Therapeutic touch is a contemporary interpretation of several ancient healing arts developed in the 1970?s by Dolores Krieger, PhD, RN and Dora Kunz, a well known healer. Therapeutic touch is the probably the best researched form of biofield or energy medicine and has been shown to be effective in a wide variety of diseases. Osteoporosis is a common disease in older adults that may result in increased disability or mortality, especially in women or men with spine or hip fractures. Over 50% of women who fracture a hip do not return to pre-fracture function and those with vertebral fractures frequently suffer from chronic pain and associated disability. Anecdotal experiences and unpublished data suggest that therapeutic touch may speed fracture healing and functional recovery after fracture, although this has not been well studied. If therapeutic touch is beneficial to fracture recovery then its use might become an important part of fracture treatment. Serum and urine biochemical markers have been used in the diagnosis and to monitor treatment in metabolic bone disease for many years. Individual markers reflect bone resorption and bone formation and these measures have been shown to be associated with more invasive and cumbersome measures of bone remodeling. Although studies evaluating the use of markers after fracture are not well controlled, they suggest that bone formation decreases immediately after fracture then gradually increases and finally returns to the normal range at 6 months to 1 year after fracture. Persons with slower healing fractures have a more gradual rise and more prolonged increase in bone formation markers over time. To begin to examine the overall hypothesis that therapeutic touch may affect fracture healing, we propose to first look at the effect of therapeutic touch on markers of bone formation (and resorption) over time in women who have suffered a recent wrist fracture. We hypothesize that therapeutic touch will prevent the immediate decrease and will result in a more rapid rise and a faster return to normal values of markers of bone formation after fracture, compared to sham therapeutic touch. We will examine the effect of 3 different therapeutic touch treatment courses (or doses) on bone formation and hypothesize that any of the doses of therapeutic touch that we are testing will alter bone formation after fracture, compared to sham therapeutic touch, but that women who receive the highest dose will have the greatest response. We also hypothesize that stimulation of bone formation by therapeutic touch will be associated with altered levels of insulin-like growth factor I and binding protein 3.
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