Shrugs, if you think you have done enough research to form your own opinion that's fine by me, I am more of keeping an open-mind on this (the acupuncture that we see in the western medicinal world is barely a fraction of what the actual trained Chinese practitioner of the method actually employs - as there are naturally various conflicting principles and the western medicinal/scientific world is only comfortable testing on things that they can directly measure). But here are some other articles (more recent i.e. 2013) - that reports some positive results (note: please bear in mind - for other readers, as RC has pointed out there are also other studies negating the efficacy of acupuncture) - I am more saying that we should continue to understand it more. (1) Rashoud et. al. published in Physiotherapy 15 Nov 2013 - "Efficacy of low-level laser therapy applied at acupuncture points in knee osteoarthritis: A randomised double-blind comparative trial" (2) Kim et. al published in Complementary Therapies in Medicine v21 iss5, Oct 2013, pp535-556. "Acupuncture for lumbar spinal stenosis: A systematic review and meta-analysis" - this may be of more interest to RC, as it tries to review many other papers on this topic and tried to pick out RCTs (Randomised Controlled Trials) and CCTs (Controlled Clinical Trials) - the downside of the reports in this paper of course the authors were analyzing papers from China - as such, they also were not overly confident of what the Chinese had reported (Authors were mainly Koreans) - although I do find it strange for the authors to claim the RCT do not have enough info about Placebos being used (if there aren't any how would they qualify as RCT?) - I will probably need to go and find those chinese papers and read for myself if I ever find the time..... (3) Hyeong Geug Kim, Sa Ra Yoo, Hye Jung Park, and Chang-Gue Son. The Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine. February 2013, 19(2): 134-140. doi:10.1089/acm.2011.0503. "Indirect Moxibustion (CV4 and CV8) Ameliorates Chronic Fatigue: A Randomized, Double-Blind, Controlled Study" - not acupuncture per se - but thought you might be interested in a related treatment regime (moxibustion). My own thoughts - western medicinal approach is in general very specific and targeted, we have ingrained a habit of drilling things down to a single-component eliciting a single effect - our treatment regime (those that we have found and tested) are very effective against a specific ailment that we identify. But we flounder when we need to deal with complex systems, I am not saying we should take what the "wholistic" camp say lock, stock and barrel - but I think we should always seek to understand more of what we don't know. Our bodies are complex systems - and yes, strange things have happened before - we do have people (not many) recovering from ailments we thought incurable. The nice thing about the western medicinal approach is that it strives towards reproducibility (which the wholistic camp somehow falls short). Traditional medicinal practices have survived many years of practice (or malpractice in some eyes) - but if they are still around - they must posess some "value" - I leave you with an interesting quote that I picked up while trying to understand Chinese medicinal philosophy. An unnamed Chinese Medicinal Teacher was said to have taught this to his students "一纸药方，连开三次， 吃死人。" - literal translation: A single prescription, prescribed consecutively 3 times, will kill somebody. It was a warning to his students to avoid the habit of assuming that everyone coming for a consultation is afflicted with the same problem (especially even if the symptoms appear similar, more care needed to be exercised whilst diagnosing the patients). The Chinese medicinal practice systems whilst difficult for us to understand has an extremely long history and a body of knowledge that may be worthy for us to explore - what they preach about "Balance" is in reality quite close to what we know about Homeostasis. Cheers!
DeAleck, okay I will try to explain what your pastor did - although I don't advise people who do not know how to do it to try it (because there is a danger of doing more damage than good). What your pastor was doing was trying to get your tendons re-aligned properly. Most people think of an ankle rolling only of the cartilage - which is the biggest problem - the distension of the rolled joint. But what happens around the joint is that your muscles joining to the ankle also gets slightly mis-aligned. This mis-alignment in general isn't noticeable - but what ensues is that your ankle becomes "easier" to roll if this is not addressed immediately. I didn't have your fortune of meeting someone who could do this - for me- if I don't walk properly these days, I may roll my ankle even just by a mis-step. PS: it doesn't "cure" chronic ankle rolling, more as a measure to ensure the surrounding muscles supporting the joint is taken care of (so they can help take care of the joint). The principle is similar to the resetting of a dislocation - if a joint pops, it is not just putting the joint back in place again - you also need to ensure the surrounding muscles and tissues heal right (otherwise the problem can recur).
Depending on the ailment, there probably would be an exact treatment that could be offered. In the case of Howard and his FTs, I don't believe there are many well-designed experiments that indicate which treatments might increase a basketball players FT percentage by over 30%, so we would likely have to do some additional studies. But in the case of something like back pain, there likely would be some specific treatments that can be recommended. In a lot of cases, I think relaxation therapy (and perhaps more exercise) would help quite a bit (you'd be able to reduce stress, blood pressure, put you body into "pain relief" mode, etc.). Some might even recommend something low-risk, purely for the placebo effect (which would be difficult to replicate), although as I pointed out earlier, some doctors might not prescribe something (purely as a placebo) due to ethical reasons (even if that treatment will make the patient feel much better). I wasn't really offering a diagnosis. As stated, I don't know your situation. If your doctors recommended it, perhaps you have a deficiency (or something along those lines). If you're perfectly healthy though, then I'm not sure there is anything in the supplement itself that is helping, though the placebo effect might be "working" for you (and perhaps your doctors were OK with prescribing you a placebo). Not really enough information to go on, hence my questions about it. Pretty busy at the moment, and that will likely continue through most of today and maybe tomorrow. I'll try to respond with more (to Unstable's posts and more) when I get a little more free time. Thanks for the replies.
My wife tried some acupuncture for stress. I was an am skeptical because I couldn't get a satisfactory answer on why it would work. The results for my wife were not suddenly life-changing or anything. But, the acupuncturist said it would take x number of sessions before we really saw benefit and then the insurance company said they'd pick up 0% of the cost, so that was the end of that. She took up roller derby instead, which seems to have had the benefit we wanted at a fraction of the cost. I'm not ready to disbelieve it; it seems to work for some things sometimes for some people. But, I obviously don't trust it enough to pay out of my own pocket.
Lol. I think she's lost sight of why she started in the first place. She just likes hitting people now.
Oh absolutely - I agree with that. But again, this is easy to say but ignores reality. Many (most?) acupuncture patients have tried traditional medicine too - and those doctors could not solve their problems. It's easy to say that they *should* be able to do so, but the reality is that's generally not the case. That's the whole reason people try acupuncture in the first place. So again, until someone can tell me exactly what to do to make my allergies miraculously disappear using traditional methods with no side effects, why should I NOT use acupuncture?
Thanks for putting the medical theory into this treatment. It certainly makes sense. In away, it DOES cure chronicle ankle rolling, because it is no longer chronicle. I was incredibly lucky to roll my ankle when my pastor happened to be there. Otherwise, my sports life would have been extremely limited, and my life would be very different today. On a side note, when I saw Steph Curry continuing to roll his ankle, I wondered why nobody who knew how to perform this massage offered to help. I think it would definitely help.
What more research can I do? At what point would you recommend dropping our losses and moving on? I do keep an open mind, but I also try to follow the evidence. I don't think we should be spending a lot of time studying the benefits of toothpick poking or RC Cola's miracle pain relief. If there is a substantial amount of evidence indicating one conclusion, I'm not going to stay "open-minded." We can continue studying this for another 50 years (and another 5000+ trials), but as pointed out in one of the blog posts I linked to, I think it is time to just cut our losses and move on. It isn't like we have an infinite amount of time and resources, and instead of doing acupuncture trial #5835, we could be studying something that MIGHT actually work (and work well). To be honest, if we removed the term acupuncture from these studies and just termed it "treatment XYZ," I'm not sure many people would be so open-minded. It should be fairly easy to test either way. We can measure the age of the universe, and gather very detailed information about worlds light-years away. I don't even really need to discuss quantum mechanics, or some of the general wackiness of the sub-atomic "world." We tend to do quite well in studying those systems, and while the human body is indeed complex, I find it hard to believe that it is that much more complex than these other systems. If there is a tangible benefit to acupuncture (which is kind of the point to seeking it out), it can be measured IMO. We can say that all the negative studies were just "not true acupuncture," or something along those lines, but if a treatment is going to be that inconsistent/variable, I'm not sure it is even worth recommending (especially if, even when it "works," the benefits don't appear that significant). I don't see any reason to give acupuncture special treatment. Thanks for mentioning this. Tried to do some digging on it, and felt like I learned a decent amount. I do have a few problems with it though. For one, while I know LLLT seems to be tied to acupuncture, I'm not sure I really buy it as traditional acupuncture. It really seems like a completely different kind of treatment, but they just say they use acupuncture points to get some attention (not sure why else they'd mention it...not all LLLT studies do). I would have liked another pair of groups to have been included in the study, where they applied the laser (both the real one and the placebo), but did it at random/non-acupuncture points. That would help show if there is any effect to the laser itself, and how much benefit there is to the acupuncture points. If you applied heat treatments (or even shots of morphine ) to acupuncture points, would that mean that acupuncture works? I also would have maybe liked another control group where no treatment was given (though maybe they were still told to perform those exercises), just to give further context. That's probably being too greedy. I don't have full access to the paper, and a couple of other things bother me (probably things that could be answered if I read the whole paper). But I might give them the benefit of the doubt on their results. It is not clear to me if the pain reduction they observed is clinically significant (they claim it is I believe, but so did the study I discussed earlier). I'd like to do more research on those pain scales, but again, I'll give them the benefit of the doubt. I did a bit of research on LLLT in general. I seem to generally see small (temporary) benefits in pain management, along with a few negative studies (i.e., placebo groups report similar/better numbers as the experimental groups). The scientific consensus seems a bit mixed on this, but the number of studies does seem pretty low. I think while the effects seem pretty small (even at best, it seems comparable, or even less effective than other heating treatments), I could support more research being done on LLLT. Probably won't be worth it, but research does seem more inconclusive than with acupuncture or other treatments. Here's a decent summary of LLLT: http://www.devicewatch.org/reports/lllt.shtml If nothing else, the treatment does seem pretty low-risk (assuming the laser doesn't suddenly point towards your eyes), compared to traditional acupuncture. I enjoyed reading this one, thanks again. The authors of the meta-analysis did a great job of pointing out the flaws in their own study. It is interesting to read about, but I'm not sure much could be taken from it (other than poorly designed trials happening in China). I don't recall if I mentioned this explicitly, but the main study I was referring to earlier was a meta-analysis. They can be very beneficial, but they are very dependent on the quality of the studies being included. As one of my links described it, Garbage In - Garbage Out. Of course, the authors of that study were far less critical of their own research (it was a bit better than this one, but they still failed to mention many obvious flaws in their research, which isn't very encouraging). I'm a little pressed for time, so haven't had a chance to look into this one yet. I'm naturally skeptical of course, but I'll try to take a look at it when I have the chance. For the purposes of this acupuncture debate/discussion, it doesn't seem hugely relevant, but it would be interesting to read/learn about. Thanks yet again. How so? I tend to think that nothing (or practically nothing) is 100% incurable. From a statistical/clinical standpoint, maybe so, but as you said, there are a huge number of variables involved, and given the right input, statistically "impossible" events could result. It is the job of science to identify those variables, find out which ones have the largest impacts, and if possible, help people tweak those inputs to obtain the results we desire. I think we're doing a fairly good job of that, and I don't really know of any better alternative. This is an argument from antiquity, and is not particularly convincing IMO (one of many logical fallacies). I'll link to Steve Novella again because he addressed this exact issues, and again, he is much more articulate than I am: http://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/the-argument-from-antiquity/ His example of bloodletting is a good counter-point IMO (and I'm sure there are others). While I'm OK with this general philosophy, I'm not sure how significant it is from a practical standpoint. "Western medicine" generally strives for "balance" as well...whatever that might mean. You certainly strive to understand all the variables involved, and try to come up with the best solution for the situation at hand. Different people react differently, but that tends to be due to variables that we can identify, study, and understand. I'm not sure it is necessarily "difficult for us to understand" the Chinese medicinal practices. If you are making the claim that it is effective but we can't figure out why, then I guess that makes sense, but you would first have to prove those claims. I won't speak directly to your case since I don't know the nature of your allergies, the treatments you tried, the time-spans involved, and many other important variables likely involved. Although even if I knew those things, I'm not sure I'd try to give advice like this to someone (I might provide facts/info, but don't think I'd say which treatments to seek out). I'd leave that up to a medical professional. I admit that I am a little skeptical that people will attempt all treatments that can be recommended by "traditional" medicine. Doctors may even fail to prescribe some treatments, due to a high likelihood of patients not complying with the treatment. Blood pressure and cholesterol medication could possibly be avoided in many cases if patients would improve their diet, exercise more, find ways of reducing stress (including better sleep), etc. But those are all things that typically result in low compliance, while medication tends to have higher compliance. In the case of people benefiting from acupuncture, I'm just speculating, but since a lot of the benefits tend to involve symptoms related to things like high stress levels, I wonder if perhaps people are more likely to try/comply with acupuncture treatments than "traditional" treatments that would reduce stress (and possibly provide the same/similar benefits that acupuncture would provide). If a doctor says you should find ways to relax more (or something along those lines), it is not clear to me that everyone will actually comply with this recommendation (or they might assume an extra 10 minutes of playing COD should get the job done). But tell him/her to attend a 2 hour acupuncture session (in which you likely have no choice BUT to relax for an extended period of time), and you might have people relaxing a lot more (and with that, lower stress levels, which in turn will help the body in many different ways). I do agree with what durvasa said. In general, I wouldn't necessarily tell people NOT to try acupuncture. I WOULD tell them that there is no evidence that it will help with their ailment (be it allergies, chronic pain, insomnia, etc.). If the person knows all of that, and still decides to receive that treatment, that is his/her decision. I personally think it would likely be a waste of time/money/etc and potentially risky, but it is up for the individual to decide (and if they get the results they were seeking, that's great, even if it was due to placebo or some other unknown variables).
i have always been very very skeptical of accupuncture but i'm a believer now.. my gf was experiencing some crazy neck and shoulder pains for a few days and it kept getting worse.. got to a point where she couldnt even move and even lying down she was in intense pain. Just the slightest movement caused her pain. We got desperate so decided to try accupuncture. When I dropped her off she looked miserable and was in a foul mood. The owner of the place said she knew exactly what to do and said i gurantee ill fix her right up. After 2 hours I went to pick her up and she was already in a much better mood and smiling. Still sore but the pain was no longer unbareable and the next day she was back to normal. I was quite amazed and shocked that it made such a huge difference. Dont know what fixed it but it worked
Disclaimer: I have never tried acupuncture and believe in hard science; that said: There is about 2,500 years of positive anecdotal evidence supporting acupuncture that is pretty hard to ignore. The fact that science has not (as yet) found a solid link does not discount it's efficacy as treatment in a substantial number of people.
I agree, but this is coming from a guy who's vet does acupuncture, and who had his late dog treated several times in an attempt to find relief for the poor soul. The hardest part was getting him to stay still while she inserted the needles. Once she did that (the vet), he became relaxed, which I found pretty amazing (you would have had to have been there). I'm not adverse to trying alternative medicine, either for myself, or my dogs (and how I wish I still had one!). I also believe in traditional medicine, however, and keep my lipids at a manageable level with statins and supplements (some might consider the supplements "non-traditional," although many doctors are embracing them as useful for certain patients). I have an inherited condition that doesn't allow my body to process lipids like "normal" people can. Without meds, my cholesterol is over 600, and my triglycerides are over 1200, astonishing numbers to someone who knows what they mean. It eventually caused my father's death, although he had the best cardiologist and heart surgeon in Houston at the time, and superb insurance. Statins did not exist. So you could say that I educated myself about lipids for excellent reasons. Today with meds and supplements? Cholesterol 153 and triglycerides 167, with excellent LDL and HDL levels. In other words, explore alternative medicine if you think the effort worthwhile, and have an open mind if you do, but don't turn your back on traditional medicine.
I posted this earlier, but I'll mention it again: http://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/the-argument-from-antiquity/ If you (not "you" specifically, but just acupuncture proponents in general...or I guess proponents of anything really) have to resort to these type of arguments, it probably isn't a good sign. Feel free to think something works (or doesn't work), but I wouldn't recommend using reasoning like this to support your beliefs/claims. Study the evidence, stay away from logical fallacies, and try to make the best conclusion you can based on the evidence you have before you (often times, this might involve a risk vs benefit analysis as well).
Pain is only electrical signals received by the brain. Who's to say acupuncture doesn't disconnect that particular connection? We're just now beginning to understand the spinal chord. Or maybe its mind over matter. How did Kobe play with all his injuries? That said, I hope he's not playing just because he learns to play with the pain.
