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[Split Thread] Acupuncture

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Posted By:Agatha





There was mention of acupuncture there, as well. Not to derail this thread, but do we have a thread about acupuncture here, by any chance? There was some talk the other day, IRL I mean to say, about acupuncture apparently being borne out by research, unlike homeopathy and chakric healing and reiki and so on. Not that "talk" amounts to much, not saying that; but if we do already have some discussion on research on acupuncture here, then I think it would be worth checking out.
 
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There was mention of acupuncture there, as well. Not to derail this thread, but do we have a thread about acupuncture here, by any chance? There was some talk the other day, IRL I mean to say, about acupuncture apparently being borne out by research, unlike homeopathy and chakric healing and reiki and so on. Not that "talk" amounts to much, not saying that; but if we do already have some discussion on research on acupuncture here, then I think it would be worth checking out.
I don't think that there's a specific thread for it, but as it's now on-topic...

Acupuncture is Sino-nationalistic propaganda.

China has had a big old Napoleon complex ever since the British kicked their butts in the Opium Wars. Acupuncture and "Traditional" Chinese medicine are one way that the Chinese government tries to assert its cultural superiority over the West, particularly Europe and America.

Every one of the studies that appears to support the efficacy of acupuncture either comes from a Chinese research organisation, or has Chinese authors. I haven't seen a single one that doesn't have a bunch of Chinese names at the top, and I bet you haven't either.

People may want to read up on Mao's "barefoot doctor" programme. Here are a couple of links to get you started:

Mao's Barefoot Doctors: The Secret History of Chinese Medicine (Skeptoid)
Puncturing the Acupuncture Myth (Science Based Medicine)
 
I don't think that there's a specific thread for it, but as it's now on-topic...

Acupuncture is Sino-nationalistic propaganda.

China has had a big old Napoleon complex ever since the British kicked their butts in the Opium Wars. Acupuncture and "Traditional" Chinese medicine are one way that the Chinese government tries to assert its cultural superiority over the West, particularly Europe and America.


Haha, right, like their martial arts thing. (There’s a lovely thread on that here, with some hilarious vids linked to, of “masters” getting beaten up by MMA and boxing types.)

Which is not to say that all of Chinese martial arts is necessarily bunk, of course. I mean the thing about China trying to hype up its traditional arts beyond all sane levels.


Every one of the studies that appears to support the efficacy of acupuncture either comes from a Chinese research organisation, or has Chinese authors. I haven't seen a single one that doesn't have a bunch of Chinese names at the top, and I bet you haven't either.


Sorry, not sure I’m onboard with that. That would be an issue only if we assume that the creds of all the Chinese-ethnicity researchers are suspect. That the ones that conducted and interpreted the research are all either corrupt, dishonest; or else that they’re all incompetent, and unable to isolate out the effect of any bias on the part of the subjects participating in the research.

I agree, though, it’s curious, what you point out, that all of this research has Chinese names attached to them. But maybe it’s just happenstance, just a matter of Chinese people drawn to research their traditional medicine? To go beyond that and to believe that therefore they’re all of them less than competent and honest, not quite sure about that...


People may want to read up on Mao's "barefoot doctor" programme. Here are a couple of links to get you started:

Mao's Barefoot Doctors: The Secret History of Chinese Medicine (Skeptoid)
Puncturing the Acupuncture Myth (Science Based Medicine)


Thanks for the links!

(Haven’t checked them out yet, though. I will, later when I’m free.)
 
I don't think that there's a specific thread for it, but as it's now on-topic...

Acupuncture is Sino-nationalistic propaganda.

China has had a big old Napoleon complex ever since the British kicked their butts in the Opium Wars. Acupuncture and "Traditional" Chinese medicine are one way that the Chinese government tries to assert its cultural superiority over the West, particularly Europe and America.
True.

But one could say similar things about western countries trying to assert their capitalist system. There are plenty of examples of studies promoted by drug companies with a vested interest in seeing positive results.

Phenylephrine, a Common Decongestant, Is Ineffective, Say FDA Advisors. It’s Not Alone
Several weeks ago, a U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) advisory committee unanimously concluded that phenylephrine, an ingredient found in popular nasal decongestants sold under such brand names as Sudafed and Dayquil, works no better than a placebo in treating cold and allergy symptoms...

even in the most rigorous of clinical trials demonstrating efficacy, the strict participation requirements for trial volunteers often don’t match how the majority of patients will be taking the drug post-approval... “There are a lot of drugs on the market with relatively little evidence, where it’s unclear whether they work, how much benefit they provide, for whom, and under what circumstances”...

Phenylephrine, the drug in common decongestants, was approved by the FDA for over-the-counter use in 1976. At the time, the FDA had determined that the drug was safe, and studies suggested its effectiveness against congestion... six of the seven studies considered in the 1970s were submitted by Sterling-Winthrop, one of phenylephrine’s manufacturers, which may have played a role in influencing the original panel’s decision.


arthwollipot said:
Every one of the studies that appears to support the efficacy of acupuncture either comes from a Chinese research organisation, or has Chinese authors. I haven't seen a single one that doesn't have a bunch of Chinese names at the top, and I bet you haven't either.
This doesn't mean anything.

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services: Acupuncture: Effectiveness and Safety
What is acupuncture?

Acupuncture is a technique in which practitioners insert fine needles into the skin to treat health problems. The needles may be manipulated manually or stimulated with small electrical currents (electroacupuncture). Acupuncture has been in use in some form for at least 2,500 years. It originated from traditional Chinese medicine but has gained popularity worldwide since the 1970s.

How widely is acupuncture used?

According to the World Health Organization, acupuncture is used in 103 of 129 countries that reported data.

In the United States, data from the National Health Interview Survey show that the use of acupuncture by U.S. adults more than doubled between 2002 and 2022. In 2002, 1.0 percent of U.S. adults used acupuncture; in 2022, 2.2 percent used it.
If Chinese are the biggest users of acupuncture then you would expect most research on the subject to come from them. That doesn't have any bearing on the quality of their research.

NCCIH-Funded Research

NCCIH funds research to evaluate acupuncture’s effectiveness for various kinds of pain and other conditions and to further understand how the body responds to acupuncture and how acupuncture might work. Some recent NCCIH-supported studies involve:

Evaluating the feasibility of using acupuncture in hospital emergency departments.

Testing whether the effect of acupuncture on chronic low-back pain can be enhanced by combining it with transcranial direct current stimulation.

Evaluating a portable acupuncture-based nerve stimulation treatment for anxiety disorders...

Key References...

Acupuncture in Patients with Allergic Asthma: A Randomized Pragmatic Trial
Benno Brinkhaus 1 , Stephanie Roll 1 , Susanne Jena 2 , Katja Icke 1 , Daniela Adam 1 , Sylvia Binting 1 , Fabian Lotz 1 , Stefan N Willich 1 , Claudia M Witt

Affiliations

1 Institute for Social Medicine , Epidemiology and Health Economics, Charité Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Berlin, Germany .

2 Department for Medical Statistics and Informatics, Universität Freiburg , Freiburg, Germany .

3 Institute for Complementary and Integrative Medicine, University Hospital Zurich and University of Zurich , Zurich, Switzerland.
Lots of European names at the top of that study. But hey, perhaps they are all Chinese who have taken on western names! :rolleyes:

Your implication that Chinese researchers are biased because 'the British kicked their butts in the Opium Wars' is itself biased.
 
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The Acupuncture in Patients with Allergic Asthma: A Randomized Pragmatic Trial was not a double blind study. The results were judged by a questionnaire.

In other words the quality of the study was poor.
 
At least with acupuncture there is something being done that could cause something. Mentioned before I've had acupuncture, from trained and qualified physiotherapists, now I perceived no benefit from it but I had a marked objective physiological response, from around the needle insertion point my skin reddened, even after the needles were removed I had these red circles for sometime. Now of course that is a million miles away from the explanation many practitioners give as to what they are doing, we know what they think they are doing is complete bunk and we don't need to give that any further thought, but if the needles for example tend to temporarily increase blood flow in an area or provoke a histamine response that could be why some people report some difference between before and after treatment. That of course doesn't mean that acupuncture is doing anything useful.
 
The Acupuncture in Patients with Allergic Asthma: A Randomized Pragmatic Trial was not a double blind study. The results were judged by a questionnaire.

In other words the quality of the study was poor.
And when you look further into it, the higher the quality of the study, the smaller the effect size. It's a direct inverse correlation.
 


Finally read those two links! Well, listened to the one, and read the other. They’re great links, the pair of them, and together do give an excellent idea about acupuncture.

Without a doubt, basis these, and particularly the latter (SBM) report, acupuncture would seem to be a complete sham. Very strongly outperforms no treatment; but on the other hand, returns exactly the same result when you poke around with needles at random points, without telling the patients they’re random points. That’s like the definition of placebo, right?

So that seems cut and dried. Except, I suppose there still remains the part where we do the textbook skeptics thing, the laborious part where we actually check this out for ourselves by poring over research reports.

So there was that one report there that had a very high placebo reading, but an even higher, and significantly higher, treatment result. But that’s just the one report, one study.

----------

I guess I’m with you now, in thinking that likely enough this thing’s complete bull. Because, hell, it’s not even an actual ancient “traditional” treatment at all, not as it is actually practiced. So that, if it did turn out that it works, then that would be happenstance, an astonishing coincidence, right?

On the other hand, I guess the properly skeptical thing to do would be to leave aside qualitative matters like those, and just focus on actual research reports. As far as that, I guess it’s wide open so far, at least in terms of our having actually examined stuff ourselves. If anything, it’s open just a wee bit on the side of acupuncture working, just maybe.


Hm, so where does that leave us? Probably not, very likely not; but maybe yes after all? That kind of sums up where I find myself on this!


…It would be cool if in this thread we ended up actually doing a bit of that latter thing too, of actually looking up acupuncture research, and seeing where that takes us.
 
Acupuncture has been thoroughly taken apart over the years (see SBM, Respectful Insolence, Edzard Ernst and many, many others) and shown to be ineffective and lacking in anything resembling proper, replicable scientific evidence.

There are those who crow about our NICE recommending acupuncture for certain low back pain. However, the paper that this reco is based on is utter pish and my view (as a long-standing reader and user of NICE guidelines) that they threw this one in as a "well, it can't do much harm and the placebo may help" for the sort of condition which is hard to deal with.

Orac has been especially damning on how this supposedly ancient technique is anything but, having been retconned in the '60s.
 
Eeeeehhh... not conclusively. From NIH: "In a 2018 review, data from 12 studies (8,003 participants) showed acupuncture was more effective than no treatment for back or neck pain, and data from 10 studies (1,963 participants) showed acupuncture was more effective than sham acupuncture."

Others, from JAMA and the peer reviewed Journal of Pain keep.finding positive results too, even if no one is sure why it works and when. Harvard might be on to something:

https://hms.harvard.edu/news/exploring-science-acupuncture

Basically, some people respond, some don't, and it goes for sham acupuncture too. It's fun and makes people feel all scientific to deny it, but there is something going on here. My guess is that the whole meridian thing is a steaming pile, but some of the points are actually doing... something... beneficial, even if we don't know why. Our local acupuncturist is a guy named Justin. Cool guy, down to earth and no incense burning in his office or anything. The man is effective at pain management for a lot of his clients, of which one of my kids was one. I think I mentioned on one of these threads that there is a point where the bones of your thumb and forefinger meet, that feels mostly like a slab of meat. If you have a headache, massage the points on each hand, and if one feels sensitive, deep.massage it for a minute or two, and way way more than half the time, your headache will vanish. I don't know or care really why it works, but I can't argue with the results. Saves me a fortune on Advil.
 
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I think I mentioned on one of these threads that there is a point where the bones of your thumb and forefinger meet, that feels mostly like a slab of meat. If you have a headache, massage the points on each hand, and if one feels sensitive, deep.massage it for a minute or two, and way way more than half the time, your headache will vanish. I don't know or care really why it works, but I can't argue with the results. Saves me a fortune on Advil.

That works for me also, and I have shared with others who had good results.
I massage/squeeze until I feel pain in the hand.
 
I tried acupuncture a few years ago. A lower spine injection attempt accidently punctured a nerve. It happens. I don't find anyone responsible. But it has caused me to feel a bit scared about going back.

After 4 botched spine surgeries, I am always looking for relief in whatever form!
 
It's not acupuncture though.

Yes, but Hoku is the acupuncture point being stimulated. Some points respond to acupressure, some don't. There's no conventional physiological reason for pain relief to come from stimulating that area. It just works. My wife, who detests anything outside Western medicine, grumbles at me sometimes to "make it go away" and holds he hand out for me to work it. It goes away.
 
Yes, but Hoku is the acupuncture point being stimulated. Some points respond to acupressure, some don't. There's no conventional physiological reason for pain relief to come from stimulating that area. It just works. My wife, who detests anything outside Western medicine, grumbles at me sometimes to "make it go away" and holds he hand out for me to work it. It goes away.

Stopped watches and all that. Could just be a coincidence that acupuncture gets a pressure point or muscle "correct".

By what mechanism do you suspect makes performing the action work?
 
Eeeeehhh... not conclusively. From NIH: "In a 2018 review, data from 12 studies (8,003 participants) showed acupuncture was more effective than no treatment for back or neck pain, and data from 10 studies (1,963 participants) showed acupuncture was more effective than sham acupuncture."

Others, from JAMA and the peer reviewed Journal of Pain keep.finding positive results too, even if no one is sure why it works and when. Harvard might be on to something:

https://hms.harvard.edu/news/exploring-science-acupuncture
Harvard, huh? That means Ted Kapchuk and Kathryn Hall - known quacks who promote pseudoscience about the placebo effect.
 
Stopped watches and all that. Could just be a coincidence that acupuncture gets a pressure point or muscle "correct".

By what mechanism do you suspect makes performing the action work?

Distraction: either psychologically or interference with pain signals from the nerves by sending other signals from pressing on the hand (a bit like Tens machines disrupt pain signals or when people bang a hand against the wall when they've stubbed their toe)?

To be clear, I do not subscribe to acupuncture being effective, I think it's all woo, just trying to think how, if there is any effect, it may have been caused.
 
Stopped watches and all that. Could just be a coincidence that acupuncture gets a pressure point or muscle "correct".

Correct, how? There's no known explanation for the effect. How would it be "coincidentally correct" if there is no "correct"?

By what mechanism do you suspect makes performing the action work?

Beats the hell out of me. Indications are that a neural pathway to anti-inflammitory/endorphin release is being triggered. I feel confident they'll keep poking around with an open mind and very likely find an explanation that fits our understanding. Science is pretty groovy like that.

What interests me is that it shouldn't work, but reliably does for myself and many others. To me, that's very exciting. It means that there might be a whole branch of neurology to be explored, possibly bringing pain relief to chronic sufferers, if we figure out what's going on, then improve on it.

I had said that Hoku works for me way way more than half the time. That's only technically true. It works for me every time, barring a few flat on my back serious illnesses. I can honestly say I don't recall having a regular headache that Hoku didn't straighten out for me in a matter of minutes since I tried it in my 20s.
 
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Harvard, huh? That means Ted Kapchuk and Kathryn Hall - known quacks who promote pseudoscience about the placebo effect.

Tell me you didn't glance at the research without telling me you didn't glance at the research.

These were neurobiologists, not your hobby-horse catch-all Harvard peeps who you apparently feel are sufficient to discredit the entire institution. The Harvard School of Medicine. That's a bold move, Cotton.

Your cited people were not part of the research, nor was there work drawn on, nor are they mentioned or credited or acknowledged in any way.
 
Ummm, that cites a mouse study rather than a human or primate one, so that is a problem; it also then cites studies on electro-acupuncture, so is talking about something other than acupuncture.

Must do better.

You seem to be unaware that mice are often used by neuroscientists performing studies that might be considered barbaric to perform on humans. I don't believe you. You also seem to object to electrically stimulated acupuncture. Why? The researchers aren't trying to prove meridian theory or other Ancient Chinrse Secrets. They are pragmatically searching for a neural explanation within the bounds of Western science. You can't seriously be oblivious to that, right?

Oh, and can someone get all the acupuncturists to agree on what the so-called acupuncture points actually are?

You could ask them about that. Doesn't much interest me unless the points seem to be working. That, I'm interested in. If your interest is in shutting down a conventionally Western exploration of neural pathways because you don't like their origin, well... there's a fallacy for that.
 
You seem to be unaware that mice are often used by neuroscientists performing studies that might be considered barbaric to perform on humans. I don't believe you. You also seem to object to electrically stimulated acupuncture. Why? The researchers aren't trying to prove meridian theory or other Ancient Chinrse Secrets. They are pragmatically searching for a neural explanation within the bounds of Western science. You can't seriously be oblivious to that, right?



You could ask them about that. Doesn't much interest me unless the points seem to be working. That, I'm interested in. If your interest is in shutting down a conventionally Western exploration of neural pathways because you don't like their origin, well... there's a fallacy for that.

I know fine well why mice and rats are used in many studies, thank you for your condescension.

And I also know that many rodent studies are NOT translatable into humans, hence my objection to drawing any conclusions from those.

My objection to "electro-acupuncture" is that this is shifting the goal posts in a huge way: the thread is about acupuncture; no-one has established that any theoretical basis for acupuncture has any validity; electro-acupuncture is a whole other thing, if it is actually A Thing and not another theatrical placebo.

My comment about acupuncture points, as, to borrow a phrase, you seem to be completely unaware, is that there is no consistency between different schools of acupuncture as to what and where these points are.

I'm not interested in shutting anything down, just pointing out some flaws in supposed arguments in favour of acupuncture, that acupuncture is not always what is actually being discussed, and, per another post of mine, that this has all been discussed to death, with references and that we are no closer to anything resembling good, replicable evidence for either efficacy of or the underpinning of acupuncture.
 
What I call "Randi's Rule", before you feel a need to explain a phenomenon, first prove it exists.

Telepathy and telekinesis are the poster children for this.
 
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What I call "Randi's Rule", before you feel a need to explain a phenomenon, first prove it exists.

Telepathy and telekinesis are the poster children for this.


That's a cool "rule". Never heard of it before; and, I checked just now, nor does Google seem to have: but it's cool, and does deserve to be a thing.

(Speaking in general, and not necessarily in connection with the acupuncture thing. Because I'm actually undecided whether the personal, anecdotal evidence provided, that acupuncture/acupressure works, amounts to proof that it exists, even if only as placebo.)
 
I know fine well why mice and rats are used in many studies, thank you for your condescension.

Not meant as condescension. It was meant to point out that it's not a legitimate dismissal of the study (see below)...

And I also know that many rodent studies are NOT translatable into humans, hence my objection to drawing any conclusions from those.

On what grounds? Do you have reason to believe the Harvard School of Neurobiology is a bunch of knuckleheads who faked their peer reviewed work? I don't see anyone in the medical community calling them.out for flawed methodology or disputing the transference of the mammalian subjects for this study. I defer to their expertise within their well respected community. Is yours higher?

My objection to "electro-acupuncture" is that this is shifting the goal posts in a huge way: the thread is about acupuncture; no-one has established that any theoretical basis for acupuncture has any validity; electro-acupuncture is a whole other thing, if it is actually A Thing and not another theatrical placebo.

One of the beauties of using mice is that they arent big on the placebo effect. One problem they have with rodent subjects is keeping their stress responses under control.because the rodents don't think testing is helpful to them. They kind of think they are being tortured, so if anything, they have kind of an anti-placebo reaction.

The researchers aren't playing around with being TCM philosophers, so they don't feel bound by pure traditional.approaches. They just want to see if there is something going on here that actually works and is explainable in Western medicine, for which I heartily cheer them. I don't think looking for flaws by saying "that's not how the ancients did it" is really in the spirit of research.

My comment about acupuncture points, as, to borrow a phrase, you seem to be completely unaware, is that there is no consistency between different schools of acupuncture as to what and where these points are.

Which is to be expected, I would think? It's not a western science, nor does it claim to be. The researchers, as well as yours truly, are very interested in a legitimate physiological mechanism that's buried in chackras or crystals or whatever horse **** is piled on top.

I'm not interested in shutting anything down, just pointing out some flaws in supposed arguments in favour of acupuncture, that acupuncture is not always what is actually being discussed, and, per another post of mine, that this has all been discussed to death, with references and that we are no closer to anything resembling good, replicable evidence for either efficacy of or the underpinning of acupuncture.

Which, again, is exactly why this relatively new Harvard research is interesting and exciting. The neurologists are finding stuff out. There's nothing more I would like than for them to find out that there is a neural.pathway to pain relief that is triggered in a way we had not seen before, buried in acupuncture. Like I said, some of it works for me. Not all, by a long shot. But I'd really like to know why the stuff that works seems so effective. It doesn't make a lot of sense to me that five or six points get the desired response (to differing degrees), and others seem to have no effect.
 
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Tell me you didn't glance at the research without telling me you didn't glance at the research.

These were neurobiologists, not your hobby-horse catch-all Harvard peeps who you apparently feel are sufficient to discredit the entire institution. The Harvard School of Medicine. That's a bold move, Cotton.

Your cited people were not part of the research, nor was there work drawn on, nor are they mentioned or credited or acknowledged in any way.
I don't discredit the entire Harvard School of Medicine, only Kaptchuk's department of Placebo Studies. Kaptchuk is an acupuncturist by trade, so even if he was not directly cited as a co-author, it's a reasonable assumption that any study at Harvard on the efficacy of acupuncture is linked to him in some way.
 
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I don't discredit the entire Harvard School of Medicine, only Kaptchuk's department of Placebo Studies.

Which has nothing to do with the cited research.

Kaptchuk is an acupuncturist by trade, so even if he was not directly cited as a co-author, it's a reasonable assumption that any study at Harvard on the efficacy of acupuncture is linked to him in some way.

It's not a reasonable assumption. The neurobiologists were doing their own research, not even tangentially related to placebo theory. Quite the opposite, in fact. They were studying physiological aspects. Do you seriously believe that no one in that rather large institution can have a medical interest in acupuncture without somehow associating with or deferring to a guy who used to be an acupuncturist decades ago?
 
Disclaimer: What I'm about to say here is mostly anecdotal; based on my own experiences and how I came to interpret them.

I took a course in Shiatsu back in the day. It's a massage therapy modality that is based upon the same "Traditional" Chinese "Medicine" system of Qi, meridians and points. Where Acupuncture uses needles, Shiatsu uses applied pressure to the points. There's all the lore about balancing Yin and Yang that has no medical foundation whatsoever.

To my observation practicing Shiatsu, many of the "tsubo" are places of heavy muscular tension or slack. These are called "trigger points" in other massage therapy modalities. Reliving muscular tension at these points by warmth and pressure, very often relieves pain, as the tightness relaxes.

Another analgesic factor in it, is that relaxing to the personal attention of another engages the parasympathetic nervous system. Natural hormonal endorphins are released that have a sopheric and pain numbing effect.
The recipient feels a state of well being and even a little high.

If you come from an Acupuncture, Shiatsu, or Acupressure treatment feeling great, it was worth it.
However, any practitioner who tells you this is a substitute for medical attention to he causes of your illness, is a fraudster.

[My teachers, BTW, told us that Shiatsu was not an alternative to medical attention and prescribed medications.]
 
That reminds me.

I went to a Myotherapist twice who had a chart of the Myotherapy "pressure points" on the wall. I think he said some of them were drawn from Acupuncture.

Wikipedia says there's not much evidence for its effectiveness, and I found that physiotherapy works better.

What did work was when he massaged the muscle that was "knotty", which is basically just massage, not anything revolutionary.
 
Yes, I also studied some shiatsu. Not formally, just by reading and practicing on my partner at the time. My conclusions are the same as Apathia's.
 
It's not a reasonable assumption. The neurobiologists were doing their own research, not even tangentially related to placebo theory. Quite the opposite, in fact. They were studying physiological aspects. Do you seriously believe that no one in that rather large institution can have a medical interest in acupuncture without somehow associating with or deferring to a guy who used to be an acupuncturist decades ago?
I'm willing to be convinced that my first assumption was incorrect.

But I will point out that your study's lead author, Qiufu Ma, is a Chinese researcher, currently working at a university in Hangzhou, which supports my initial conspiracy theory that acupuncture is Sino-nationalistic propaganda.
 
I'm willing to be convinced that my first assumption was incorrect.

But I will point out that your study's lead author, Qiufu Ma, is a Chinese researcher, currently working at a university in Hangzhou, which supports my initial conspiracy theory that acupuncture is Sino-nationalistic propaganda.

I think it is best not to make assumptions like that. I think thermal correctly pointed out that it would make no sense that the placebo effect can be invoked when it came to mice.

Besides, one of the things that I find somewhat odd is that many of these authors come from "Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Department of Neurobiology".

And in the Vickers et. al study, two of them were affiliated with "Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center".

I wondered why that might be, but it turns out that there are a lot of people working on reducing symptoms of cancer treatment or illness related to cancer in some ways. To the extent that it is a clinical trial, I am all for it. The problem is when relatively weak evidence is spun by practitioners who then charge big fees for it pointing to studies that their patients won't be able to interpret.

Unfortunately, "Sino-nationalistic propaganda" is essentially a form of conflict of interest that regularly infects activists for a cause of some kind or another.

As you rightly assume, we should be aware that bias and wishful thinking are all too possible when someone puts forward the kinds of treatment that they simply wish were true or which lines their pockets whether true or not.

The problem is that when someone who is considered an outsider looks at the data and pokes holes in it, and points out that the the studies were of a low quality or demonstrating some conflict of interest or at a high risk of some other bias and that maybe we need to wait on better evidence, we regularly see criticisms that from acupunturists that their critics are closed-minded, or haven't seen first-hand the undeniable benefits that their own eyes revealed, or that maybe the critics are bigoted Sinophobes. It sometimes almost seems as though people make up their own minds first and arrange the evidence after. And that is not very skeptical!
 
Eeeeehhh... not conclusively. From NIH: "In a 2018 review, data from 12 studies (8,003 participants) showed acupuncture was more effective than no treatment for back or neck pain, and data from 10 studies (1,963 participants) showed acupuncture was more effective than sham acupuncture."

Others, from JAMA and the peer reviewed Journal of Pain keep.finding positive results too, even if no one is sure why it works and when. Harvard might be on to something:

https://hms.harvard.edu/news/exploring-science-acupuncture

Basically, some people respond, some don't, and it goes for sham acupuncture too. It's fun and makes people feel all scientific to deny it, but there is something going on here. My guess is that the whole meridian thing is a steaming pile, but some of the points are actually doing... something... beneficial, even if we don't know why. Our local acupuncturist is a guy named Justin. Cool guy, down to earth and no incense burning in his office or anything. The man is effective at pain management for a lot of his clients, of which one of my kids was one. I think I mentioned on one of these threads that there is a point where the bones of your thumb and forefinger meet, that feels mostly like a slab of meat. If you have a headache, massage the points on each hand, and if one feels sensitive, deep.massage it for a minute or two, and way way more than half the time, your headache will vanish. I don't know or care really why it works, but I can't argue with the results. Saves me a fortune on Advil.

That's good. Now what we need to do is get some evidence for that, teach it to everyone and then not only can people save money on Advil, or better yet a generic ibuprofen tablet which costs tuppence each in the UK (i.e cheaper than the shoeleather you wear out to walk to the shop), they can also save money on visits to acupunturists which probably cost orders of magnitude more than the brand-name ibuprofen.
 
I'm willing to be convinced that my first assumption was incorrect.

But I will point out that your study's lead author, Qiufu Ma, is a Chinese researcher, currently working at a university in Hangzhou, which supports my initial conspiracy theory that acupuncture is Sino-nationalistic propaganda.

It's a thing of "Traditional Chinese Medicine." which is a Maoist Chinese Construct.
Prescientific/ancient Chinese medicine was about the interactions of the "Five Elements."
So-called "Traditional" downplays the "elements" for balancing Yin and Yang Qi.
 
That's good. Now what we need to do is get some evidence for that,

Pain relief is self reported, soooo....done.

teach it to everyone

That's what I'm doing here. Can't hurt, might help. Try it. What do you have to lose?

and then not only can people save money on Advil, or better yet a generic ibuprofen tablet which costs tuppence each in the UK (i.e cheaper than the shoeleather you wear out to walk to the shop), they can also save money on visits to acupunturists which probably cost orders of magnitude more than the brand-name ibuprofen.

I'm using "Advil" as a shorthand, like Q-tip or Jell-O. Only ever bought brand name if on sale cheaper than the generic.

Regarding the pill-popper mindset, a lot of us aren't crazy about that and avoid it when practical. Like, if I want to relax, I don't pop barbituates either, nor when i want to build strength, pop some D-ball. And I'm saving both the tuppence and shoe leather by casually working it out.

My point is that if you can relieve minor pains without doping up, why wouldn't you? You got stock in pharmaceutical companies or something?
 
I'm willing to be convinced that my first assumption was incorrect.

But I will point out that your study's lead author, Qiufu Ma, is a Chinese researcher, currently working at a university in Hangzhou, which supports my initial conspiracy theory that acupuncture is Sino-nationalistic propaganda.

OK, but I'm going to assume you're kidding and I'm not getting the joke, because... well that's fairly in-your-face racist. Dude was banging out his grad school at UCLA in the 80s and has been with Harvard for about a quarter century. There's really no reason to stereotype him as a "Chinese researcher" with ethno-chauvanistic pride. The guy primarily maps out spinal pain pathways. Pretty Western-thinking brother.
 
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