Acupuncture

[Abby96]

Has anyone had any experience with it?

I just started, and I'm already getting positive results. I'm really surprised.

[samparnell]

Has anyone had any experience with it?

I just started, and I'm already getting positive results. I'm really surprised.

I used it a year ago and had great results.

[80stheman]

I've never tried it, but my wife uses it and she says it's very helpful.

[Brancos]

Does acupuncture really work?
March 24, 2000

Dear Cecil:

I agree with you that homeopathy is bunk, but what about acupuncture? Most of the commentary I've seen so far has been of the "maybe it works, maybe it doesn't, more research is needed" variety. Come on, I've been reading about acupuncture for years — surely medical science has been able to form some tentative conclusions by now.

— Carol Fanchamps, Sturtavant, Wisconsin

Cecil replies:

I'm tired of always pouring cold water on these things, so I'm not going to say acupuncture is silly. Who am I to make light of a therapy just because it uses the same technology as the voodoo doll? Getting miracle drugs from bread mold looked pretty stupid once, too. So I'll just say this:

(1) People really, really want to believe acupuncture works.

(2) There's pretty sparse evidence that it does.

The one place where acupuncture has been a big success is on the PR front. In 1996 the Food and Drug Administration declared that acupuncture needles were no longer experimental but would henceforth be considered standard medical equipment, along with syringes, trusses, and arch supports. In 1997 a conference sponsored by the National Institutes of Health concluded that acupuncture was sufficiently effective to warrant increased use in clinical practice.

But you don't have to read much in the medical journals to think, these guys have got to be kidding. In July 1999 the British Medical Journal published an extensive review of Chinese research on "traditional Chinese medicine" (which also includes herbal and other techniques) and found numerous problems, including poor controls, inadequate protection against bias, etc. The most revealing datum was a chart showing the results of 49 trials of acupuncture in the treatment of stroke. Normally in such a chart you'd see a bell-curve distribution, with a few data points at the far ends (indicating the treatment was either extremely effective or extremely ineffective) but most in the middle. In fact the chart shows half a bell — a few trials showed acupuncture was very effective, the largest number showed it was slightly effective, and almost none showed it was ineffective. Obvious conclusion: researchers in China only publish positive results.

Acupuncture enthusiasts say it will cure everything from cholera to overbite, but few of these claims can be taken seriously. Acupuncture is widely used to treat addiction, for example, but there's little solid evidence it does any good. It's not even clear that acupuncture is all that effective in treating pain, its most basic use. Acupuncture is not routinely used as an anesthesia substitute in China; reports to the contrary in the early 70s were based on observation of surgical patients who'd been selected for high pain tolerance and who in at least some cases were secretly given morphine. At best acupuncture can be said to alleviate rather than eliminate pain, and even then we don't know whether it's blocking the pain pathway or simply having a placebo effect.

Part of the problem with acupuncture is the dopiness of the underlying theory. Traditional Chinese medicine holds that disease is the result of imbalanced qi, or vital energy. Qi supposedly flows through the body in channels called "meridians," with branches to the various organs. Acupuncture, along with breathing exercises, "moxibustion" (burning of certain herbs placed on the body), etc., restores the body's yin/yang to equilibrium and ameliorates "channel obstruction," "blood stasis," organ "vacuity," and so on. Many acupuncturists — I've heard from a few — accept the qi business at face value. But there's no scientific basis for it, and it's of little use even in the practical sense of telling you where to place the needles. One study of recommended treatment for lower-back pain in 16 traditional texts found that fewer than 20 percent of the "acupoints" were recommended by more than half the texts.

Some of acupuncture's defenders recognize its inadequacies. "Thirty years of active acupuncture research have failed to unequivocally demonstrate its clinical efficacy," concedes a 1999 paper in the American Journal of Acupuncture. Shall we go back to Tylenol, then? Not at all. "Acupuncture and Chinese traditional medicine are based on a unique philosophical model, and the instruments of biomedical research may be inadequate and inappropriate," the paper concludes. Translation: Don't blame acupuncture, blame the test. These guys can rationalize all they like, but I bet when they go in for a root canal the only needle they want to see is a shot of novocaine. For more, see Stephen Barrett's review in Quackwatch, www.quackwatch.com/ 01QuackeryRelatedTopics/acu.html.

— Cecil Adams

http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2543/does-acupuncture-really-work

[kmcgough25]

Love it.

Used it to help quit smoking around 6 years ago. I also use it for my back, bulging and protruding disc....traditional medicine would dope me up (darvacet and muscle relaxers), which I couldn't stand.

Started getting treated and they always have me back on my feet within a couple days.

[Al Wilson 4 Mayor]

I've been using massage therapy and chiropractic care for several years to help with migraines. They both work, but together they are great. The best form of massage therapy I've tried is thai-yoga.

I've never tried accupressure.

[yaz96]

http://www.straightdope.com/columns/...re-really-work

And this guy is just an internet quack who loves attention.....what an expert.

[Jay3]

I think it's hooey, along with chiropractic.

But in the area of pain management, I tend to defer to whatever the patient says works. Because chronic pain is kind of a mysterious thing anyway -- I'm convinced it is sometimes "radio echo" in the nervous system and the brain from a former condition. Anything that you can do (whether it's physical, mental, placebo, or just tricking the nervous system) to make someone's pain feel better is by definition, working.

Pain is one thing where perception matters most. So for pain management -- let 'er rip. Acupuncture, chiropractic, herbal, whatever.

But the foundation of if, the claims of it all, are hooey.

[Brancos]

And this guy is just an internet quack who loves attention.....

No he's not. Read up on Cecil Adams, he writes for news papers and is fairly well known. He's also largely unbiased, he would probably love acupuncture to work, it's just that is doesn't.

There are very few cases where it even shows signs of slightly helping. It's not based on any scientific or medical fact, it's based on Traditional Chinese Medicine which is not really true medicine at all and is almost always proven not to work.

I'm not saying there is anything wrong with acupuncture. It's just that saying it works beyond the placebo effect for anything but very specific and uncommon illnesses is wrong, and even then it is only slightly effective.

There is just no evidence to show that it works for what it is commonly said to work for and there is also no real explanation to even prove why it would work.

[xX-Bronco-Xx]

I've had it done by a professional when I screwed up my knee. Worked for like an hour and then the pain came back harder than ever.

To me it's not worth it unless you plan on going there constantly.

[quiggle]

have any of you tried reflexology before and is it similar to accupressure?

[Abby96]

I'm not saying there is anything wrong with acupuncture. It's just that saying it works beyond the placebo effect for anything but very specific and uncommon illnesses is wrong, and even then it is only slightly effective.

How exactly would the placebo effect apply to infertility? It's not like pain relief. You are either actually pregnant or you're not.

Marshall cites a 2002 German study suggesting that acupuncture may, in fact, work. The study looked at 160 women undergoing IVF, half of whom received acupuncture along with IVF, and the other half who received IVF alone. They found pregnancy rates among the women undergoing acupuncture were significantly higher

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/07/23/earlyshow/saturday/main631441.shtml