Study Entices Thoughts Of Hands-On Healing

[Celebration]

http://www.courant.com/news/health/hc-healingtouch0728.artjul28,0,4379719.story

Steeped in white-coat science since she earned her Ph.D. in cell biology at Columbia University 20 years ago, Gloria Gronowicz is about the last person you'd expect to put stock in the touchy-feely discipline of energy medicine.But then the University of Connecticut researcher saw it with her own eyes, under a high-power microscope in her own laboratory, where, once, only well-accepted biological building blocks — proteins, mitochondria, DNA and the like — got respect.

Therapeutic Touch performed by trained energy healers significantly stimulated the growth of bone and tendon cells in lab dishes.

Her results, recently published in two scientific journals, provide novel evidence that there may be a powerful energy field that, when channeled through human hands, can influence the course of events at a cellular level.

"What she's showing is an association that defies explanation with what we currently know," said Margaret A. Chesney, a professor of medicine at the University of Maryland and former deputy director of the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine at the National Institutes of Health. "She's Daniel Boone."

Gronowicz and others said more studies are needed to figure out how and why Therapeutic Touch seems to stimulate cell growth — and if the findings can be applied to patient care.