Courtney Linder here, deputy editor at Popular Mechanics. I’m willing to bet you probably know at least one person who is obsessed with collecting dazzling gemstones and crystals. Some collect these colorful, often shiny stones for a simple appearance, while others perceive the stone as containing mystical healing properties. But is there any scientific evidence that these crystals and stones have the ability to heal our bodies and minds? Or are crystals actually just pretty objects that offer up some sort of placebo effect that can convince us of something more magical to play?
First, let’s consider the primary argument for crystals as healing conduits. In short, the belief that certain stones can help guide healing energy into the body, while ushering out negative, energy-causing disease. This supposedly occurs through your body’s energy field, or chakra; energy is variably called “qi,” “prana,” or “universal energy,” according to Jonathan Jarry, a science communicator at the McGill Office for Science & amp; Society in Montréal.
Crystals are often incorporated into practices such as reiki, a Japanese form of energy healing, and in special crystal healing practices such as “crystal surgery,” where practitioners use crystals as tools for “operations” in the body’s energy field (don’t worry., It’s not an invasive practice — it’s not no scalpel is needed). In these treatments, practitioners try to “unblock” areas of our energy field that are “stuck”.
But it’s not easy to measure whether such bodily energy exists in the first place, Jarry thinks. Scientists can study other forms of energy, such as gravity or the energy contained in food, because we can see apples falling from trees, and we can amplify the process of glucose from apples breaking down into adenosine triphosphate (ATP), which provides energy for our cells.
However, scientists have tried. In the 1990s, Dr. Stephen Barrett — a now-retired psychiatrist who runs Quackwatch, an organization dedicated to health fraud and general quackery — designed an experiment to see if touch therapy (TT) practitioners could actually identify and manipulate a human’s energy field. In it, 21 practitioners with experience ranging from one to 27 years were tested under blind conditions to see whether they could properly judge which arm, right or left, the investigator flew his own hand. Practitioners only identify the correct hand in 123 of the 280 trials, or about 44 percent of the time, about the same odds as flipping a coin.
Now go back to the crystal. If no evidence of a human energy field exists, how can crystals manipulate it?
✅ Stranger Than Fiction
“Crystals absorb energy from pressure and movement and convert it into electronic frequencies,” Jude Polack, founder and director of Bewater, a company that sells crystal-infused water bottles, tells Healthline. On the same subject : President Biden’s remarks at the Launch of the Global Infrastructure and Investment Partnership. “It’s these frequencies, unique to each type of crystal, that users rely on when working with crystals, and given that many pain and anxiety relief tools can work on the same principles, we believe that they can help in this area.”
In the 1880s, Pierre and Jacques Curie — two physicists who were also brothers — conducted a study and discovered that pressure on or changing the temperature of crystals could generate electricity. This is known as the piezoelectric effect, and works in technologies such as watches, where quartz crystals indeed perform special time -keeping properties through vibration at a certain frequency. The work of the Curie brothers suggests that crystals can have a small effect on the body’s energy levels, but that doesn’t automatically translate into healing power.
“The healing energy that is claimed to come with certain crystals is some less defined concept, which is suitable for a placebo effect.”
“Just because an object has a specific type of energy doesn’t mean we humans can take it with our bodies,” Jarry told Popular Mechanics. “For example, magnetic energy is very real and can be measured by the right devices, but humans don’t have, for example, magnetoreception the way that pigeons do. So, the fact that quartz crystals contain energy that can be exploited by piezoelectric effects does not indicate that we humans should be able to take it in. The healing energy that is claimed to come with certain crystals is some less defined concept, which is suitable for the placebo effect.
Case in point: Another study done in 2001 by British psychologist Christopher French challenged 80 volunteers to distinguish between real and fake crystals after holding them in their hands for five minutes and meditating. Six people felt nothing at all, and the rest reported feeling some energy, whether in the form of tingling in the body or an improved sense of wellbeing. Both groups, though — whether holding false crystals or more real — reported similar impressions, suggesting a placebo effect could be played.
“When scientists conduct robust clinical trials, they want to eliminate this placebo effects intervention to know if it has a specific benefit,” Jarry explains. “The reputation of alternative medicine is very favorable from these non-specific placebo effects. Enough people will start to feel better after using crystals (because of regression to the mean, self-limiting disease, misremembering, etc.), and they will publicly testify to their improvement. gives the illusion that crystals work.What they don’t know is what would happen if they didn’t use crystals.
So, if you want to put some amethyst stones on your table to reduce your sadness, or Tiger Eye stones to clear your mind, go ahead: they thought not to manipulate the sacred energy fields around your body to heal you, but they can certainly manipulate your mind.
Deputy Editor
Prior to joining Pop Mech, Courtney was a technology reporter at her hometown newspaper, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
