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Accupuncture

Cainkane1

Philosopher
Cainkane1
Joined
Jul 16, 2005
Messages
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Location
The great American southeast
I guess this is one of those areas that I thought I knew something about and it turns out I don't. Many years ago I used to work in a Mental Hospital and accupuncture was being used. My impression was that it helped ease pain but now it turns out that its just so much woo. How can you fool millions of Chinese over the span of centuries? Is it totally useless?
 
Cainkane1 said:
I guess this is one of those areas that I thought I knew something about and it turns out I don't. Many years ago I used to work in a Mental Hospital and accupuncture was being used. My impression was that it helped ease pain but now it turns out that its just so much woo. How can you fool millions of Chinese over the span of centuries? Is it totally useless?
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As I mentioned in another post, the acupuncture that I attended was aimed to heal some pains in my arms. The mechanisms which were explained to me seemed very rational: The needles are supposed to trigger a very subtle reaction in the nerve, which relaxes the muscle itself. It´s supposedly an easier alternative to what would otherwise consist of very long and tiresome massaging therapies (Yes, I said ¨tiresome massage¨. Chinese massage can be sometimes a little bit harsh).

There was really no woo in his explanation. I remember him giving clear explanations of how muscles and tissues and bones interact together as he was working on them.

But this is just my personal experience with that one acupuncturist.
 
Why is it that people who start threads about acupuncture, can't spell it?

Rolfe.
 
Who said the chinese used it for centuries?

My read is that it fell out of favor- for centuries. But the Red Chinese brought it back up, just to show off to the rest of the world as 'chinese medicine'. It was a 1960's resurrection brought on by Nixon's opening up of trade.
 
casebro said:
Who said the chinese used it for centuries?

My read is that it fell out of favor- for centuries. But the Red Chinese brought it back up, just to show off to the rest of the world as 'chinese medicine'. It was a 1960's resurrection brought on by Nixon's opening up of trade.
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The running joke is that there are more acupuncture patients in California than in China. (probably not true)

Good references:

 
plumjam said:
I don't know much about acupuncture, but came across a caesarian section apparently conducted with only acupuncture for anaesthetic.

Not for the squeamish.
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=Hlhol6KSvvE
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A friend of mine had her caesarian performed when the epidural hadn't really worked. In the circumstances there was little she could do about it and in the context of how much things already hurt she said the surgery did not add very much to the pain. n=1 anecdote.
 
plumjam said:
I don't know much about acupuncture, but came across a caesarian section apparently conducted with only acupuncture for anaesthetic.

Not for the squeamish.
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=Hlhol6KSvvE
Click to expand...

Hmmm...

Is it 'acupuncture' when the needles are 12-inches long, inserted either side of the surgical incision and then electrically stimulated?

I think this is one of the problems with acupuncture. When is it 'real' acupuncture and when is it exploitation of neurophysiology by methods that pose no challenge to a Western understanding of medicine? If the latter, are the methods nonetheless interesting and effective so as to provide a useful alternative to other methods, such as, in this instance, GA or epidural anaesthesia? Don't know.

Presumably this was an elective caesarian, but even so I think we might describe the patient as potentially being from a culture of female acquiescence.
 
Badly Shaved Monkey said:
Presumably this was an elective caesarian, but even so I think we might describe the patient as potentially being from a culture of female acquiescence.
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p.s. I should add that this thought was prompted by the utter lack of reaction from the patient when those feckin' huge needles were shoved the whole way along her abdominal wall.
 
Does acupuncture work any better than a placebo? The best evidence says it does not.

Does a placebo work in reducing pain? Very often it does.

I think the answer is in these two statements.
 
The most recent study showed pretty much that. Acupuncture works slightly better than sham acupuncture, but both work far better than nothing. How strange.
 
This is what it seems to boil down to…

If there is a use for acupuncture, it can only be in mild pain relief. The question then becomes a matter of whether the cost of acupuncture for this mild pain relief can be justified."

http://www.skeptics.org.uk/article.php?dir=articles&article=acupuncture.php
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…and here’s why it’s not looking good for acupuncturists in the UK:

Conclusions: Prospective, controlled, cost-effectiveness studies of complementary therapies have been carried out in the UK only for spinal manipulation (four studies) and acupuncture (two studies). The limited data available indicate that the use of these therapies usually represents an additional cost to conventional treatment.

Cost-Effectiveness of Complementary Therapies in the United Kingdom—A Systematic Review (2006)
Peter H. Canter, Joanna Thompson Coon, and Edzard Ernst
Evidence Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine

http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?tool=pubmed&pubmedid=17173105
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