fraud and idiot.
So all you fraudsters who are making claims that you’re actually doing something helpful and charging your victims ANYTHING, you are disgusting. The entire “practice” of bio tuning, etc. is a complete scam and a lie. I don’t care if you’re wearing a lab coat, a suit and tie, and that you have pyramids and crystals wrapped in copper wire hanging from your neck. You are a liar. Your tuning forks are not actually doing anything but vibrating.
You may as well blow a trumpet or hold a turd on someone, because it’ll do the same thing as your out-of-tune forks, NOTHING.
I’m not sorry if this offends you; you should be tarred and feathered and run out of town like a snake oil salesman.
I was interested to read your comment about the inaccuracy of commercially available tuning forks. Although I am not acquainted with the precise details of how they are used in biofield tuning, do you think if more than one are employed at a time that it is important how their ratios are tempered? I would be surprised if the tuning of any field associated with the human body follows a precise geometric ratio, partly on theroretical grounds as this would only be found in a one-dimensional vibrator (such as an idealised strong of infinitessimal width) and partly on practical grounds that most music is unplayable on an instrument tuned to a just intonation. Do you think a meantone system would be more succesful, and if so how would you distribute the Pythagorean comma (quarter-tone, sixth-tone etc.) or do you think a well-tempered system such as the ones developed by Valotti might be more successful?
Skeptics of biofield tuning, YOU ARE RIGHT, but………..
Please don’t get too angry at the bottom-of-the-scam-practitioners. You are right to be skeptical, but it’s the top of the food chain peddlers of this crap — the ones that both sell the equipment AND the training — that are real criminals here. They take advantage of lost souls. And maybe the main peddlers believed in this stuff at some point, but over time, most people in this field realize it’s a scam.
So to you pseudo-science certification peddlers, consider doing the right thing and pulling out of this industry, because you are creating more harm than good. And it’s very likely you got into this bogus industry with good intentions.
I’m writing this because I have an old friend who went into this field. I know this person is good-hearted, I know this person is open-minded, and I believe they found biofield tuning at a rough time in their life and were taken advantage of. With biofield tuning, they probably hoped, they would actually be able to help people. And it only costs a few thousand to get started, but possibly more down the line …. how great is that? (so they thought)
Unfortunately, they fell victims to a scam, and it’s sad.
I hope any well-intentioned individual who has invested both money and time into biofield turning, realizes sooner than later, that they’ve been duped. And, most importantly, when you realize you’ve been a victim yourself, please stop selling your services to others. It’s not real, and you’re not helping people like you thought you would be. You’re taking money from people who are searching for help, just like someone took advantage of you. And most likely, the type of people who want your services are lost themselves and don’t have a lot of money — again, just like you.
Just consider it. You can walk away with your head held high. There’s no shame in falling for a scam, but there is shame in perpetuating it.
Hopefully you will retire soon because you’re such a big pharma servant.
Unfortunately for you, Millions of people have woken up to true SCAM…. Big pharma doctors.
Millions of people are using homoeopathy and MANY other therapies for health & wellness.
We are SICK (literally) of your poisonous pills and needless surgeries.
People no longer trust doctor like they did back when doctors actual cared about their patients (decades ago).
THANK GOD for these marvelous alternative therapies!!!
thanks – but I am retired and have not taken a penny from BIG PHARMA.
so thanks for your ignorance!
@Gina
This is a statement of fact. Can you provide supporting evidence for this statement? If not, people might think that you are telling lies. Also see the banner at the top of this page.
And unfortunately, those millions of people are fooled, defrauded and tricked into believing that those alternative treatments really help them. Yes, this is also a statement of fact – and Prof. Dr. Edzard Ernst can provide literally thousands of pages of peer-reviewed studies to support this statement.
Well, real medicine is of course not perfect. But it is without a shadow of a doubt the best that we have, and for most regular medical interventions there is evidence that they really work. And just look at statistics for e.g. life expectancy, childhood mortality and cancer survival rates. These have all improved dramatically over the past century. And no, this is not credited to quacks such as homeopaths or fraudsters such as those peddling this ‘biofield’ SCAM.
I can only assume that you had a bad experience with a regular doctor, otherwise you would know better than to gravely insult 15 million highly educated and hard-working doctors around the world. Sure, there will be some who are uninterested in patients or arrogant or plain bad – after all they’re still people first, and doctors second. But the vast majority of doctors do care about their patients and do their very best to try and help them.
@Edzard I have never before seen a so-called, “professional” nay-sayer behave so rudely and deplorable towards people who disagree with them. Hopefully, I never will again. Despite your seemingly thorough “scientific” arguement that biofield tuning is a scam, the only thing I took away from this article is that you are a very angry, hostile individual who derives pleasure from insulting those who disagree with them.
Now, feel free to insult my brain, my intelligence or anything else you feel will be most offensive. You’ve proven to be very good at that.
Academic discussions tend to be frank and fact-based. By the standards of normal conversation this can appear quite abrupt but it is normal to challenge robustly any contention not supported by evidence.
“Academic discussions tend to be frank and fact-based.”
I agree with you Dr JMK but Ernst does lean towards personal insults. His blog, so whatever.
“please try to get a functional brain cell!”
DC,
True. That sort of comment doesn’t really add weight to an argument.
As a side note I really enjoy your comments and insights on various topics. A cordial and true skeptic is rare.
Julia
You are entitled to your own opinions, but not your own facts. Now unless you are bringing some decent evidence to the argument – and “It works for me” doesn’t count – we will demonstrate why your brain and intelligence are not what you wish them to be.
You may find this insulting. This is your problem, not ours. Objective scientific fact doesn’t care about peoples’ feelings.
@Julia
I do not think that Prof. Dr. Ernst derives pleasure from criticizing people who practice and/or promote quackery. I think that if any emotion is involved, it is mostly anger – anger at the fact that every day, medically incompetent alternative practitioners (a.k.a. quacks) defraud thousands upon thousands of people about one of the most important things they have: their health. And that people suffer harm and even die because of this.
Please also note that this goes way beyond disagreement; this is about deception, about fooling people as a business model, and about people who pretend to be knowledgeable about health and sickness when in reality they are not.
Please allow me to further explain this with some views of my own, as I can’t speak for Edzard Ernst of course. And please excuse my rather lengthy ramblings, but I think this is the best way to address the motivations behind my (and probably Edzard’s) criticism of quackery.
I have always been interested in quackery in general and homeopathy in particular, and from the 1980’s onward, it became increasingly clear to me that it was, indeed, all quackery. Like all quacks, homeopaths rely mainly on two things: 1) the placebo effect, i.e. that people feel better already when receiving a bit of personal attention for their story/complaints, reinforced by pretending that the sugar crumbs they buy are ‘medicine’, and 2) that up to 90% of ailments eventually resolve naturally.
Now initially, I was one of those adherents of the ‘What’s the harm’ school of thought: people with (mostly innocent) medical complaints know that they’re not being treated by a real doctor, and quite often it even makes them feel better, so no problem, right? Also, those practitioners are a bit like gullible children who believe in Santa: they actually believe in what they practise, and (most) do not deliberately try to defraud their customers; quite the contrary: they try to help them, which is laudable. So ‘live and let live’ was my adage for quite a while.
My views changed, mainly because of two events:
– In 2012, a close friend of my parents consulted a homeopath lady with vague complaints of fatigue. This woman (who had no medical education at all) was both extremely arrogant and fiercely dismissive of real medicine; she ‘treated’ the man’s complaints with homeopathic sugar crumbs for almost a year, charging him thousands of euros for the privilege. During this time, she strongly advised against visiting a real doctor (“they’ll only poison you”), even though the man’s condition slowly deteriorated. But according to her, an initial worsening of symptoms was quite normal, and a sign that the homeopathic treatment was starting to work.
After 9 months, the man was in such bad shape that he could hardly get out of bed any more, and his wife finally decided to bring him to hospital – where he died a week later. Official cause of death: congestive heart failure, resulting from an untreated leaking heart valve. Real cause of death: trusting a stupid, highly arrogant quack. Had he consulted a real doctor instead of this homeopath lady, his problem could have been fixed easily, and he would probably still be alive today.
– In 2015, I noticed that ever more homeopaths were offering ‘homeoprophylaxis‘, claiming that it was an effective alternative for childhood vaccination, and also claiming that real vaccination caused untold damage to children, up to and including autism, brain damage and death. When I contacted the Dutch Health Inspectorate about this, they said that they could not do anything about this, unless actual damage was done and the injured party filed a complaint. So basically, those quacks are allowed to scare parents out of vaccinating their children, and even defraud them by selling them completely useless sugar crumbs as ‘highly effective prophylaxis’.
In the end, the only organization that was receptive to my complaints was an advertising standards organization, so that is where I filed complaints against eight homeopaths. All eight cases were ruled in my favour, and all homeopaths were told to stop advertising their ‘homeoprophylaxis’. Some complied with this ruling, but most didn’t – as the organization mentioned above has no real power to impose sanctions of any kind. In the course of this whole process, one of these quacks made use of his right to defend himself in person before the committee, an occasion at which I again noticed the extreme arrogance and hostility to science-based medicine of these people. The man was absolutely livid about the mere fact that I had the audacity to file a complaint about his ‘medicine’, and when asked if he could be wrong about the viability of homeoprophylaxis, his only answer was, “I know that I am right!”, with a reference to this Australian quack called Isaac Golden (who first came up with this ‘homeoprophylaxis’ nonsense).
So by now, there must be thousands of children whose parents think that they protected their offspring against very nasty and often deadly diseases, while nothing could be further from the truth. When these children ever come into contact with people carrying polio, diphtheria, measles, meningitis or other serious diseases, many of them will get sick, and some will die – totally unnecessary, and all because their parents listened to stupid yet very arrogant quacks instead of people with real knowledge about health and sickness.
These are just two examples why tolerating quackery is Not Good, no matter if the quacks involved really believe that they’re doing good things, and no matter if most their customers are satisfied with their services. Because those ‘services’ don’t actually do anything, and people do get hurt and even die as a result.
The latter happens way more often than actually reported, because it is real doctors who are expected to clean up the mess when a quack happens to get a customer with a serious medical condition that doesn’t resolve by itself. When in the end the customer dies as a result of postponed or withheld medical treatment, it usually is not the quack who gets blamed.
And oh, please don’t insult our intelligence by coming up with the excuse that real doctors also harm people. Yes, that happens sometimes. Doctors can have a bad day too, some are in fact incompetent, or rude, or extremely arrogant, or sometimes they have plain bad luck. But it is NOT because those doctors are uneducated, and it is certainly not because they believe in some alternative type of ‘medicine’, and stubbornly and arrogantly keep believing in it, even if real medical science has proven them wrong countless times already. As said before: alternative ‘medicine’ is simply fooling people, telling (and selling!) them nonsense in the hope that it makes them feel better. And nobody wants to be fooled, especially if it can harm them.
not that I am disagreeing but is there a source for this statement?
“…up to 90% of ailments eventually resolve naturally.”
@DC
Good question. This number is an estimate that I heard from several GP’s and other first line healthcare workers, but indeed I can’t find any hard figures on this (at least not with a cursory search).
The overall number is also rather high because most people tend to consult homeopaths with less serious and thus more benign and self-limiting issues.
Then there is also the question what counts as a medical problem in this context, and what counts as self-limiting. Does a simple headache count? Or does it only count if the patient consults a doctor or other practitioner, who then advises to “wait and see”?
However, it still seems reasonable to assume that the majority of medical problems is indeed self-limiting, if only from personal experiences and stories from family and friends: you hear a lot from people about health issues, and in most cases, these are resolved with no active intervention except some symptom relief in the form of painkillers or the likes. Far fewer are the occasions where people actually needed e.g. antibiotics, an operation or another curative procedure.
So thank you for pointing out this unproven assumption; I shall certainly try to find out more about it. Maybe you have some ideas of your own?
Looking at this list I doubt that 90% are self-limiting.
https://www.cdc.gov/diseasesconditions/az/a.html
It would be an interesting study to compare between a PCP and a homeopathic (as an example)….looking at the percentage of self-limiting conditions.
I found this survey. It is interesting that these are also among some of the more common reasons to visit a PCP
“The most common conditions treated were respiratory and otorhinolaryngology complaints (cold symptoms were the most common; there is some evidence of efficacy8,15,16) and musculoskeletal complaints such as pain.”
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4816083/#!po=23.9130
Mayo Clinic IDs the top 10 reasons for doctors’ visits
“They found that the 10 most common diagnoses were:
Skin disorders;
Osteoarthritis and joint disorders;
Back problems;
Cholesterol problems;
Upper respiratory conditions, excluding asthma;
Anxiety, depression, and bipolar disorder;
Chronic neurologic disorders;
High blood pressure;
Headaches and migraines; and
Diabetes.”
https://www.advisory.com/en/daily-briefing/2013/01/22/study-ids-the-top-10-reasons-for-doctors-visits
@DC
Richard said ailments, not diseases. Note the difference.
Quacks of all kinds derive much of their income by pretending to treat minor ailments that get better anyway.
ailment : A complaint, disease, or physical disorder, esp. a mild or chronic one. Medical Dictionary, © 2009 Farlex and Partners
Right. You’re getting the gist of it, DC
Not only mild disease but all sorts of complaints and symptoms without underlying disease that are self-limiting (resolve naturally) and do not need any specific treatment. Very convenient for those who pretend to heal. Non specific complaints and a large collection of self limiting and cyclical diseases makes up the majority of success stories of make-believe medicine.
@DC
OK, interesting, thanks for looking this up! Now of course we need to determine which of those medical complaints require active intervention to get solved, and which usually get better on their own.
E.g. I know from both personal experience and medical science that back problems almost always resolve naturally, and that any interventions at best alleviate the symptoms somewhat. The same goes for several other problems mentioned. Chronic ailments by definition can’t be treated in a curative manner, so here one needs to look at the next best possible outcome, i.e. symptom relief.
Anyway, I still think that we can say that most medical complaints resolve naturally, even though the actual number is uncertain. Maybe 90% is a bit on the high side, but I’d say it’s well over 50%. So I think I’ll simply stick with ‘most’ from now on instead of naming a percentage.
Ok.
FWIW we are beginning to question just how often low back pain is “self-limiting” or is it in a state of “remission”.
Examples:
“Recurrence of low back pain is very common, with more than two-thirds of individuals having a recurrence within 12 months after recovery.”
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1836955319300591
“After an acute episode of low back pain, one-third of patients will experience a recurrent episode…”
https://academic.oup.com/ptj/article/97/9/889/3884292#96722750
@DC
I think that discussing the concepts of self-limiting/recurrent/chronic conditions may have us barking up the wrong tree here anyway.
When I claimed that ‘90% of ailments resolve naturally’, the point I was trying to make was not so much about any conditions, but about the treatment people receive for those conditions. The important question is whether or not an intervention has any significant effects on the course of an ailment. If the answer is no, then that treatment can be abandoned.
Returning to the example of (lower) back pain: after making certain through X-ray examination that there was no visible cause for the problem, I repeatedly tried several approaches just to see what happened. The ‘full treatment’ included physiotherapy, special mobilization exercises and painkillers, whereas the ‘no treatment’ option meant that I would mostly ignore the pain and go about my daily business as much as possible, just taking care to avoid any activities known to exacerbate the condition (e.g. heavy lifting).
It turned out that there was no difference in outcome, either with regard to duration of the complaints or the frequency of recurrence. As for symptom relief: physiotherapy and targeted exercise gave some improvement(*), but by far the most effective was a simple dose of painkillers, usually before bedtime, in order to get sufficient rest.
In the end, the GP and I concluded that simple ‘pain-guided normal daily activity’ was the best approach, especially since my daily routine includes one or two hours of exercise (cycling, walking) anyway. One interesting thing I noticed was that painkillers could sometimes aggravate the situation by masking the pain, thus increasing the risk of over-straining the muscles that were causing most of the pain in the first place.
So these days, I don’t seek treatment any more when the problem recurs (every 2-3 years or so), and knowing that it’ll resolve again in a couple of days makes it quite bearable.
Still, I know of several other people with the same condition who do visit the physio or the doctor every time their pain returns – they probably experience more of a comforting placebo effect than I do, and/or they normally take less exercise than I’m used to, so they may need the extra care and attention in this respect.
*: In fact, the 30-minute bike ride to and from the physiotherapist appeared to help just about as much as the actual treatment I received there 🙂
Richard. We’re not far apart here. I only brought in back pain because you mentioned it.
Yes, people make money off of self-limiting conditions. Be it stuff one can buy over the counter or seeing a CAM or a MD. Unfortunately too many people seek care for such conditions and the reasons are numerous. And they don’t like to leave without some sort of intervention (be a script or a therapy).
Regarding acute back pain, yes, the goal is to return people back to their normal ADLs as quickly as possible. There are several options, if one seeks care, with exercise currently being the base activity. Adding PT or manual therapy seems to speed up the process. Is it always necessary? No, but if it gets someone back to work sooner or aids in their other ADLs, I see that as their choice, being properly informed of course.
Pain pills can do what they are designed to do but they can give one a false sense of security leading to worsening of the condition and of course narcotics have the risk of addiction (last I read about 25% of the population is at risk of addiction to narcotics).
NSAIDs are OK for a short period, no longer then a week or so. After that the risk tends to outweigh the benefits.
Muscle relaxers seem to help some people. I refer my patients as needed to their PCP for a script. Gets them over the hump and makes my job easier.
Chronic back pain is a whole different ballgame re interventions.
Anyway, nice chat.
@DC
I’m under the impression that MD’s are mostly honest about this (at least mine was), whereas alternative practitioners tend to be more, erm, ‘optimistic’ about what they have to offer (to put it politely). And I’m afraid that this is also in general a cornerstone of their business model: offer hope where regular medicine in all honesty can’t do much. Then again, I think this is pretty much unavoidable when they really believe in what they’re doing (which I think most of them do).
Yes, this is also a very important point: patients don’t just have conditions, they also have desires and expectations, although it seems to be a cultural thing too. I recall that in France and several southern European countries, a staggering 98% of consultations ends with a prescription of some sort, and indeed people often don’t feel taken seriously by their doctor if they don’t get any medicines (maybe Edzard can shed some more light on this?).
Here in the Netherlands, the prescription rate is far lower; the latest figure I heard was that some 45% of consultations involves medicines being prescribed. And unlike the US, we don’t have anything even remotely like an opioid crisis. I think that this is also the result of far stricter advertising rules for pharmaceutical products (strictly forbidden for prescription medicines, and subject to tight regulation for OTC medicines).
And lastly, there are of course also the doctors themselves: they have been taught to do things to alleviate the suffering of their patients. Sending them home with “just wait and see if it goes away” probably feels a bit awkward; no doubt, there is always the temptation to at least make them more comfortable with a mild painkiller or so.
I absolutely agree. We don’t always need to slap each other around the head with our differences; it’s nice to also see what we can agree upon, and this seems to fit the bill.
Hello Dr. Ernst,
Thank you for the interesting article. I came across it while trying to chase down any reliable information in support of fork tuning as an alternative to nasal breathing or yogic breathing to aid the production of nitric oxide and/or for clearing the sinuses, for which there does seem to be some scientific basis (see links to two PubMed articles at the bottom). Unfortunately, these methods are impractical for someone who is severely congested.
I should start by noting that I don’t have a scientific or medical background and I often have a difficult time understanding scientific articles. However, I do seem to have a knack for finding them. If you have a chance perhaps you could skim the PubMed article regarding the effects of sound vibration on human health (directly below). There is no mention of “BioField Tuning” or tuning forks, but there is a reference to something called a “Lung Flute” as an adjunct treatment for COPD (see footnote 28) which suggests to me that perhaps some of the gizmos and gadgets out there may not be complete quackery and there may be some merit in trying them if you aren’t paying an arm and a leg for them, or worse yet, paying someone to use them on you.
There are a few YouTube videos describing how to use tuning forks for a number of issues, including sinusitis. One YouTuber does suggest that unless you have a bone fracture that tuning forks are harmless. She does emphasize the importance of the quality of the tuning fork. But as another poster here pointed out, unless you are a musician with the right equipment you have no way of knowing whether the frequency is correct. Which begs the question of what is the correct frequency.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8157227/#B28-healthcare-09-00597
Published online 2021 May 18. doi: 10.3390/healthcare9050597
PMCID: PMC8157227
PMID: 34069792
Possible Mechanisms for the Effects of Sound Vibration on Human Health
Lee Bartel1,* and Abdullah Mosabbir1,2
José Carmelo Adsuar, Academic Editor
“Researchers working on the mechanisms of vibration effect have essentially worked in silos. We determined to look for commonalities among the silos by looking not at the vibratory device, frequency, or context of application, but rather at mechanisms involved. Consequently, our search for studies to include was an emergent process from general to specific with the intent to identify categories of mechanism and then the specifics within the categories. We used a basic strategy to locate candidate studies: an electronic database search including PubMed, Scopus, and Google Scholar. Initial searches included terms such as “Vibration and Health”, “Vibration mechanism”, and “Vibration treatments” from years 1975 to 2021. We filtered based on number of citations and considered the more cited work first.”
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16406689/
Humming May Help Sinuses Stay Healthy
Increases Airflow, Which May Fight Sinus Infections
Medically Reviewed by Gary D. Vogin, MD
“Nasal NO is known to be increased 15- to 20-fold by humming compared with quiet exhalation. NO is known to be broadly antifungal, antiviral and antibacterial.” … “It is hypothesized that strong, prolonged humming increased endogenous nasal NO production, thus eliminating CRS by antifungal means.”
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31143019/
The Efficacy of Yogic Breathing Exercise Bhramari Pranayama in Relieving Symptoms of Chronic Rhinosinusitis
K Abishek 1, Satvinder Singh Bakshi 1, Ananda Balayogi Bhavanani 2
“Methodology: A total of 60 patients with chronic sinusitis were randomly divided into two groups, one received conventional treatment of chronic sinusitis and the other group was in addition taught to practice yogic breathing exercise Bhramari pranayama. The patients were advised to practice this breathing exercise twice a day and were followed up at 1, 4, and 12 weeks using the Sino-Nasal Outcome Test (SNOT-22 score)
Results: The mean SNOT-22 score in the group following the Bhramari pranayama breathing exercise using the ANOVA test improved from 39.13 ± 9.10 to 24.79 ± 8.31 (P = 0.0002), this improvement was seen by the end of 4 weeks itself and continued until the 12th week of assessment.”
Cassy,
I have had a look at the papers you cite:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4325896/
This is a study of 19 volunteers with fibromyalgia symptoms. Treatment consisted of ten sessions of lying on a specially constructed couch vibrating at 40Hz.
On average they showed an improvement in their symptoms over the study period. There was no control group, and therefore no way of knowing whether the same improvement would have been seen without the intervention. However, fibromyalgia is a chronic condition characterised by pain with no obvious associated pathology and tends to wax and wane in severity. Generally people with conditions of this nature tend to seek treatment at times when they are particularly symptomatic, and therefore most likely to return to its average level of severity (this is a mathematical phenomenon called regression to the mean, and is also why past returns in any investment scheme are no guarantee of future performance). I also note that two of the authors are from private clinics offering this treatment commercially.
My conclusion is that this paper is not really designed to investigate whether or not the treatment is beneficial and doesn’t actually tell us anything. It is essentially publicity, not science.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16406689/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12119224/
This paper is a case report of somebody with sinusitis who decided to treat himself by spending almost all his time humming. His sinusitis improved, as it often does. Case reports of this nature cannot be used as the basis of any treatment, and at best they are hypothesis-generating, suggesting something that might be investigated in a proper study.
I have also included a link to another paper cited as evidence suggesting that humming increases the production of nitric oxide. That isn’t actually what it shows – the authors found an increase in exhaled nitric oxide during humming rather than quiet breathing, but this could be because humming resulted in greater mixing of exhaled air with the air in the nasal sinuses, where nitric oxide levels are known to be higher. To suggest that this might have a beneficial antimicrobial effect is something of a wild extrapolation, particularly as in sinusitis any infection is located in the sinuses themselves, where the nitric oxide level is already relatively high.
I am prepared to say that I find it plausible that humming can improve drainage of the sinuses, but there are quite a number of steps to go from plausible to true to useful therapeutically. Many things in medicine that are plausible turn out to be completely wrong when they are properly investigated.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31143019/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6521749/ (full text)
Again this isn’t a very well-conducted study. Although it is randomised, there were only 30 patients in each group, and three of the patients were lost to follow-up. It is not very clear how the authors treated these lost subjects in their statistical analysis, though as far as I can see they were simply omitted, which affects the randomisation and therefore the underlying assumptions on which their statistical tests of significance are based. Indeed I am not very clear what they mean by P=0.003 and P=0.0002 in Table 2 of the results section, though I think they are effectively saying that both the control and the intervention group got better. There doesn’t seem to be very much difference in outcomes between the two groups as the confidence intervals overlap.
Essentially this seems to be an underpowered study, in other words with too few subjects to show whether or not the small differences they found were due to chance. None of the authors are a statistician, and I get the impression that the decisions about how to treat the results statistically was made at the end of the trial, rather than at the design stage. Unfortunately the medical literature is full of papers of this nature where the authors don’t really understand the mathematics governing the behaviour of random numbers and the results are essentially meaningless. Unfortunately there is a lot of pressure on junior doctors to publish research in order to progress their careers and much of it has no purpose other than to look good on a curriculum vitae. The majority of doctors don’t have enough training in medical statistics to assess such papers critically and often don’t look beyond the abstract in any case. Thankfully they don’t generally have much impact on clinical practice.
Unfortunately it seems that none of these papers really answer the question of whether vibrations, humming or breathing exercises might be beneficial in the situations described. The problem is that most medical conditions improve regardless of what you do about them (regression to the mean), and most people report an improvement after almost any intervention (placebo effect). Unless a study is rigorously designed, executed and analysed in such a way as to distinguish genuine effects from chance it is essentially a waste of time, effort and resources.
I’m just amused by the concept of the Sino-Nasal Outcomes Test (SNOT-22)
Who says the ENT lot don’t have a sense of humour? (Or, indeed, humor, if you’re of a Galenic mind)
Perhaps look at actual studies to make your decision .. just a thought.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4654788/
@Berni
We did look at actual ‘studies’ such as the one you link to, and we (i.e. Edzard Ernst, Les Rose and yours truly) had one of those retracted.
Just some of the problems with the linked article:
“Biofield therapies are noninvasive therapies in which the practitioner explicitly works with a client’s biofield (interacting fields of energy and information that surround living systems) to stimulate healing responses in patients.”
This opening sentence alone is complete nonsense. There is no acceptable scientific evidence at all for the existence of ‘biofields’, and this explanation about “interacting fields of energy and information that surround living systems” is completely fictitious.
When asked, not a single one of these practitioners can explain how said ‘biofield’ can be detected or measured (usually they come up with the excuse that it is too ‘subtle’ to be measured, and that you need to be ‘trained’ to ‘detect’ it directly – as in: you have to believe in this stuff before you can see it), and none of them can tell me how they know what it is made up of.
Apart from this, energy is not a component of a field, it is a property of matter and space (i.e. the capability to do a certain amount of work). (Electromagnetic) fields can convey energy, but fields are not made up of energy.
“While the practice of biofield therapies has existed in Eastern and Western cultures for thousands of years,…”
Nope. The practice of hand-waving accompanied by some sort of mumbo-jumbo has existed for thousands of years.
“… empirical research on the effectiveness of biofield therapies is still relatively nascent.”
Empirical research shows that it is all pseudoscientific nonsense with no effectiveness at all. Biofields do not exist(*), and all therapies that claim to be based on it are complete quackery.
*: Yes, neural activity in humans and other organisms can produce tiny electromagnetic fields, which can be measured with highly sophisticated (and hugely expensive) electronic equipment – but these fields are simply by-products of said activity, and say nothing at all about a particular state of health. And it is absolutely impossible that one can change these very same fields from the outside to affect the state of health of a person.
I read your article, which contains a lot of accusations based on your personal opinions/speculation. Yet, nowhere in this article do you present any science or evidence that this practice does NOT work. Where is your concrete evidence that it doesn’t work?
(and no…I don’t have to prove it does; you are the one saying it doesn’t, so back it up with actual hard-core facts and studies.)
so, if I stated that eating my special ice cream cures diabetes, anyone who doubts my claim would need to prove that I am wrong? I think you need to go back to school.
It’s so extremely cringy that Edzard even gets this distraught over it. If he is so against it he should just focus on things he believes in and let everyone that does believe in it be in peace. His reaction is actually so immature it’s hilarious. Why bother even communicating with him about it, some people don’t have an IQ high enough to even figure out how and why it helps people.
I believe in good evidence in the best interest of patients.
I believe in exposing those who act against the best interest of patients.
Whether this makes you cringe, is neither here nor there.
@MM
You are wrong. It IS up to you (or other practitioners and proponents of this SCAM) to prove the positive claim, i.e. that it works. And even if you insist on proving the negative claim (i.e. that it doesn’t work): that too is in fact the task of the ones making the claim. Good scientists will always test their novel ideas by trying to disprove (or falsify) them. Just tossing some crazy idea out there and then leave it for others to disprove is the modus operandi of charlatans and con artists.
The point here is that there are no ‘hard-core facts’ and studies that it works. There is in fact no scientific evidence whatsoever that the claimed phenomena and mechanisms are real. Which means that they can be safely dismissed, at least until such evidence has been delivered.
LMAO…as I sent my prior reply, I see you have this disclaimer posted:”Please remember: if you make a claim in a comment, support it with evidence.” Are you KIDDING me? You’re asking people to support their comments with evidence to YOUR article that has zero evidence? Is this a parody account? You cannot really be a doctor…omg…this is so rich, so hilarious. Truly, this must be Candid Camera.
Wow. A troll website. Your points can all be made without the nastiness.
I am 70 and use reiki, cranial sacral, meditation, and tuning forks to say the list and don’t take medicine very healthy. Unfortunately your most have not tried any of these since ur so angry or maybe part of the conventional medical field. All I can say is Goodluck and what u put out there comes back. Peace
I am older than 70 and don’t use reiki, cranial sacral, meditation, and tuning forks and am very healthy
Oh dear, what can one say?
It’s a bit like religion. I try to differentiate between those who say “god bless you” and mean it it with a simple, but to my mind totally misguided, faith and those who use it as a power play to try to impose their view on me. To the one I can say thank you, to the other – probably best not to say.
I generally find the first can accept my different view, the others not so much.
I’ve often used tuning forks, to great benefit. Otherwise the music I made with my band would have sounded a lot worse.
I think it is extremely small minded and arrogant to only believe in that which has pages and pages of supportive data to back up that which may divert from the traditional mindset. If there was endless financial backing with focus research I believe the results would show more substance than a scam or fallacy, that equally can not be proven. Some need this ‘proof’ in a documented, extensive, research studied format. Others accept personal experience as proof. I am one who does not question why or how something works or spend too much time reading extensive studies. If it works for me, I’m in. And for others, it doesn’t work, and they are out. We are all different but nothing should be so blatantly discounted for lack of evidence which doesn’t exist purely based on lack of designated research funding to extensively be studied. There is so much that novice experimentation has sourced out which remains black listed due to this lack of ‘proof’ – some things simply can’t be proven. Does not mean they are ineffective,
“some things simply can’t be proven”
Please give me an example of a THERAPY that cannot be tested by running a clinical trial.
THANKS
Melissa Wagner,
Allow me to introduce you to Melissa M Wagner:
“However, distance sessions have shown to be just as effective as in-person sessions”
There’s a very good reason for that 😂
hilarious!
Ah, that explains it 🙂
Well done!
@Melissa Wagner
‘Personal experience’ is one of the worst and least trustworthy types of evidence there is, especially when it comes to whether or not a particular treatment has any effects or not. There are at least half a dozen well-known mechanisms how our brain fools us into believing that a particular treatment has a particular effect when in reality it does nothing.
The most important one is known as false causality, or the Post hoc fallacy. Don’t get me wrong: this is not some sort of mental flaw – EVERYONE is susceptible to this effect, simply because it is an evolutionary trait that greatly helped us survive in a hostile environment. This principle of false causality is also why we have for instance antivaccine people, or people who believe in homeopathy, or conspiracy believers, and people believing in a myriad of other things for which there is no evidence whatsoever. Science has taken centuries to identify and overcome this trap.
Then there’s this: medicine has exclusively relied on personal experience (of both doctors and patients) for thousands of years. And that medicine was no good at all: life expectancy remained low and child mortality remained sky-high (~ 30%) – until science got into the act, and started successfully distinguishing the things that actually worked (very few) from the things that didn’t (almost everything else). I think you are very wrong in calling this ‘arrogant’ and ‘small-minded’.
You are correct. Those things are known as ‘illusions’ and ‘figments of the imagination’. They are not real, and only exist in some people’s heads.
One such imaginary thing is this ‘biofield’: there is no evidence at all that it exists, and people who claim that they can detect (and even manipulate) it, are easily proven wrong: as soon as they are asked to detect this personal biofield when blinded (which they say they can), they lose that ability all of a sudden. And I am very certain that if patients were blindly treated with ‘biofield tuning’ or with some random tuning-fork waving (the placebo), the results would be identical.
All it takes to see that ‘biofield tuning’ is nonsense is an open mind – open to the notion that it can be properly tested, and that it might not be real.
Here you go…… Scientific paper and multiple studies on the new science of “Biogeometry” describing the energy centers of the human body and found in all other forms of nature. By Dr. Karim
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/361718412_Study_Physical_Forces_of_Universe_to_Find_Design_Language_of_Shape_and_Color_for_Controlling_Body_Energy_and_Increasing_its_Adaptation_to_the_Modern_Life
http://www.rexresearch.com/biogeom/biogeom.htm
thank you
I missed the clinical trials showing that such energies are effective therapies.
perhaps you could identify them to me?
Sorry, but that article is one big accretion of pseudoscientific babble, completely detached from reality.
I just sat down to write a more detailed analysis, but your comment encapsulates what I would have said very well and I therefore can save my effort for later.
Using words such as “study” or “science” in an article is not enough to make it “scientific” 😀
Hello Edzard – this is Eileen McKusick, the founder of Biofield Tuning. I’m linking two peer reviewed published papers on a feasibility study we conducted in 2020. 15 volunteers received 3 one hour Biofield Tuning sessions over zoom, one a week for 3 weeks, to treat their clinical anxiety. One paper is quantitative and the other qualitative, and both demonstrate clearly what we have been observing clinically for 28 years now -using sound in this way can dramatically decrease people’s experience of anxiety. We currently have a fully funded 3 year follow up study underway with 100 volunteers, 60 of whom will receive tuning and 40 will be in the control group. In this study we will be administering 5 sessions instead of 3. Once we get that published I will also share it with you.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0965229923000341
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1550830723001155
I’m also happy to share my award winning Masters Thesis, Exploring the Effects of Audible Sound on the Human Body and its Biofield, if you have any interest in reading that. Cheers.
thanks but that is hardly sound evidence; feel free to send me your thesis.
And this paper [my emphasis]:
Inter-Rater Agreement of Biofield Tuning: Testing a Novel Health Assessment Procedure
Richard Hammerschlag, Eileen D. McKusick, Namuun Bat, David J. Muehsam, James McNames, and Shamini Jain
The Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine 2020 26:10, 911-917
doi:10.1089/acm.2020.0159
was assessed here:
Biofield Tuning: Another Example of Tooth Fairy Science
Biofield tuning uses tuning forks to assess the health of clients. This study of inter-rater agreement is a prime example of Tooth Fairy science.
Harriet Hall, MD, on November 3, 2020
Science-Based Medicine
https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/biofield-tuning-another-example-of-tooth-fairy-science/
@Eileen McKusick
I was going to ask you for scientific evidence, but then I found your “thesis”.
Oh dear.
if I had been in charge, I would have surely failed this ‘thesis’
Her references include the incredible authors Dean Radin, Deepak Chopra, Wayne Jonas.