Acupuncture Matters: The Definitive Guide to Understanding the True Power of Acupuncture

Who knew that mice and humans had the same meridians and acupoints? Then they cranked in some voltage and measured various cytokines and other inflammatory mediators under various conditions to see what happens. The results were interesting. The electroacupuncture-treated mice had decreased mortality by an:.

Acupuncture Vignettes

Direct electrical stimulation of the vagus nerve mimicked the production of dopamine and norepinephrine induced by electroacupuncture. They did not use a random peripheral site to apply the voltage or another acupuncture point as a control. As best I can tell, the study actually had nothing to do with acupuncture. What they demonstrated was electrical stimulation of peripheral nerves or the vagus nerve had anti-inflammatory effects. The use of the specific acupuncture point was, well, pointless.

This is the kind of study that drives me nuts. You could remove all the references to acupuncture and the results would be just as applicable. I suppose it would then lack the sexiness that acupuncture adds. Without acupuncture as a hook, I wonder if it would have been published in Nature Medicine or get the notice it did. Anthony Koraroff has a column called Ask Doctor. By stimulating specific acupoints, the practitioner aims to restore the proper flow of energy in the body. He fails to mention that this is a pre-scientific concept with zero basis in reality.

There are no meridians or acupoints or any sort of life energy. Of course they are. I would be more curious why no acupuncture map ever shows meridians and acupoints in the genitals. You would think the life force would be in the life-generating organs.

If you are a male making stuff up, the last thing you would do is stick needles in the genitals. Makes one think it would be useless for erectile dysfunction. Other theories claim the needles release neurotransmitters, chemicals that carry messages between nerve endings. You stick needles in someone and twist them and you get a pain response? And in response to a noxious stimulus neurotransmitters are made? And water is wet. And how would that have any effect on the panoply of diseases that acupuncture is supposed to help, from ED to fertility to herniated discs?

Given prior plausibility, why waste time and money on a useless therapy. But he is right. From a recent meta-analysis of acupuncture and ED:. Most investigations had methodological flaws, e. There are more studies of acupuncture as a treatment for chronic pain. Such studies sometimes find that both real and sham acupuncture relieve pain. This suggests to them that acupuncture may work by causing a placebo effect. No, this suggests that acupuncture does nothing. If real acupuncture has the same effects as twirling toothpicks, safe to say it is ineffective. Or would he use the same justification for using internal mammary artery ligation for angina?

And if he is suggesting placebo medicine, well, that is usually considered unethical.

Acupuncture

Whether this is true or not, what matters to patients is that their condition has been improved. Some of my patients have had good relief of their pain. Be sure to seek out an experienced acupuncturist. And remember that it can be time-consuming and expensive. But in experienced hands, it is safe. No reason whatsoever in the discussion to suggest it would have any efficacy at all, but use it any way despite the cost. And those experienced hands? Yet another photo without gloves; bare fingers poking around the needle site. Acupuncture is not safe in any hands experienced or otherwise:.

And this did not include the numerous reports of infection from the sloppy infection-prevention technique that defines acupuncture. No reason it should be effective for ED, no clinical trials to suggest efficacy, has complications and cost, and in my experience it occasionally works for pain so try it for ED. I am not impressed with the advice. Maybe not so much if it concerns acupuncture. Pseudo-medicines combine and recombine in a continual fantastical dance.

Pick any two alternative medicines and someone, somewhere, has combined them into a unique treatment modality. My favorite is Tong Ren , a voodoo form of acupuncture. I had thought, perhaps incorrectly, that no one could come up with a more ludicrous combination.

Perhaps it would be dark energy homeopathy or dark matter acupuncture. I suppose it is just a matter of time before someone combines some pseudo-medical modality with the time cube and their nonsense will reign supreme.

There is the idea that as long as you are sticking needles in people you might as well add other substances to the needle and drag them into the dermis. It is called mesotherapy. There have been 35 reports of odd infections associated with mesotherapy, often atypical mycobacteria. Evidently there is also bee venom acupuncture:. Bee venom acupuncture is growing in popularity, especially in Korea, and is used primarily for pain relief in many kinds of diseases as an alternative medical treatment. We report 3 cases of Mycobacterium chelonae infections after bee venom acupuncture.

All were treated with antibiotics and surgery. A common organism in the environment and water, Mycobacterium chelonae is not an uncommon cause of soft tissue infections where simple infection control interventions are ignored. Considering the increasing use of bee venom therapy and considerable morbidity of NTM infection, prevention efforts of infections are needed through strict adherence to infection control principles, including sterilization of venom extraction, purification process, injection equipment, and environment.

Another victim, a year-old employee, was also molested after receiving paralyzing acupuncture from Seo. You are correct, Sir. There is no way acupuncture could cause paralysis. It cannot and does not do anything. But what might have happened? I lack information in this particular case, but I have seen two patients with hysterical paralysis and hysterical blindness aka conversion disorder. Neither had a physiologic cause of their problem but neither could walk or see.

I have seen patient with melanomas the size of a large button mushroom and another with an erosive tumor on his abdomen the size of a dinner plate. Both completely denied anything wrong. It was hard to believe the patients were unaware of the problem. I have been amazed over the years of what people can do given the right situations. I wonder what kind of social expectations allowed the acupuncturists to convince his victims that they were paralyzed.

Some odd combination of male dominance, conversion disorder and Stockholm syndrome? If indeed the event occurred as written. Given the inability of most news outlets to be even remotely accurate about pseudo-medicines, I am a touch skeptical that the events occurred as reported. It is more interesting, if true, about a milieu that allows a predator to use a worthless pseudo-medicine as a weapon for abuse. Check out the Society for Science-Based Medicine.

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Our announcement was a month ago and it is going along nicely, if taking up a huge amount of my time. Remember how some believe acupuncture is ancient? Even if it were that old, its age would be a hindrance, not a help. All of the ideas behind it are pre-scientific notions, as outdated as "balancing the humors". The so-called "energy" of qi , so recently coined, is a modern expression of ancient vitalism. The meridians are, as we already saw, tied to astrology, yet another pre-scientific implausibility. What's more, nobody can seem to agree on how many meridians there are or where they should be.

At one point acupuncture charts mapped points, based on the number of days in the year, not on anatomy. But today acupuncturists claim to have "discovered" some 2, meridian points, pretty much guaranteeing that you could glue a needle to a dart, chuck it at the patient from across the room, and hit one of them. Are there 9, 10, or 11 meridians?

Nobody seems to know. It doesn't matter, because no research has found evidence PDF for the existence of acupuncture points, meridians, or qi. Acupuncture's plausibility has more holes in it than one of its long-suffering patients. Efficacy Put simply, efficacy answers the question, does it work? This is what we want from our medicine: Acupuncture has been studied perhaps more than its poor plausibility would merit.

Acupuncture Vignettes – Science-Based Medicine

Supporters point to the studies which show that acupuncture works, and ignore those that don't. When evaluating studies there are all kinds of things to consider. Are the putative "researchers" part of an organization which promotes the modality under test? What's the methodology of the study? Did they use proper blinding and placebo controls? It's a big subject and we don't have time to go into detail right now, but here are some things to consider.

First, where was the study done? In the researchers Vickers, Harland, and Rees performed a systematic review of controlled trials and discovered a pattern. But careful, double-blinded, placebo-controlled trials of acupuncture have been done. Some of them are quite clever. A special sheath can be made that either contains an acupuncture needle that will enter the skin when pressed, or a toothpick that will just lightly poke the skin.

Neither the practitioner or the patient knows which is which. It doesn't matter where you stick the needle, and it doesn't even matter if you stick the needle. Acupuncture works no better than not doing acupuncture. Indeed, the higher quality the study, the more acupuncture appears to work no better than placebo. Now, placebo is widely misunderstood. What it really represents is the noise floor of the experiment. Subjectively experienced symptoms such as pain often come and go on their own. Many disease processes, even cancers, can spontaneously remit. This is the background noise that an effect must be judged against.

Picture yourself standing at the beach with the roar of the waves in your ears. You are listening to hear if someone is speaking behind you. If the voice isn't loud and clear enough to be understood over the background, or noise floor, of the surf, then you can't conclude that the speaker is even there. When a clinical trial concludes that the modality being tested performs "no better than placebo" that's just science's cautious way of saying it doesn't do anything.

Or, if it does, it's too quiet to hear over the sound of the waves. So why do so many people report feeling better after acupuncture? There are many plausible explanations. Contrasted to the rushed, sterile atmosphere of the typical doctor's office, acupuncture is often performed in a comfortable, relaxing atmosphere. Soothing, personal attention is known to lower stress. A nice massage is likely to be just as effective. Some of the positive trials resulted from sessions where, after the needles are inserted, wires are clipped to them and a small electric current is applied.

Yes, this can actually reduce muscular pain, but it isn't acupuncture. Any efficacy using acupuncture is more plausibly linked to what happens around acupuncture than to the acupuncture itself. Safety The ancient Greeks didn't have the science-based medicine we now enjoy, but they could clearly see that a doctor's first duty is to "do no harm". Even if a treatment is plausible and effective, there's not much point if it's going to injure or kill you. One of the biggest issues medical studies need to address, then, is safety. If you have a life-threatening disease it might be worth trying a higher risk treatment, but for minor conditions you will usually go for lower risk.

And there's always some kind of risk. This is just as true for acupuncture.

References & Further Reading

While its overall safety, at least as typically practiced in the United States, is pretty good, any time someone is piercing your skin with sharp tools there can be serious complications. Canadian athlete Kim Ribble-Orr had her lung collapse when the massage therapist treating her for headaches decided to try the acupuncture that he learned on weekends at the local university. Collapsed lungs are considered a "rare but well-documented " side effect of acupuncture. Other documented risks include the the transmission of hepatitis C and hepatitis B.

But, as with other so-called "Complementary and Alternative Treatments", the greatest risk may be to those who avoid science-based medicine in favor of an ineffective treatment. On the What's the harm? Medicine is a complex field, and little matters more to us than our health.

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When it comes to acupuncture, a modern twist on medieval misconceptions with no real benefits, and rare, but serious complications, it pays to remain skeptical and insist on plausibility, efficacy, and safety. Please contact us with any corrections or feedback. Skeptoid Media, 9 Sep The Truth about Complementary and Alternative Medicine.

Oxford University Press, Chinese Medicine in Early Communist China, University of California Press, A systematic review of controlled trials. Rights and reuse information. The Skeptoid weekly science podcast is a free public service from Skeptoid Media, a c 3 educational nonprofit.

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