Hey Alex, nice to hear you were able to fix the problem avoiding drugs and hospitals.
Having changed the diet is likely to also have improved the condition but that doesn't subtract from the experience.
I have experimented with energy healing during 2006-8. I had met several people doing reiki and pranic healing at the time and was very curious, in particular with remote healing which for me was almost inconceivable at the time. I had several treatments done by different people and I was very surprised about the outcome. I didn't suffer from anything major but I was in a stressful period of time and I was in need of some mental reset.
I have no doubt that "energy" can be moved around and accessed from remote, although I have no idea of what energy we're really talking about, I doubt it's something known in the realm of today physics. And I doubt it is only EM as Gary Schwartz posits in his "Energy Healing Experiments" book.
As regards the placebo effect I am not particularly blown away by the studies I've seen, which kind of makes me skeptic of the usual materialist's approach to label as "placebo" any unexplainable healing.
There are studies on Parkinson's patients being able to significantly increase endogenous dopamine levels, via placebo, and thus reducing their symptoms. On the surface this is fascinating but we all know that when we get excited, for example for participating in a promising medical trial, our brain chemistry changes and we can see powerful effects. The question however is... can we sustain that effect for a long time? Some placebos can work for a relatively long time (months), other wear off more rapidly.
As regards the power of expectation and suggestion... placebo works even if people are told they are given a fake remedy!
http://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode/placebos-work-even-when-you-know-10-12-23/
A study reported in a recent BBC documentary presented the case of a woman suffering from IBS who benefited from a placebo medication even knowing that she was administered a inactive remedy! The sole idea of being involved in a medical study was sufficient to help her symptoms, even though she knew she was swallowing sugar pills. When the study was over her symptoms worsened again. This is not to say that the placebo effect is unremarkable, but it seems pretty intuitive the symptoms will change when the patient spends a lot of time at home vs being engaged in a stimulating activity, for example.
The are other documented placebo effects that seem remarkable like "placebo surgery". At first it sounds amazing that a fake knee surgery can produce the same effect of a real meniscus operation, but it turns out that simply most of these procedures have no particular effect in the first place.
However, in most chronic and degenerative illnesses the placebo effect can be useful to relieve some symptoms but it's unlikely to produce a complete remission. There's simply not enough evidence to jump to such conclusion. When an energy healer or any other alternative practitioner resolves one of these long standing issues the default explanation from medicine is "spontaneous remission" or "placebo". Which is like saying... could have been anything, but not the healer :D
It's amazing how "critical thinkers" loose their ability to think straight when something goes beyond their heavily guarded intellectual borders :D
There is probably more to the placebo effect than what we know, and studies are contradictory, but I wouldn't be so quick to jump to conclusions whenever a remarkable case of healing is documented, especially in complex cases that have been going on for years.