Reiki for the Treatment of Fibromyalgia: A Randomized Controlled Trial

Nassim Assefi, Andy Bogart, Jack Goldberg, Dedra Buchwald.
The Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine. November 2008, 14(9): 1115-1122.


Abstract


Objective: Fibromyalgia is a common, chronic pain condition for which patients frequently use complementary and alternative medicine, including Reiki. Our objective was to determine whether Reiki is beneficial as an adjunctive fibromyalgia treatment.


Design: This was a factorial designed, randomized, sham-controlled trial in which participants, data collection staff, and data analysts were blinded to treatment group.


Setting/location: The study setting was private medical offices in the Seattle, Washington metropolitan area.


Subjects: The subjects were comprised 100 adults with fibromyalgia.


Intervention: Four (4) groups received twice-weekly treatment for 8 weeks by either a Reiki master or actor randomized to use direct touch or no touch (distant therapy).


Outcome measures: The primary outcome was subjective pain as measured by visual analog scale at weeks 4, 8, and 20 (3 months following end of treatment). Secondary outcomes were physical and mental functioning, medication use, and health provider visits. Participant blinding and adverse effects were ascertained by self-report. Improvement between groups was examined in an intention-to-treat analysis.


Results: Neither Reiki nor touch had any effect on pain or any of the secondary outcomes. All outcome measures were nearly identical among the 4 treatment groups during the course of the trial.


Conclusion: Neither Reiki nor touch improved the symptoms of fibromyalgia. Energy medicine modalities such as Reiki should be rigorously studied before being recommended to patients with chronic pain symptoms.


http://www.liebertonline.com/doi/abs/10.1089/acm.2008.0068



Excerpts:


"Advanced Reiki providers, or masters, report being able to heal with intention alone, without physically contacting the patient or even being in close vicinity, a technique called distant Reiki."


"To our knowledge, no blinded, randomized controlled trials of Reiki for chronic pain have been published."


"Four (4) actors who were matched to the Reiki masters in age group, gender, race, and general appearance provided control interventions. Additional selection criteria for the actors were no experience with or knowledge of energy medicine, no self-reported natural ability as a healer, and low healing touch potential according to the subjective assessments of the Reiki masters after meeting the actors and feeling their hands."