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Accupuncture, placebo or solid medicine

Thread title

  • Placebo

  • Really works

  • Dunno/Other

Results are only viewable after voting.
Dunno. It works. Whether that's placebo or not, I don't know, but science doesn't have absolute answers to everything. We know what we know, and that's well short of 100%.
 
There's some evidence that acupuncture works for a few things, but its proponents often vastly overhype both the benefits and the evidence behind it. It's not as absurd as homeopathy or reiki or other similar garbage, but it should be looked at very skeptically.
 
The problem with acupuncture studies is designing and implementing a good placebo. Makes interpreting results sort of difficult in some cases.

The fundamental ideas behind it (aligning your chi or whatever) are completely whack imo.
 
The theory of how Accupuncture works is that it is literally magic.

Acupuncture works is that there is magical energy called Qi flowing through the body in channels called meridians. By stimulating specific points of the body this magical energy can be influenced and moved around. According to Chinese medical theory, illness arises when the cyclical flow of Qi in the meridians becomes unbalanced or is blocked. So, acupuncture is supposed to fix these blockages or unbalances in the magic force in you.

Even if there is something to the needles the theory is so wrong as to make the entire practice useless.
 
SMOGZINN said:
The theory of how Accupuncture works is that it is literally magic.

Acupuncture works is that there is magical energy called Qi flowing through the body in channels called meridians. By stimulating specific points of the body this magical energy can be influenced and moved around. According to Chinese medical theory, illness arises when the cyclical flow of Qi in the meridians becomes unbalanced or is blocked. So, acupuncture is supposed to fix these blockages or unbalances in the magic force in you.

Even if there is something to the needles the theory is so wrong as to make the entire practice useless.
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The hypothesis is centuries old, similar to all the stupid shit we've said in the west. The hypothesis doesn't have to be correct for the practice to be correct.
 
It's a placebo, but fairly effective even by placebo standards. Maybe it's the massage-like stimulation of nerves over a wide area, I dunno.

They do studies comparing acupuncture to "placebo acupuncture" (which uses needles, but places them randomly instead of at "energy points") and it does about the same, and both do better than no acupuncture.
 
lxskllr said:
The hypothesis is centuries old, similar to all the stupid shit we've said in the west. The hypothesis doesn't have to be correct for the practice to be correct.
Click to expand...

True, generations of people (including pilots!) are taught that airplanes fly according to Bernoulli's principle, which isn't really true. And yet, the planes stay in the sky.
 
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lxskllr said:
The hypothesis is centuries old, similar to all the stupid shit we've said in the west. The hypothesis doesn't have to be correct for the practice to be correct.
Click to expand...

Yes actually it does. If you theory is flawed then you don't really know what you are doing or why, which means you can't actually make a predictive plan. With a flawed theory all you are really doing is sticking needles in people at random.
 
I found it to be effective for the management of migraines but I think don't believe it to be the cure-all that some claim it to be.
 
I took at least 12 hours to track this down. Whoever invents a way of searching the internet will be a millionaire.

Abstract
We investigated the effectiveness of acupuncture in childhood migraine in 22 children with migraine, randomly divided into two groups: a true acupuncture group (12 children) and a placebo acupuncture group (10 children). Ten healthy children served as a control group. Opioid activity in blood plasma was assayed by two methods: (1) determination of total (panopioid) activity with an opiate radioreceptor assay, and (2) determination of beta-endorphinlike immunoreactivity by radioimmunoassay. The true acupuncture treatment led to significant clinical reduction in both migraine frequency and intensity. At the beginning of the study, significantly greater panopioid activity was evident in plasma of the control group than in plasma of the migraine group. The true acupuncture group showed a gradual increase in the panopioid activity in plasma, which correlated with the clinical improvement. After the tenth treatment, the values of opioid activity of the true acupuncture group were similar to those of the control group, whereas the plasma of the placebo acupuncture group exhibited insignificant changes in plasma panopioid activity. In addition, a significant increase in beta-endorphin levels was observed in the migraine patients who were treated in the true acupuncture group as compared with the values before treatment or with the values of the placebo acupuncture group. The results suggest that acupuncture may be an effective treatment in children with migraine headaches and that it leads to an increase in activity of the opioidergic system.
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http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9367292
 
I think for certain nerve/pain disorders it has real use, but much of the efficacy is atributable to placebo.


Then again, "pain" itself is a rather nebulous concept. Much of it depends on individual perception, so it would not be surprising that a treatment largely attributable to placebo would have an effect, being that the condition treated is often reserved for "State of mind."
 
SMOGZINN said:
Yes actually it does. If you theory is flawed then you don't really know what you are doing or why, which means you can't actually make a predictive plan. With a flawed theory all you are really doing is sticking needles in people at random.
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And if it works, it works. Joe Holistic doesn't give a shit about the reason his back stops hurting when he goes to the acupuncturist. Telling him the needles attract invisible tiny unicorns that prance on his back, and exude pain reducing pixie dust from their hooves is as good a reason as any. The reasons behind it are for the scientists, and don't matter to the person getting the work done. So no, the hypothesis doesn't matter outside of furthering our knowledge.
 
Both acupuncture and jogging provide similar benefits. They both get the fluids/fascia moving through the body.

Acupuncture has the added benefit of manipulating the Qi but jogging or exercising probably also does this.
 
you guys may as well argue abortions, gun control or separation of church and state. youll get about as much accomplished as you have in the past.
 
lxskllr said:
And if it works, it works. Joe Holistic doesn't give a shit about the reason his back stops hurting when he goes to the acupuncturist. Telling him the needles attract invisible tiny unicorns that prance on his back, and exude pain reducing pixie dust from their hooves is as good a reason as any. The reasons behind it are for the scientists, and don't matter to the person getting the work done. So no, the hypothesis doesn't matter outside of furthering our knowledge.
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Would you really go to a doctor that says, "here is a red pill, most of the time it stops people from having pain, but I don't really know why, but maybe if you take the pill it will help you too." Of course not, you would ask what was in the pill.
We don't know what is in this pill.
 
hanoverphist said:
you guys may as well argue abortions, gun control or separation of church and state. youll get about as much accomplished as you have in the past.
Click to expand...

Acupuncture can help reset the Qi after having an abortion or receiving a wound such as a gunshot. Acupuncture can also help relax a person after discussing the separation of church and state.
 
SMOGZINN said:
Would you really go to a doctor that says, "here is a red pill, most of the time it stops people from having pain, but I don't really know why, but maybe if you take the pill it will help you too."
Click to expand...

That's more or less what a doctor does all day, you realize.
 
SMOGZINN said:
Would you really go to a doctor that says, "here is a red pill, most of the time it stops people from having pain, but I don't really know why, but maybe if you take the pill it will help you too." Of course not, you would ask what was in the pill.
We don't know what is in this pill.
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I'm not inclined to take legal drugs of any kind ;^)

For something like acupuncture, I'd be willing to give it a try because it can do little harm. If it doesn't work, I'm out a bit of money and time. If a mystery substance doesn't work, almost anything could happen, and it does, even with substances aren't much of a mystery. Empirical evidence says acupuncture works, and it says there aren't side effects. It's up to science to figure out why it works.
 
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