Help! Health fair has accupunction today

[ObscureReferenceMan]

I am in need of input...

Our company is having a "health fair" today. There will be several booths set up with info on all sorts of topics; exercise, diabetes, heart attack, breast cancer, etc. Including accupuncture!

It's my understanding that there have been no studies that show accupunture works. With the possible exception of one that showed that the insertion of needles (not necessarily in the proper "meridians") has an effect on lowering blood pressure. But I can't find that. Anyone know where it is? Or any other studies that show accupuncture in a good light.

Also, what kind of approach do you recommend when I go? Ask questions and take notes? I'd like to be a little bit confrontational, but I don't think I'm prepared well enough on the subject. All suggestions are welcome!

Oh, and by the way, the health fair is today from 11am-2pm (EST).

 

[Professor Yaffle]

I'm sure its best research track record is in pain reduction. Its not overwhelmingly convincing, but enough to look further into. Again, I dodnt think it mattered where the needles were, and I think the researchers would look more into stuff like endorphins and gate theory to explain it rather than stuff like meridians.

This is all a hazy memory from the last time I looked though.

Try pubmed and google research.

 

[Kochanski]

http://www.quackwatch.com/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/acu.html

This should give you a good start. Good luck, if all the woo-woo they have at the health fair is accupuncture, you are lucky. You could have so much more nonsense.

Do let us know what is there. Curious to see if magnets, chiropractors, or any of the other woo-woo is there too.

 

[ObscureReferenceMan]

Thanks, Kochanski! I can't believe I forget to check Quackwatch.

I think there's also going to be a chiropracter as well. But, one at a time...

I'll post back with an update.

 

[Fnord]

No acnepuncture booth? Then I'm not going!

 

[ObscureReferenceMan]

False alarm.

Went to the fair, and there was no accupuncture! No booth, nothing. Oh well.

 

[T'ai Chi]

I heard some people take it to get rid of their fear of needles.

 

[strimmer]

I heard some people take it to get rid of their fear of needles.

I am deathly afraid of needles. i HATE getting shots done. this is OK for me to live with, but every once in a while i would like to donate blood. I wonder if it really does get rid of your fear of needles??

 

[T'ai Chi]

It was a joke. I really dunno.

There are some positive studies on it in general. A 5 second search on PubMed will reveal those pretty easily.

 

[Slimething]

There are some positive studies on it in general.

There was a short article on it recently at sciam.com (Scientific American) but I can't locate it. There was a study that showed that it was effective in relieving pain in half of the people tested which was high enough to rule out placebo effects. However, the test included both professional and amateur accupunturists and there was no evidence that the professionals who used chi lines were any better than the random stabbers.

The study concluded that there was something to accupuncture but its mode of action was still unkown.

 

[arthwollipot]

Some tests have discovered that acupuncture works just as well if the needles are put into the wrong places on the body. You know all that about meridians and if you want to cure a headache you put the needle into your finger? Well, they found that you could put the needle anywhere you like and it would have the same effect.

This strongly suggests that the only thing at work here is placebo.

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

False alarm.

Went to the fair, and there was no accupuncture! No booth, nothing. Oh well.

Were the chiropractors there?

I had a gig last week at a "community science fair" a few days ago. They had some massage therapists with their x-rays showing "subluxations" and stuff about "holistic healing" (I never did see what the organization was). Otherwise the participants were pretty good: a physics department, various animal groups, various disease research charities, a way cool archeological site/museum not far from here, and such.

 

[Professor Yaffle]

Some tests have discovered that acupuncture works just as well if the needles are put into the wrong places on the body. You know all that about meridians and if you want to cure a headache you put the needle into your finger? Well, they found that you could put the needle anywhere you like and it would have the same effect.

This strongly suggests that the only thing at work here is placebo.

No, it strongly suggests that the meridians explanation is completely wrong, and there may be another explanation (endorphins, gate control theory, activation of the HPA axis etc), and/or placebo

http://www.acupunctureinmedicine.org.uk/servearticle.php?artid=435

 

[Cuddles]

The unfortunate problem with testing acupuncture is that there is no useful placebo. There are two main problems. The first is that there is a significant difference in perception between real needles and placebo ones, so the placebo may not be valid. The second is that placebo needles seem to have some effects that suggest they are not inactive and so if there actually is something to acupuncture, what is supposed to be placebo may actual have an active effect.

http://www.superdragon.co.uk/acupuncture knowledge/placebo acupuncture needles.htm

The fact that more than a third of patients treated with the placebo needle experienced de qi did raise some concerns among the scientists, who said that the results of their experiment "· call into question the main claim of placebo needles that they only are eliciting a placebo response."

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=9717924

FINDINGS: Of 60 volunteers, 54 felt a penetration with acupuncture (mean visual analogue scale [VAS] 13.4; SD 10.58) and 47 felt it with placebo (VAS 8.86; SD 10.55), 34 felt a dull pain sensation (DEQI) with acupuncture and 13 with placebo.

 

[BPSCG]

Also, what kind of approach do you recommend when I go?

I was going to recommend, "From behind, with a large baseball bat."

Saw a rerun of a season 1 episode of House: M.D. the other day. Guy had had a stroke while he was in the hospital ER. He'd been grinding his teeth, so he'd gone to see an acupuncturist (most sane people would start with a dentist first...). The acupuncturist referred him to a chiropractor. The chiropractor referred him to a shen balancer (House asked sarcastically how they could tell his shen was out of balance in the first place). The shen balancer referred him to a homeopath, the homeopath referred him to a chiropractor, the chiropractor referred him to a naturopath, and the naturaopath referred him to ... the acupuncturist.

House orders a bunch of tests after angrily observing that it would have been nice if he'd gone to someone who could have tested him for something that was actually wrong with him.

I like this program more and more all the time.

 

[Orangutan]

There >is< more than placebo effect with acupuncture. That's because you have another human being interacting with your body. It's nice to be touched.

A good study would be to replace that acupuncturist with one of those huge car-building robot arms for needle placement. I have the feeling that even if the needles were placed in the meridians that the effects would be highly diminished. (if you could even get anybody to trust the robot not to impale them!).

You could get a new application of clear-coat afterwards though.


Ps

I heard some people take it to get rid of their fear of needles.

I loled.

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

The unfortunate problem with testing acupuncture is that there is no useful placebo. There are two main problems. The first is that there is a significant difference in perception between real needles and placebo ones, so the placebo may not be valid. The second is that placebo needles seem to have some effects that suggest they are not inactive and so if there actually is something to acupuncture, what is supposed to be placebo may actual have an active effect.

Yeah, pretty tough to tease apart, unless they can give some explanation of how it's supposed to work. If a needle has to be within 1 mm of a certain anatomical structure, then it's testable. If it's something called "meridians" which don't exist, there's no way to say whether a misplaced needle really is misplaced.

Also, with the fake needles or misplaced real needles, there's still the issue that it's impossible to double blind the study. At the very least, the person placing needles knows whether he's a placebo control or not. Cuing is then an issue.