Unusual Touch Therapy Gains Fans

By Jack Challem

Physician Kenna Stephenson used to be skeptical about Bio-Touch, a type of energy therapy. Until, that is, the day she had a head-splitting migraine on top of a full patient schedule. A volunteer at the clinic where she worked, in Tucson, gave her a brief Bio-Touch session, using two fingertips to lightly touch and stroke various points on her head and body. Within seconds Stephenson’s headache vanished—and she became a believer.

“I’m convinced the effect is more than psychological,” says Stephenson, an associate professor at the University of Texas at Tyler, who now uses it in her medical practice. The technique involves a butterfly-light touch with the index and middle fingers. Each session begins with two touches, one just below the breastbone and the other just left of the back of the neck.

From here, the practitioner touches the back, stomach, and other areas in patterns that, while dependent on the patient’s health concerns, don’t necessarily correspond to acupuncture meridians or the pressure points of any other touch system. She says that many of her patients want nondrug therapies to reduce pain and to help speed healing, and Bio-Touch fits the bill.

Since Bio-Touch emerged a little more than 20 years ago, the technique has quietly gained adherents around the world. At its hub is the International Foundation of Bio-Magnetics (IFBM) in Tucson, Arizona; trained practitioners can be found in many of the 50 states, as well as in Canada, Japan, Egypt, Denmark, and Brazil.

The story behind Bio-Touch makes it easy to see why Stephenson was skeptical. It was founded almost completely by accident by the late Norman Cochran, a chain-smoking mining engineer who lived in Mancos, Colorado. As the story goes, one day he encountered a woman who was pregnant, hemorrhaging, and about to miscarry. Cochran, for reasons he could never explain, asked if he could touch her, and she said yes. Cochran touched her lightly with his fingertips, the hemorrhaging stopped, and she was able to carry her baby to term. Cochran was as surprised as anyone, and word soon got around that he had healing powers.

He developed a pattern of touch based on trial and error, and eventually a loosely knit group of practitioners was formed. Today, IFBM is an all-volunteer nonprofit that trains people free of charge. “It’s an option that helps low-income, uninsured patients with musculoskeletal pain or stress-related disorders,” says Stephenson.

One of Stephenson’s patients had undergone several operations for chronic pain and had just applied for disability insurance when she joined one of Stephenson’s Bio-Touch studies. The woman improved so much that she withdrew her application for disability and soon felt strong enough to build a fence on her ranch.

Bio-Touch is different from energy therapies like reiki and therapeutic touch, says Stephenson, because it’s easy to teach and replicate, which makes it easier to study. And she has documented some of the benefits in several small studies.

In one, of 18 healthy postmenopausal women ages 62 to 84, half received Bio-Touch sessions once a week for four weeks, and the others did not. By the end, Bio-Touch had led to significant increases in interleukin-12, an immune system molecule known to increase resistance to infection and cancer. (No changes occurred in the untreated group.) Stephenson is currently writing up the results to submit to a medical journal.

Despite many testimonials, which tell of relief from depression and anxiety, the president of IFBM, Paul Bucky, won‘t make any health claims for it. He says he leaves that to patients. But he suspects the reason it works is pretty simple. “Touch is a very powerful healing modality,” he says, “and it transcends belief systems.” For more info: justtouch.com; 800.473.3812.

Heart Patients Reconsider Chelation Doug Grier, a painter of coastal and marsh scenes who lives on Edisto Island in South Carolina, tried everything from herbs to prescription drugs to bring down his cholesterol. The herbs didn’t work for him, and Lipitor caused him back and muscle pain. Then he heard about oral chelation, the latest twist on what used to be an intravenous therapy.

Grier, now 57, started taking daily oral chelation supplements, along with some vitamins and minerals. After three months, his cholesterol had dropped 30 points. When Grier coupled the supplements with a low-carbohydrate diet, his cholesterol fell another 20 points, and his ratio of good to bad cholesterol improved as well.

Oral chelation supplementation is attracting new interest in light of growing evidence that many of us carry heavy metals in our bodies, which can lead to heart disease and have also been implicated in Alzheimer’s disease and cancer, among other health problems. It’s thought to work by latching on to lead, mercury, and other metals and pulling them out of body tissues, which then leads to their excretion.

The idea that chelation therapy might be a useful way to battle disease sprang up in the early 1960s, when doctors found that ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid (EDTA), a compound built around four molecules of vinegar, could not only lower lead levels when used intravenously, but also reduce heart disease. “Studies have clearly shown that the more lead a person’s body contains, the higher his or her risk of death from cardiovascular diseases,” says Garry F. Gordon, a physician and osteopath, and one of the pioneers in chelation therapy.

In the latest, biggest study, National Institutes of Health researchers are testing intravenous chelation therapy’s effectiveness against heart disease in more than 2,000 people. Results are expected in late 2008. It will be the first controlled study; most evidence that chelation therapy can lower heart disease has been presented in the form of case studies and clinical observation.

Gordon, head of the Gordon Research Institute in Payson, Arizona, sees value in intravenous chelation, but the cost and discomfort deter many people from trying it; a single IV treatment runs around $120, and a person with heart disease might need 30 to 50 treatments. So these days he’s pushing a painless option: oral chelation supplements. Supplements take more time to work than intravenous therapy and aren’t absorbed nearly as efficiently, but they cost as little as $2 a day.

For oral chelation, Gordon typically prescribes 400 milligrams of calcium EDTA, which also serves as a powerful antioxidant, antiviral compound, and blood thinner. Other nutritional chelators include malic acid (for removing aluminum and excess iron), vitamin C (for lead, tin, antimony, and nickel), garlic (for lead, mercury, and cadmium), and selenium (for mercury). A treatment can take from two to 12 months. “Oral chelation is extraordinarily safe,” Gordon says. “and chelation is the only way to get rid of heavy metals.”