Any value in acupuncture?

[paineroo]

I'm seeing a physiotherapist for a knee injury. While he gave me a standard set of exercises and stretches to help rebuild the knee, he also mentioned that I might want to get acupuncture to help with minor pain and swelling.

My initial reaction was to respond that I'd prefer to stick with traditional treatments (i.e. those that work .) However, I think I remember reading somewhere in JREF about a study that showed that, while mock acupuncture and real acupuncture both produce roughly the same results, they do produce some result (beyond simple placebo effect) for localized pain. The theory was something to do with the fact that they body could release antibiotics and pain-relieving chemicals in response to being jabbed with the needles. (Please correct me if I'm wrong.)

My question is whether this means that acupuncture does have some value as a medical treatment? If so, what are the moral considerations of utilizing this somewhat legitimate medical treatment from someone whose business makes money by claiming that they can also cure colds, stress, cancer, mummy curses, etc?

In the meantime, I'm doing my exercises and stretches.

Thanks,
Paineroo

 

[I less than three logic]

The theory was something to do with the fact that they body could release antibiotics and pain-relieving chemicals in response to being jabbed with the needles.

May I suggest getting a tattoo? It also involves being stabbed repeatedly with a needle so the theory should hold true. Plus you get the added bonus of becoming trendy.

 

[Hazen]

I wonder if that belongs in the 'If you keep bashing your head against a wall' type therapy, 'it's bliss when you stop'?

 

[merentha]

I was a clumsy kid who has twisted my right ankle more times than I should, so much so that the ankle troubles me at times. Some years back, when I was less skeptical, I was convinced to try acupuncture. The acupuncturist stuck needles around my ankle region and applied mild electrical pulses. The result: I could barely walk after that, but was told it would get better later in the day. It didn't. The pain got worse, and my ankle swelled and felt stiff. It was after some self-massaging and forced rotation of the ankle joint that it became better. There was no improvement to my ankle, but the acupuncture experience certainly improved my skeptical instincts. I'm not going anywhere near a Chinese "witchdoctor" after that.

 

[Physiotherapist]

Probably the best form of treatment for ankle injuries such as you sustained is massage and mobilisation. The mobilisation helps to relieve the stiffness that can occur in the joint following injury and the massage will help to break down the scar tissue that inevitably deveops after any kind of soft tissue injury as part of the normal healing process. Collagen fibres you know!!

 

[merentha]

Probably the best form of treatment for ankle injuries such as you sustained is massage and mobilisation. The mobilisation helps to relieve the stiffness that can occur in the joint following injury and the massage will help to break down the scar tissue that inevitably deveops after any kind of soft tissue injury as part of the normal healing process. Collagen fibres you know!!

Thanks for the advice. I used to aggravate the ankle problem by wearing high-heeled shoes, but I've learnt to curb my vanity.

 

[Carn]

Personal opinion, the amount of pain a person perceives differs vastly for equivalent sources.
A lot of aspects of human abilities and senses can be trained or adjusts.

It could be that the amount of pain felt to a certain stimulus is also something that can be trained to be bigger or less or one can get used to a certain amount of pain.

Maybe acupuncture just trains human body to reduce the reaction to pain, as otherwise acupuncture would be quite a torture. This would explain, why acupuncture would help with chronical pain.

Carn

 

[Lothian]

I'm seeing a physiotherapist for a knee injury. While he gave me a standard set of exercises and stretches to help rebuild the knee, he also mentioned that I might want to get acupuncture to help with minor pain and swelling.

My initial reaction was to respond that I'd prefer to stick with traditional treatments (i.e. those that work .) However, I think I remember reading somewhere in JREF about a study that showed that, while mock acupuncture and real acupuncture both produce roughly the same results, they do produce some result (beyond simple placebo effect) for localized pain. The theory was something to do with the fact that they body could release antibiotics and pain-relieving chemicals in response to being jabbed with the needles. (Please correct me if I'm wrong.)

My question is whether this means that acupuncture does have some value as a medical treatment? If so, what are the moral considerations of utilizing this somewhat legitimate medical treatment from someone whose business makes money by claiming that they can also cure colds, stress, cancer, mummy curses, etc?

In the meantime, I'm doing my exercises and stretches.

Thanks,
Paineroo

I think the body is far more likely to release pain relieving chemicals in response to a sore knee. I don’t think any acupuncture experiments have shown anything above placebo, but placebo is very powerful.

Therefore I suggest that you forget that acupuncture relies on non existent chi. Pretend there is a host of double blind replicated evidence it works. Fully convince yourself that sticking a needle in will cure you then along with the rebuilding exercises you can gain from the placebo effect as well.

 

[yrreg]

Acupuncture is an acceptable option if...

Acupuncture is an acceptable option for dealing with medical complaints, if you don't have enough money for treatment and medication in conventional scientific medicine, or if conventional scientific medicine has given up on you.

I might be wrong with this suspicion, but if you make a survey of medical complaints treated by acupuncture and treated by conventional scientific medicine, you might just find that the number of successful cases and lasting duration of the successful treatments are quantitatively the same.

This rough study means you get people who are treated with acupuncture and people treated with conventional scientific medicine, on the same diseases or medical complaints.

Is this a valid approach for a study? Never tried that; as I said, it is just my almost arbitrary suspicion.


Actually I have seen Chinese doctors using their Chinese medical procedures, with herbs or concoctions made directly from herbs, heal patients in cases where conventional scientific medicine has given up.

And they cost in most instances less than 20% or even less of what scientific medical practitioners will cost you, with all kinds of drugs, procedures, and equipment expenses and hospitalization.


I said that if you don't have enough money for conventional scientific medicine or this kind of medicine has given up on you, you can and might profitably try acupuncture, and I will add also Chinese medical practitioners working with herbs and drugs directly sourced from herbs, including natural components from organic and mineral origins.

I will also add that if you want to experiment because you are not in an urgent medical situation, try the Chinese medical practitioners, you might just save a bundle of money and get the successful lasting treatment for your medical problem.


I would like to ask people here whether there are scientific studies of successful treatments done by Chinese doctors in patients given up by conventional scientific medicine.

I think that is a good approach for a study: round up people who had been treated successfully by Chinese doctors, who had been earlier given up by medical practitioners of conventional scientific medicine, and find out why the Chinese doctors succeeded where conventional scientific doctors had given up. In this manner conventional scientific medicine stands to gain new knowledge in medicine.


Allow me to point out that Chinese medicine is not to be equated with what people might think to consist in gestures and in orations executed by religious medicine men, maybe called tribal healers, who would treat sick people by appeals to invisible agents called spirits.


Pachomius

 

[Carn]

I think that is a good approach for a study: round up people who had been treated successfully by Chinese doctors, who had been earlier given up by medical practitioners of conventional scientific medicine, and find out why the Chinese doctors succeeded where conventional scientific doctors had given up. In this manner conventional scientific medicine stands to gain new knowledge in medicine.



Pachomius

You know some trick to exclude self-healing, placebo and their relatives?

Carn

 

[Carn]

Sorry, so far only in german, but at least from german sceptics:
http://www.gwup.org/skeptiker/archiv/2005/1/gerac_akupunktur.html

Article about study comparing acupuncture to sham acupuncture(poking where no meridians are supposed to be) and conventional treatment for back pain and knee arthrosis.
Result is acupuncture is equal to sham and both is better than conventional treatment. So needles help, but not because of chi, meridians or whatever, and the position is not that important.


http://www.skeptiker.de/aktuell/news.php?aktion=detail&id=295

Confirmation for results of first study.

Carn

 

[brodski]

Acupuncture is an acceptable option for dealing with medical complaints, if you don't have enough money for treatment and medication in conventional scientific medicine, or if conventional scientific medicine has given up on you.

I might be wrong with this suspicion, but if you make a survey of medical complaints treated by acupuncture and treated by conventional scientific medicine, you might just find that the number of successful cases and lasting duration of the successful treatments are quantitatively the same.

This rough study means you get people who are treated with acupuncture and people treated with conventional scientific medicine, on the same diseases or medical complaints.

Is this a valid approach for a study? Never tried that; as I said, it is just my almost arbitrary suspicion.


Actually I have seen Chinese doctors using their Chinese medical procedures, with herbs or concoctions made directly from herbs, heal patients in cases where conventional scientific medicine has given up.

And they cost in most instances less than 20% or even less of what scientific medical practitioners will cost you, with all kinds of drugs, procedures, and equipment expenses and hospitalization.


I said that if you don't have enough money for conventional scientific medicine or this kind of medicine has given up on you, you can and might profitably try acupuncture, and I will add also Chinese medical practitioners working with herbs and drugs directly sourced from herbs, including natural components from organic and mineral origins.

I will also add that if you want to experiment because you are not in an urgent medical situation, try the Chinese medical practitioners, you might just save a bundle of money and get the successful lasting treatment for your medical problem.


I would like to ask people here whether there are scientific studies of successful treatments done by Chinese doctors in patients given up by conventional scientific medicine.

I think that is a good approach for a study: round up people who had been treated successfully by Chinese doctors, who had been earlier given up by medical practitioners of conventional scientific medicine, and find out why the Chinese doctors succeeded where conventional scientific doctors had given up. In this manner conventional scientific medicine stands to gain new knowledge in medicine.


Allow me to point out that Chinese medicine is not to be equated with what people might think to consist in gestures and in orations executed by religious medicine men, maybe called tribal healers, who would treat sick people by appeals to invisible agents called spirits.


Pachomius

That has to be one of the worst proposals for a "medical" study I have ever seen.
Why? because you are just collecting anecdotes and treating like data collected under properly controlled conditions. </p>Most medical conditions will resolve themselves (one way or another) given enough time- Wait long enough and you'll either be cured or dead. Medical science recognises this, but strives to find treatments which will speed up the process of recovery (or delay death).
An anecdote about someone getting better after taking any given particular "treatment" is not evidence for that treatments efficacy, studies showing that on average people who undergo treatment X recover faster, (or more fully, or are more likely to recover at all) than people with a similar condition that don't take treatment X is evidence for efficacy (once all other probable explanations have been discounted)- everything else is just an extended post hoc ergo propter hoc argument.
You propose only to study those whose symptoms improved or disappeared after taking TCM, so you'll be counting the "hits" and ignoring all the "misses", this is exactly the sort of "research" woos have been doing for centauries, and it tells us nothing about whether the treatments have any effect at all.
Medical science is constantly developing drugs based on "herbs or concoctions made directly from herbs"the differences are
1) medical science looks for robust (corroborated) evidence of efficacy and safety, and discards (or alters) those "concoctions" which do not meet these standards.
2) Medical science tries to isolate the active component of the treatment, and discards what is useless
3) Because the active component has been separated from the useless "packaging"greater consistency and quality control between differing administrations of the same treatment can be given.
As for your assertion that TCM is "around 20% of the cost" of real medicine, that is totally irrelevant, first prove efficacy, and then we can talk about the cost. Homeopathic remedies can be prepared at a tiny fraction of the cost of many real drugs, but you wont catch me taking Belladona 30C, no matter how bad my health, or bank balance, gets, because there is NO evidence that "alternative" medicine works above placebo

I said that if you don't have enough money for conventional scientific medicine or this kind of medicine has given up on you, you can and might profitably try acupuncture, and I will add also Chinese medical practitioners working with herbs and drugs directly sourced from herbs, including natural components from organic and mineral origins.

I truly take objection to this part, you are staying here that people who are desperate for medical treatment either because a) they cannot afford real medicine, or B) there is no effective treatment for their condition, should waste their money on unproven (and in many cases disproven) treatments, because hey- it could work.
Alternative medicine practitioners who target their "services" like this are just con-artists preying on some of the most vulnerable people in soceity, and are beneath contempt. The fact that many of these people are deluding themselves that they are not con-artists does not excuse them in any way shape or form, any more than it excuses the sexual predator who is convinced that "they are all asking for it."

Allow me to point out that Chinese medicine is not to be equated with what people might think to consist in gestures and in orations executed by religious medicine men, maybe called tribal healers, who would treat sick people by appeals to invisible agents called spirits.

No, instead they appeal to invisible (and undetectable) "energy" or "Chi" much as pre-scientific European herbalism "medicine"relied on the "vital force" or even "humours"

 

[Rolfe]

It's fairly well understood that the perceived effectiveness of a placebo treatment varies according to the "ritual" associated with it. So sticking needles in people seems to have more of an impact than giving them sugar pills, for example.

If you have a problem in which perception of the problem plays an important part, and you think you want to be hoodwinked by a ritual into imagining you feel better, then go with the complicated ritual every time. Just don't imagine that there is any effect on the actual outcome, as opposed to your perception of the severity of the problem.

Rolfe.

 

[yrreg]

Whoa, fire to message ratio too high

That has to be one of the worst proposals for a "medical" study I have ever seen.

[etc. etc. etc.]

Last edited by brodski : Today at 07:35 PM. Reason: formatting

Please, notwithstanding your attempt at improvement of message to fire ratio by formatting, write your message again, following the style and mood of the following one:

Acupuncture is an acceptable option for dealing with medical complaints, if you don't have enough money for treatment and medication in conventional scientific medicine, or if conventional scientific medicine has given up on you.

I might be wrong with this suspicion, but if you make a survey of medical complaints treated by acupuncture and treated by conventional scientific medicine, you might just find that the number of successful cases and lasting duration of the successful treatments are quantitatively the same.

This rough study means you get people who are treated with acupuncture and people treated with conventional scientific medicine, on the same diseases or medical complaints.

Is this a valid approach for a study? Never tried that; as I said, it is just my almost arbitrary suspicion.


Actually I have seen Chinese doctors using their Chinese medical procedures, with herbs or concoctions made directly from herbs, heal patients in cases where conventional scientific medicine has given up.

And they cost in most instances less than 20% or even less of what scientific medical practitioners will cost you, with all kinds of drugs, procedures, and equipment expenses and hospitalization.


I said that if you don't have enough money for conventional scientific medicine or this kind of medicine has given up on you, you can and might profitably try acupuncture, and I will add also Chinese medical practitioners working with herbs and drugs directly sourced from herbs, including natural components from organic and mineral origins.

I will also add that if you want to experiment because you are not in an urgent medical situation, try the Chinese medical practitioners, you might just save a bundle of money and get the successful lasting treatment for your medical problem.


I would like to ask people here whether there are scientific studies of successful treatments done by Chinese doctors in patients given up by conventional scientific medicine.

I think that is a good approach for a study: round up people who had been treated successfully by Chinese doctors, who had been earlier given up by medical practitioners of conventional scientific medicine, and find out why the Chinese doctors succeeded where conventional scientific doctors had given up. In this manner conventional scientific medicine stands to gain new knowledge in medicine.


Allow me to point out that Chinese medicine is not to be equated with what people might think to consist in gestures and in orations executed by religious medicine men, maybe called tribal healers, who would treat sick people by appeals to invisible agents called spirits.


Pachomius

Thanks for any accommodation, and remember, hold down your temper and adhere to high message to fire ratio than otherwise.

[This is an experiment.]


Pachomius

 

[brodski]

Please, notwithstanding your attempt at improvement of message to fire ratio by formatting, write your message again, following the style and mood of the following one:



Thanks for any accommodation, and remember, hold down your temper and adhere to high message to fire ratio than otherwise.

[This is an experiment.]


Pachomius

If you feel that there was inappropriate content in my post please point it out.
I understand that you don't have good answers for my points, but is it really necessary to start criticising my writing style rather than sticking to the topic under discussion?
If you feel that you cannot understand my arguments though all the "fire" you perceive, perhaps you can ask me specific questions and I will clarify my position to you.

 

[I less than three logic]

Please, notwithstanding your attempt at improvement of message to fire ratio by formatting, write your message again, following the style and mood of the following one:



Thanks for any accommodation, and remember, hold down your temper and adhere to high message to fire ratio than otherwise.

[This is an experiment.]


Pachomius

Looks like a thinly masked ad hominem argument.

Here’s what I read in your message.
“Your opinions are not worth addressing because you’re unable to use the proper format.”

His post made some points that you’ll need to address if you want your argument to stay standing. The deployment of a common logical fallacy will convince very few of us.

 

[bjb]

I think there can be something more to acupuncture than the placebo effect. A few years ago, I went to a very reputable acupuncturist for my back pain. She stuck needles in me that made me feel like there was an electric shock going through my leg. Imagine hitting your funnybone, but all the way down your leg for several minutes and you'll have the idea. She told me she was 'shocking' the pain out of me leg, but I believe that by overstimulating the sciatic nerve, it would become desensitized, at least temporarily. I hope it isn't too controversial to believe that jamming a needle into a major nerve is something other than a placebo effect! Most of those meridians are meaningles but some of them do correspond to important parts of the human anatomy (insert dirty joke here).

But I think it is difficult to go from overstimulating a nerve to claiming that it actually heals your body. It certainly didn't work in my case. I quit going to the acupuncture lady and went to physicaltherapy, and that's been the oly thing that has helped me with my back pain.

I should mention that I went in for some cortisone shots (they help) and I mentioned my story to the doctor. He told me that he went in for acupuncture but when I asked, he really couldn't say that it helped him. All he could say was that he liked it, which seemed like a woo-woo attitude to me. I was not at all satisfied with this response so once my cortisone shots were over, I went back to physical therapy.

 

[yrreg]

Shall we proceed item by item, calmly, please?

Acupuncture is an acceptable option for dealing with medical complaints, if you don't have enough money for treatment and medication in conventional scientific medicine, or if conventional scientific medicine has given up on you.

[ etc. etc. etc. etc. ]

Please proceed outside this quote box for specific invitations from yours truly for your calmly considered reactions.

[Kindly give careful attention to phrases in bold.]

----------------

1. Acupuncture is an acceptable option for dealing with medical complaints, if you don't have enough money for treatment and medication in conventional scientific medicine, or if conventional scientific medicine has given up on you.

-----------------

2. I might be wrong with this suspicion, but if you make a survey of medical complaints treated by acupuncture and treated by conventional scientific medicine, you might just find that the number of successful cases and lasting duration of the successful treatments are quantitatively the same.

3. This rough study means you get people who are treated with acupuncture and people treated with conventional scientific medicine, on the same diseases or medical complaints.
Is this a valid approach for a study? Never tried that; as I said, it is just my almost arbitrary suspicion.

4. Actually I have seen Chinese doctors using their Chinese medical procedures, with herbs or concoctions made directly from herbs, heal patients in cases where conventional scientific medicine has given up.

5. And they cost in most instances less than 20% or even less of what scientific medical practitioners will cost you, with all kinds of drugs, procedures, and equipment expenses and hospitalization. (Addendum: the sky is the limit in professional fees, unless you enjoy socialized medicine.)

6. I said that if you don't have enough money for conventional scientific medicine or this kind of medicine has given up on you, you can and might profitably try acupuncture, and I will add also Chinese medical practitioners working with herbs and drugs directly sourced from herbs, including natural components from organic and mineral origins.

7. I will also add that if you want to experiment because you are not in an urgent medical situation, try the Chinese medical practitioners, you might just save a bundle of money and get the successful lasting treatment for your medical problem.

8. I would like to ask people here whether there are scientific studies of successful treatments done by Chinese doctors in patients given up by conventional scientific medicine.

9. I think that is a good approach for a study: round up people who had been treated successfully by Chinese doctors, who had been earlier given up by medical practitioners of conventional scientific medicine, and find out why the Chinese doctors succeeded where conventional scientific doctors had given up. In this manner conventional scientific medicine stands to gain new knowledge in medicine.

10. Allow me to point out that Chinese medicine is not to be equated with what people might think to consist in gestures and in orations executed by religious medicine men, maybe called tribal healers, who would treat sick people by appeals to invisible agents called spirits.

------------------

For my part I am searching the net for reliable accounts of people given up by doctors of conventional scientific medicine, but healed and still alive and healthy today, by Chinese medical practitioners using their traditional methods, and with herbs or concoctions made from materials of organic and mineral origins.


[Please remain calm and keep to rational mood with your reactions.]


Yrreg

 

[Rasmus]

1. Acupuncture is an acceptable option for dealing with medical complaints, if you don't have enough money for treatment and medication in conventional scientific medicine, or if conventional scientific medicine has given up on you.

How does an unacceptable option suddenly transform intpo an acceptable one, just because you run out of other options? If an option is not at all acceptable to begin with, then it will remain so unless something about the option itself changes.

Hitting my thump with a hammer is not a good way to treat a blister. It will not turn into a good way of treating a blister just because I run out of plasters, ointments or hot needles.

2. I might be wrong with this suspicion,

yes.

but if you make a survey of medical complaints treated by acupuncture and treated by conventional scientific medicine, you might just find that the number of successful cases and lasting duration of the successful treatments are quantitatively the same.

No. Or rather: It is highly unlikley that you would find anything like this. Also, if you did, it would be meaningless for reasons already stated.

3. This rough study means you get people who are treated with acupuncture and people treated with conventional scientific medicine, on the same diseases or medical complaints.
Is this a valid approach for a study? Never tried that; as I said, it is just my almost arbitrary suspicion.

No, it is not a valid approach for a study. Bold text won't change that, and neither will pretty colours.

4. Actually I have seen Chinese doctors using their Chinese medical procedures, with herbs or concoctions made directly from herbs, heal patients in cases where conventional scientific medicine has given up.

That notion strikes me as odd. How can "medicine" give up? I can see doctors giving up, or patients. In personal experiance, my paracetamols just sit in the little box and don't give a damn about anything. They don't care fi I take them or mnot, they are utterly indifferent to my condition, and their whole existance seems void on anythoing to hope for or give up on.

So what does it tell us about medicine, if individuals give up? Nothing.
It has been pointed out already that herbal treatment can be used and assessed to the same standards as chemotherapy. Why does it make a difference that it would be administered by a chinese person? (My last batch of paracetamol was handed zto me by a guy of indian descent - or so i think. I wonder if that means they are now more or less effective than what I usually have.)

5. And they cost in most instances less than 20% or even less of what scientific medical practitioners will cost you, with all kinds of drugs, procedures, and equipment expenses and hospitalization.

isn't it funny how decent education and training, reliable industry standards, unsurance, maintance of equipment and governmental screening end up costing money? Of course, if you forgo al those little things, it only ends up costing lives.

(Addendum: the sky is the limit in professional fees, unless you enjoy socialized medicine.)

Yes, so it's really not a problem of medicine as such if the economics around it aren't worked out reasonably enough. Of course, that still doesn't make the hammer on my thump look any better, or does it?

6. I said that if you don't have enough money for conventional scientific medicine or this kind of medicine has given up on you, you can and might profitably try acupuncture, and I will add also Chinese medical practitioners working with herbs and drugs directly sourced from herbs, including natural components from organic and mineral origins.

And that's still nonsense. Either those practices are good for something, or they aren't.

7. I will also add that if you want to experiment because you are not in an urgent medical situation, try the Chinese medical practitioners, you might just save a bundle of money and get the successful lasting treatment for your medical problem.

Or it might turn out that your slight medicalk problem didn't receice the attentino it required, changed into something chronical, lethals or otherwise unpleasent. But go ahead and give it a try - it's your life, not mine you'Re playing with.

8. I would like to ask people here whether there are scientific studies of successful treatments done by Chinese doctors in patients given up by conventional scientific medicine.

I suspect you would find those studies in your local KKK library. A chinese doctor is a doctor from China. Nothing more, nothing less. He'd stil lbe a doctor and thus not the same thing as a chinese quack (which, I suspect, is little different from your average angmoh quack anyways...)

How can "medicine" give up on patients again, and what would that tell us?

9. I think that is a good approach for a study: round up people who had been treated successfully by Chinese doctors, who had been earlier given up by medical practitioners of conventional scientific medicine,

No, it's still a bad appraoch for a study. You are still not looking at the peolpe that got cured by proper medicine, you are ignoring the peole that died either way and you cannot control for placebo or other factors.

'Nobody denies that people couldn't get better *after* alternative treatment, but if you want ot show that they got better *because* of it, you will have to conduct a proper study. Just like with real medicine.

and find out why the Chinese doctors succeeded where conventional scientific doctors had given up. In this manner conventional scientific medicine stands to gain new knowledge in medicine.

... uh... no.

10. Allow me to point out that Chinese medicine is not to be equated with what people might think to consist in gestures and in orations executed by religious medicine men, maybe called tribal healers, who would treat sick people by appeals to invisible agents called spirits.

Care to define what ouy think "chiense medicine" is, rather than telling us what it isn't?

For my part I am searching the net for reliable accounts of people given up by doctors of conventional scientific medicine, but healed and still alive and healthy today, by Chinese medical practitioners using their traditional methods, and with herbs or concoctions made from materials of organic and mineral origins.

Why would oyu do that? For your personal comfort, pick up a copy of "Chickensoup for the Soul" at your nearest bookstore. It's nice, mushy read, less work and just as pointless.

[Please remain calm and keep to rational mood with your reactions.]

Sure thing.

Rasmus.

 

[I less than three logic]

[Kindly give careful attention to phrases in bold.]

----------------

1. Acupuncture is an acceptable option for dealing with medical complaints, if you don't have enough money for treatment and medication in conventional scientific medicine, or if conventional scientific medicine has given up on you.

-----------------

2. I might be wrong with this suspicion, but if you make a survey of medical complaints treated by acupuncture and treated by conventional scientific medicine, you might just find that the number of successful cases and lasting duration of the successful treatments are quantitatively the same.

3. This rough study means you get people who are treated with acupuncture and people treated with conventional scientific medicine, on the same diseases or medical complaints.
Is this a valid approach for a study? Never tried that; as I said, it is just my almost arbitrary suspicion.

4. Actually I have seen Chinese doctors using their Chinese medical procedures, with herbs or concoctions made directly from herbs, heal patients in cases where conventional scientific medicine has given up.

5. And they cost in most instances less than 20% or even less of what scientific medical practitioners will cost you, with all kinds of drugs, procedures, and equipment expenses and hospitalization. (Addendum: the sky is the limit in professional fees, unless you enjoy socialized medicine.)

6. I said that if you don't have enough money for conventional scientific medicine or this kind of medicine has given up on you, you can and might profitably try acupuncture, and I will add also Chinese medical practitioners working with herbs and drugs directly sourced from herbs, including natural components from organic and mineral origins.

7. I will also add that if you want to experiment because you are not in an urgent medical situation, try the Chinese medical practitioners, you might just save a bundle of money and get the successful lasting treatment for your medical problem.

8. I would like to ask people here whether there are scientific studies of successful treatments done by Chinese doctors in patients given up by conventional scientific medicine.

9. I think that is a good approach for a study: round up people who had been treated successfully by Chinese doctors, who had been earlier given up by medical practitioners of conventional scientific medicine, and find out why the Chinese doctors succeeded where conventional scientific doctors had given up. In this manner conventional scientific medicine stands to gain new knowledge in medicine.

10. Allow me to point out that Chinese medicine is not to be equated with what people might think to consist in gestures and in orations executed by religious medicine men, maybe called tribal healers, who would treat sick people by appeals to invisible agents called spirits.

------------------

For my part I am searching the net for reliable accounts of people given up by doctors of conventional scientific medicine, but healed and still alive and healthy today, by Chinese medical practitioners using their traditional methods, and with herbs or concoctions made from materials of organic and mineral origins.


[Please remain calm and keep to rational mood with your reactions.]


Yrreg

Isn’t this the same post, word for word, only with some nice numbered bullet points and bold text?

The formatting of the text has very little to do with the validity of the message. What is important is the idea the text conveys, not how it looks.

I’m afraid you’ll need to address some of the counter arguments if you want any of us to take this seriously.


Also, I’d like to reinforce an argument expressed by both Brodski and Rasmus.

I’m rather appalled that you keep suggesting that people who cannot afford “conventional scientific medical treatments” try one that is unproven on the chance that it may help. This could be very dangerous for those that blindly take such advice.

If you have a problem that cannot be helped by standard OTC medications, then it is in your best interest to see a real doctor. People don’t just wake up one day, realize they have cancer, and then decide to go see a doctor. The symptoms start out mild usually. That headache you get that aspirin can’t help could be a warning for a whole list of potentially life threatening problems; a brain tumor, a blood clot that could become an aneurysm or a stroke, meningitis, to name a few.

It is important to get a proper diagnosis as early as possible, and pointing people off to acupuncture or other unproven alt-med could end up costing them their life. I doubt an acupuncturist would recognize something uncommon like meningitis, let alone have any way of curing the infection.

There are programs available to help people that cannot afford healthcare. If someone has a potentially dangerous medical condition, his or her time and money are best spent securing proper medial treatment. Not being wasted on unproven alt-med with false hope and the rationale of; “It might help, what harm can it do?”