Beyond the Molecular Machine: Rethinking How Animals Heal

A few days ago, I was listening to a podcast interview with a mitochondrial biologist who has spent his career studying these great energy factories inside our cells. Somewhere in the conversation, he said something that made me stop: "We've deluded ourselves over the last hundred years or so that we are molecular machines, and this is what biomedical science is based on". As a holistic vet who works with homeopathy, Bach flower remedies, and herbal medicine, that line made me genuinely happy because it made me realize that something is changing in medicine and, even if at a slower pace, veterinary medicine is changing as well. If there's one thing daily practice teaches you, it's that animals are not machines either, and the ones who heal are not always the ones with the best biochemistry on paper, since there is much more behind it.

If there is one thing that clinical practice teaches us, it is that animals are not machines, and that those who recover are not always the ones who show the “best” biochemistry on their tests. There is much more behind it. Most of the animals I see are adults or seniors, living with chronic diseases or cancer, who come to me after receiving unfavorable prognoses or when conventional therapeutic options already seem limited. Very often, the first question I am asked is: “How much time does he have? What is the prognosis?”. And I usually explain that prognoses and average survival times are, precisely, averages. They provide us with a reference based on groups of animals, but they do not necessarily determine what will happen to that individual. Every animal is unique, and its journey may be very different from what the statistics describe.

It is at this point that we begin to realize that neither we nor our animals are machines. The body does not respond only to the figures that appear on a test. There is a complex interaction between the body, mind, emotions, environment, and experiences, and all of these can influence the way we respond to illness. This does not mean ignoring clinical reality or denying the importance of a prognosis. It means understanding that a statistic describes what happens on average, but not necessarily what will happen to that animal. And perhaps this is precisely where one of the most fascinating aspects of medicine lies: recognizing that the body has an extraordinary capacity for adaptation and that its trajectory can change, for better or worse, depending on countless factors that go far beyond the results of a test.

It is precisely this complexity that makes observation so important. As homeopaths, we are trained to observe our patients in every detail, as well as their environment and their relationships with humans and other animals. The biologist I mentioned also began developing his ideas through observation, initially as a child, accompanying his mother, who was a nurse providing home care. By observing her patients, he noticed something that never completely fit the traditional model of disease: some seriously ill people recovered, contrary to all expectations, while others, with apparently “milder” conditions, did not progress in the same way. Clearly, there was something beyond the molecular and physical aspects that was influencing the outcome.

It immediately reminded me of the story of Dr. Edward Bach, who as a young man working in his father's brass foundry, noticed that loneliness, alienation, and apathy seemed to erode his co-workers' health just as much as any physical exposure did. He also saw how deeply the fear of illness and its financial consequences, weighed on those workers, sometimes more than the illness itself. Those observations planted the seed for everything he later developed: the idea that disease is not simply a malfunctioning body, but an imbalance of the whole being, including the mental and emotional state. Two men, separated by a century, arriving at the same starting point simply by paying close attention to who actually gets better.

None of this is new to those of us who practice Homeopathy and Bach flower therapy,  but it is validating to hear these ideas echoed from within a modern research laboratory. Every day, we see animals whose physical symptoms don't map neatly onto laboratory values: the dog whose skin condition flares every time the household is under stress; the cat who stops eating after a house move, long before any blood work reveals a problem; the dog with hypothyroidism, just like his "mom"; or the horse whose old lameness resurfaces after the loss of a herd companion.

If we only ever treat the "molecular machine" - the inflamed joint, the reactive gut, the imbalanced microbiome, the hypothyroidism - we're addressing only half the picture. The other half is the animal's emotional and relational state: fear, grief, insecurity, disrupted bonds, and even energetic influences, the same territory Bach was mapping in people a hundred years ago, and the same territory today's mitochondrial researchers are beginning to explore at the cellular level. This is exactly why homeopathy, Bach flower remedies, and careful case-taking matter so much in our practice. We're not ignoring biochemistry, but we see that molecular layer as just one part of a system that is fundamentally adaptive, relational, and energetic, not the whole story.

Reiki fits this same pattern. Once regarded as lacking a scientific basis, it is now used in many hospitals in the United States as a complementary therapy. The same shift is reflected in the scientific literature. A recent feasibility study by Dr. Natalie Dyer and colleagues at an integrative oncology clinic found that Reiki was not only feasible and well accepted by cancer survivors, but was also associated with improvements in pain, anxiety, fatigue, depression, overall well-being, and quality of life. While larger randomized trials are still needed, studies like these suggest that Reiki can support aspects of healing that extend beyond what conventional laboratory tests can measure.

On the veterinary side, the evidence is still emerging but is beginning to point in the same direction. A randomized, placebo-controlled study by Pacheco et al. demonstrated reduced postoperative pain and eliminated the need for rescue opioid analgesia in dogs receiving Reiki after ovariohysterectomy. In my own randomized, blinded, placebo-controlled study, repeated distant Reiki sessions also produced significant reductions in pain in companion dogs, adding to the growing body of veterinary evidence. In horses, pilot research has suggested beneficial effects on physiological indicators of relaxation and stress, although larger, adequately powered studies are still needed to confirm these findings. As Bach flower remedies and homeopathy, Reiki appears to be especially valuable in addressing the deepest layer of each being, where we may find fear, grief, and nervous system dysregulation, things no blood panel can fully capture.

What struck me most about this perspective is that this subject is no longer confined to what we once called "alternative" medicine. It is emerging from within mainstream biomedical research, from someone whose daily work involves studying mitochondria under a microscope. When a contemporary research scientist and a 1930s English homeopath independently arrive at the conclusion that emotions and other psychological factors matter just as much as pathology, it's worth paying attention, for the sake of both our two-legged and four-legged patients.

For those of us who treat animals holistically, it serves as a reminder that we've never really been treating "conditions." We've always been treating whole, sentient beings whose bodies respond to safety, connection, and fear in ways that no blood panel can fully explain. A hundred years after Bach and today, in a mitochondrial biology laboratory somewhere, the same truth keeps resurfacing: “Healing isn't purely mechanical. It never was.”

Inspiration for this article:

Phenomena Healing Podcast.Episode 6: Not a Machine but a Flame | The Biology of Energy at Columbia and Beyond.Con Martin Picard, Richard Hammerschlag e Neil Theise.

References:

• Bach, E. (1931).Heal Thyself: An Explanation of the Real Cause and Cure of Disease.

• Dyer, N. L., Fink, K. E., Chakraborti, S., Cheng, J., Dusek, J. A., & Rao, S. (2026).A Feasibility Study of Reiki Therapy to Improve Symptoms in Cancer Survivors at an Integrative Oncology Clinic.Global Advances in Integrative Medicine and Health.

• Pacheco, L., Marangoni, M., Rodrigues, E. O., Pacheco, K. O. M., & Freitas, G. C. (2021).Postoperative analgesic effects of Reiki therapy in bitches undergoing ovariohysterectomy.Ciência Rural, 51(10).

• Barbieri, C. R. (2025).Impact of Distant Reiki on Owner Assessment of Health and Wellbeing of Adult Dogs: A Blinded, Placebo-controlled, Randomized Trial.American Holistic Veterinary Medical Association Journal, vol. 78.

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