Does acupuncture work?

[Varanid]

The problem, as I understand it, with acupuncture trials is developing a suitable control protocol. Whaddya do? Just stick needles into people in random places?

On the subject of electricity: I received Tens treatment for knee problems some 25 years ago, and found it mildly effective. I was only a teen at the time, and while not the least bit susceptible to magical hocus pocus stuff, I wasn't the skeptic I now try to be. It was, however, a chiropractor that introduced me to the treatment, so...

I occasionally use a Tens device now, and find it mildly helpful. I've read a bit about the idea though, so maybe it is a placebo effect.

 

[Modified]

All injury affects the surrounding area, though a needle prick is not much of an injury.

 

[Ziggurat]

I can only speak from personal experience, but it worked for me.

I used to have moderate to severe pain in my lower back from an injury I received in a rugby tackle when I was younger (about 30 years ago). As I got older, the pain got steadily worse, and made it difficult to do everyday things such a riding a bike or driving a car. Sometimes, even sitting at a computer was painful. I tried several sessions with physiotherapists, chiropractors and osteopaths, all to no avail. I used to take some pretty heavy painkillers (Percoset, Oxycontin) Then, on the physiotherapist's recommendation, I went to an acupuncturist.... She connected wires from a small machine to the needles which passed a small, pulsing electric current through my body (a weird but not unpleasant sensation). Three sessions later, no more pain and it hasn't returned in a few years.

This is not proof or definitive by any means, but my experience makes it difficult for me to conclude that it doesn't work...

Pain, especially chronic pain, is very complex. It isn't simply an indication of tissue damage. There are all sorts of complex feedback loops. It wouldn't surprise me if your treatment really worked by interrupting the feedback loops. But the thing is that even if it's a placebo, it still worked. If you're in pain, there's no reason to refuse a placebo treatment that works.

 

[alfaniner]

I like the idea of acupuncture being labeled an "alternative" medicine.

And that's a fact.

 

[Donn]

The rapid osculating of the muscle…

Rapid kissing of the muscle. Oh, dear. It should've been oscillating!

 

[ViewsofMars]

Medline Plus:
U.S. National Library of Medicine from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and National Institutes of Health:
NIH(1): National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health

Acupuncture

Summary
Acupuncture has been practiced in China and other Asian countries for thousands of years. Acupuncture involves stimulating specific points on the body. This is most often done by inserting thin needles through the skin, to cause a change in the physical functions of the body.
Research has shown that acupuncture reduces nausea and vomiting after surgery and chemotherapy. It can also relieve pain. Researchers don't fully understand how acupuncture works. It might aid the activity of your body's pain-killing chemicals. It also might affect how you release chemicals that regulate blood pressure and flow.
https://medlineplus.gov/acupuncture.html

1. NIH: National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health

 

[Reality Check]

NIH: National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health

Their source is the slightly dubious National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health. This is a short summary that hides the complete truth about acupuncture.

Being ancient does not mean that a medical practice is effective.

Many different forms of acupuncture were practiced in China for a couple of thousands of years. It was in decline for the last 800 years and even banned in 1822 and 1929. Mao Zedong resurrected acupuncture as part of the pseudoscience of Traditional Chinese medicine.

Research has shown that acupuncture may be effective only to reduce nausea and vomiting after surgery and chemotherapy.
Research has shown that there is little evidence that acupuncture reduces pain.
Research has shown no support for the stated mechanisms of acupuncture.

 

[ViewsofMars]

So you are knocking down the National Institutes of Health!
https://search.nih.gov/search?utf8=✓&affiliate=nih&query=Acupuncture&commit=Search

Look do some research in the future before you attempt to correct me. The problem I am having here with some people is they aren't doing research. I am a science researcher.

Read this:
https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/treatment/cam/patient/acupuncture-pdq

 

[Reality Check]

So you are knocking down the National Institutes of Health!

No: The slightly dubious National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health.

NCCAM's mission statement declared that it is "dedicated to exploring complementary and alternative healing practices in the context of rigorous science; training complementary and alternative medicine researchers; and disseminating authoritative information to the public and professionals."[5]

This is an institute set up to do research into pseudoscience such as homeopathy, acupuncture and reiki. When it was created that was a dubious goal. Waving hands at people should not fix ailments (though it took a 12 year old girl to show that reiki practitioners could not detected energy fields if I recall right!). Homeopathy is basically that no active ingredients magically cure just about everything. And then there is acupuncture.

After 20 years and $2 billion (e.g. a 2012 study), NCCIH has not shown that any alternative medicine works better then placebos and there is a startlingly lack of publications. Essentially they have spent 2 billon dollars mostly finding out what we already knew.

Since its birth, in 1999, NCCAM officials have spent about $1.6 billion studying alternative therapies. They've spent $374,000 of taxpayer money to find out that inhaling lemon and lavender scents doesn't promote wound healing; $390,000 to find out that ancient Indian remedies don't control Type 2 diabetes; $446,000 to find that magnetic mattresses don't treat arthritis; $283,000 to discover that magnets don't treat migraine headaches; $406,000 to determine that coffee enemas don't cure pancreatic cancer; and $1.8 million to find out that prayer doesn't cure AIDS or brain tumors or improve healing after breast reconstruction surgery. Fortunately, NCCAM has recently abandoned these kinds of studies, choosing instead to focus on studies of dietary supplements and pain relief.[38]

 

[xterra]

[snip

Look do some research in the future before you attempt to correct me. The problem I am having here with some people is they aren't doing research. I am a science researcher.
Read this:
https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/treatment/cam/patient/acupuncture-pdq

Do you honestly, really, believe that you are the only person here with a scientific background, or who is a "science researcher"?

 

[ViewsofMars]

To:
Reality Check and xterra

So you want to knock down all of the three below:
U.S. Department of Health & Human Services
National Institutes of Health
National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIH)
https://www.nih.gov/about-nih/what-...center-complementary-integrative-health-nccih
The above page last reviewed on March 1, 2017

Yeah, I am one of many science researchers xterra

 

[Reality Check]

https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/treatment/cam/patient/acupuncture-pdq

That the National Cancer Institute (another part of the NIH sadly) promotes pseudoscience does not make acupuncture work, ViewsofMars .
ETA: "promotes " is a bit strong - the NCI has a Complementary and Alternative Medicine for Patients list. The list includes some bits of quackery that are not actually promoted, e.g. antineoplastons that are only used by the quack Dr. S. R. Burzynski.

Read Human/Clinical Studies where NCI are honest about the limitations of the studies they cite, e.g.

Although most of these studies were positive and demonstrated the effectiveness of acupuncture in cancer pain control, the findings have limited significance because of methodologic weaknesses such as small sample sizes, an absence of patient blinding to treatment in most cases, varying acupuncture treatment regimens, a lack of standard outcome measurements, and an absence of adequate randomization.

Look at the "nonrandomized, single-arm, observational clinical study" above that paragraph. 20 patients. Acupuncture of the ear lobe. Leaving needles in until they dropped out in 5 - 35 days.

 

[Reality Check]

So you want to knock down all of the three below

To ViewsofMars: There are many US intuitions that promote pseudoscience. That does not make acupuncture work.

Being a "science researcher" suggests that you know about science. You should know that the traditional basis of acupuncture is pre-scientific fairy stories. The purported scientific basis is mostly wishful thinking, e.g. that the response of rats to relatively invasive needles means the minor invasion in humans will have similar effects.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

The "classic" sham acupuncture studies prove, as far as I am aware, that doing it wrong is just as good as doing it right.

Among other reliable studies that show no benefit.

 

[ViewsofMars]

To ViewsofMars: There are many US intuitions that promote pseudoscience. That does not make acupuncture work.

None of the U.S. institutions that I have presented are promoting pseudoscience. Also, I honestly don't read Wikipedia for science information.

Updated: October 20, 2016

"In patients with lung cancer, the acupuncture group also showed greater improvement than the controls in the symptoms of cough, thoracodynia, hemoptysis, and fever; in patients with esophageal cancer, the acupuncture group showed greater improvement in the symptoms of chest pain, mucus vomiting, and difficulty in swallowing. In addition, the acupuncture group suffered fewer side effects (e.g., poor appetite, N/V, dizziness, or fatigue) from radiation therapy or chemotherapy than the control group. However, no statistical analysis was performed on these data. An RCT of 138 postoperative cancer patients treated with acupuncture plus massage showed decreased pain (P = .05) and a decrease in depressive mood (P = .003) compared with usual care.[18]
https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/treatment/cam/hp/acupuncture-pdq#section/_35

Is acupuncture approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for use as a cancer treatment in the United States?
The FDA approved acupuncture needles for use by licensed practitioners in 1996. The FDA requires that sterile, nontoxic needles be used and that they be labeled for single use by qualified practitioners only.

More than 40 states and the District of Columbia have laws regulating acupuncture practice. The National Certification Commission for Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine (www.nccaom.orgExit Disclaimer) certifies practitioners of acupuncture and traditional Chinese medicine (TCM). Most states require this certification.

https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/treatment/cam/patient/acupuncture-pdq#link/_53

By the way, I've never needed acupuncture. I'm over 60 years old and have had great health. It must be the German, French, and Irish in me. I eat healthy meals and exercise though I have a dear friend who has cancer.

 

[fuelair]

As with all mainstream or alternative medical practices, if you have faith in the process then it can be quite effective sometimes.

temporarily.

 

[fuelair]

Rapid kissing of the muscle. Oh, dear. It should've been oscillating!

Good self catch!!!!

 

[xterra]

To:
Reality Check and xterra

So you want to knock down all of the three below:
U.S. Department of Health & Human Services
National Institutes of Health
National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIH)
https://www.nih.gov/about-nih/what-...center-complementary-integrative-health-nccih
The above page last reviewed on March 1, 2017

Yeah, I am one of many science researchers xterra

I asserted nothing about NIH or NCCIH, nor about the research you cited, nor even about whether you are a science researcher. I took issue with this:

"Look do some research in the future before you attempt to correct me. I am a science researcher."

The implication underlying that paragraph is that people who disagree with your support of acupuncture do so from a position of ignorance. That implication is unwarranted.

Your declaration of being a science researcher implies that no one else here has that qualification. You have no basis that I can discover for such a statement.

 

[Darat]

All injury affects the surrounding area, though a needle prick is not much of an injury.

I've had acupuncture a few times, based on recommendation of my physiotherapists and whilst it didn't seem to do anything for me there is no doubt there was a physiological response to sticking the needles in. Apparently I'm a "good reactor" as around each needle point there would be a circular red mark, about 5 to 10cm in diameter.

Given that there was something objectively and physically happening it could be doing something.

 

[Ziggurat]

Rapid kissing of the muscle. Oh, dear. It should've been oscillating!

No, you were right the first time. My children can attest to the pain-relieving efficacy of that treatment.