Bioresonance therapy

Energy medicine, energy therapy, energy healing, vibrational medicine, psychic healing, spiritual medicine or spiritual healing are branches of alternative medicine based on a pseudo-scientific belief that healers can channel healing energy into a patient and effect positive results. This idea itself contains several methods: hands-on, hands-off, and distant (or absent) where the patient and healer are in different locations. Many schools of energy healing exist using many names: for example, biofield energy healing, spiritual healing, contact healing, distant healing, Qi Do, therapeutic touch, Reiki or Qigong. Spiritual healing occurs largely in non-denominational and ecumenical contexts, in which practitioners do not see traditional religious faith as a prerequisite for effecting cures. Faith healing, by contrast, takes place within a traditional religious context. While early reviews of the scientific literature on energy healing were equivocal and recommended further research, more recent reviews have concluded that there is no evidence supporting clinical efficiency. The theoretical basis of healing has been criticised as implausible, research and reviews supportive of energy medicine have been faulted for containing methodological flaws and selection bias, and positive therapeutic results have been determined to result from known psychological mechanisms. Edzard Ernst, formerly Professor of Complementary and Alternative Medicine at the University of Exeter, has said that 'healing continues to be promoted despite the absence of biological plausibility or convincing clinical evidence ... that these methods work therapeutically and plenty to demonstrate that they do not'. Some claims of those purveying 'energy medicine' devices are known to be fraudulent and their marketing practices have drawn law-enforcement action in the US. History records the repeated association or exploitation of scientific inventions by individuals claiming that newly-discovered science could help people to heal. In the 19th century, electricity and magnetism were in the 'borderlands' of science and electrical quackery became rife. These concepts continue to inspire writers in the New Age movement. In the early-20th century health claims for radio-active materials put lives at risk, and recently quantum mechanics and grand unification theory have provided similar opportunities for commercial exploitation. Thousands of devices claiming to heal via putative or veritable energy are used worldwide. Many of them are illegal or dangerous and are marketed with false or unproven claims. Several of these devices have been banned.Reliance on spiritual and energetic healings is associated with serious harm or death when patients delay or forego medical treatment. The term 'energy medicine' has been in general use since the founding of the non-profit International Society for the Study of Subtle Energies and Energy Medicine in the 1980s. Guides are available for practitioners, and other books aim to provide a theoretical basis and evidence for the practice. Energy medicine often proposes that imbalances in the body's 'energy field' result in illness, and that by re-balancing the body's energy-field health can be restored. Some modalities describe treatments as ridding the body of negative energies or blockages in 'mind'; illness or episodes of ill health after a treatment are referred to as a 'release' or letting go of a 'contraction' in the body-mind. Usually, a practitioner will then recommend further treatments for complete healing. The US-based National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIH) distinguishes between health care involving scientifically observable energy, which it calls 'Veritable Energy Medicine', and health care methods that invoke physically undetectable or unverifiable 'energies', which it calls 'Putative Energy Medicine': Polarity therapy founded by Randolph Stone is a kind of energy medicine based on the belief that a person's health is subject to positive and negative charges in their electromagnetic field. It has been promoted as capable of curing a number of human ailments ranging from muscular tightness to cancer; however, according to the American Cancer Society 'available scientific evidence does not support claims that polarity therapy is effective in treating cancer or any other disease'.