A New Way to Deal With Injuries or the Placebo Effect?

My mom has always been a big supporter of natural medicines and things of that nature so it was no surprise that when she found out about the new Amega Zero-Point Energy Wand that she would jump right on it, now being a spokesperson for the company. Let me explain exactly what this is. The idea is Indian scientists have found a way to crystallize a form of energy called zero-point energy. Think of it as the stem cells of energy; it becomes whatever it is needed to be. From the crystal, zero-point energy radiates and goes into everything around it supposedly for hundreds of years without stopping. They took this crystal (which no one has seen) and put it into the tip of what looks like a fully metallic pen, which is the wand I mentioned earlier. People can then use the wand by twirling it on hurt or stressed parts of the body and the energy will help your body out and make the areas feel significantly better. A link to see Amega's claims can be found here.
You may be wondering what exactly this has to do with sports. Well the first thing I must say is that it does get results and because of this, it has many users. Some of these users are coaches. If an athlete gets hurt, whether they pull a muscle or break a bone, the coaches have the athlete "wanded" to help them recover. The crazy thing is that it does help, but is it the reason that the users believe it is?

The idea itself is very laughable. You wave a pen that has some mysterious crystal in it that no one has ever seen and it can heal most problems. To many it might be confusing as to why this odd product seems to be gaining a small following (it still is far from mainstream). Well the company, Amega, states that they have done extensive testing and all of their experiments have confirmed everything they advertise it does. There are a few problems here. First off, they do not give out many details about the experiments they ran. Second, because the experiments are being done within the company there is likely the problem of experimenter expectancy. Their researchers may be seeing results that aren't necessarily there. Thirdly, their experiments are the only ones that have been performed on the wand. Without unbiased researchers weighing in and running their own experiments, there is very little credibility in anything the company claims.

Without any facts or real experimentation, the only thing that can be concluded right now is that the wand is a physical form of the placebo effect. The likely reason as to why people feel better after being "wanded" is that they believe that it will. It has been proven that people somehow heal from this state of believing so it is understandable that if the wand is really just a scam, people still can get benefit from it.

Who knows, it might actually work and the company is just very secretive about it. While it may not seem likely, people still get something out of it. To each his own. If it works for them, why not let them use it?