I'm curious about acupuncture, has anyone got any experience with it? Can you get acupuncture without having anything wrong with you? Does it work?
1) Yes 2) Well, yes......but why would you want to? 3) No more proven than placebo in many cases, although placebo has a curative effect on the body so perhaps the accupuncture acts as a catalyst. I question the inherent value of accupuncture in and of itself, and trials have been less than kind to it
Acupuncture not really a chi gatherer...more "medicinal" as it were. To cure/help with ailments and the such.
There are literally millions of people who benefit from it every single day, and some of the smartest folks I know (lawyers, police, engineers, IT folks) have greatly benefited from acupuncture for back and other related issues when all other options fail or are undesired, such as epidural injections of steroid medicines into the spine to relieve pain and inflammation. Acupuncture studies often suffer from publishing bias as well as a number of other issues. This is especially true for studies out of Asia, where acupuncture has been in use for "folk medicine" for thousands of years and produces (whether you trust the science or not) positive results for many generations. That said, not all the studies are biased and some produce positive results, and there is plenty of ongoing legitimate research into it. There ARE studies that show benefits beyond placebo. Often, there is a study that will "prove" skeptics wrong, as well as studies that will "prove" supporters right. There are also plenty of licensed MDs who think it's fake. However, lots of MDs are totally worthless as far as the healing arts. My insurance plan doesn't cover some doctors, but every licensed acupuncturist in the state is covered. If acupuncture were a total sham, the studies would all have proven it across the board. The studies have had mixed results, and the mixed results indicate that success depends largely on the quality and type of the study. For instance some studies have shown sham treatments (acupuncture in "wrong" spots) had the same effects as placebo. In other studies, sham treatments performed poorly compared to "real" acupuncture.
This is faulty logic and I wrote a lot of words about statistics and science, but the truth is it's boring as all get out and no one wants to read any of that. Look up "type 1 and type 2 errors" and then "p-value" on wikipedia. Essentially what you'll find is that even under the most stringent of conditions, simply due to statistical wizardry, there will always be the chance that your study has a false positive due to sampling error and random chance.
Keep in mind that this only proves that placebo can have a positive effect, it doesnt prove that acupuncture doesnt work. I do believe that there is alot of value in Chinese medicine, acupuncture included.
They tried to get me to do acupuncture for my neck at the VA Hospital, said it works for some and not for others. I was also offered a shot of some numbing/relaxing stuff. I refused both. Not too keen on letting people stick long needles into areas in my neck around my spine. One small slip and "whoops, can't feel my legs anymore." Maybe not, but I'm still not letting anyone stick things in my neck unless it's absolutely necessary. Can't see what the back nobber I have can't do that a needle will do. Seemed strange that I was being offered it in a hospital though.
"If I link to what I'm talking about nobody will read it because it's all sciencey and stuff and nobody likes that. So here, let me post some key words you can look up that will totally be harder to figure out exactly what I wanted to get at and create a lot more effort for you, the reader." Yeah . . . sure buddy. I bet that works every time!
Be aware of the training your acupuncturist has had. They are not all the same, qualifications vary from state to state. In Illinois for example, if you are a licensed chiropractor you can legally practice acupuncture with only 40hr of training! Some states don't regulate at all.
Lol what?! Well, given the outstanding work the VA does sometimes, I'm guessing whomever was going to stick needles in my neck got a "hip-pocket class" on it at the very most.
This is true. There is legitimate medicinal application for acupuncture. It all depends on what you're treating. It tends to treat certain forms of pain well according to the academic literature. Long-term treatment of diseases probably won't be productive using acupuncture alone, but bringing relief from pain might be possible short-term.
It is ironic that so many licensed doctors who dismiss acupuncture often do so because they feel their practice of medicine is infallible and proven, when so many of the medicines they prescribe come with a horde of nasty side effects, combination effects, as well as enormous price tags. I have seen doctors who have no problem dismissing CAM and then pushing experimental, privately produced chemical cocktails onto the public in the same breath. Of the studies and meta studies that show a positive effect beyond placebo, the effects were small. So, the anti-CAM crowd believes they are worthless to prescribe, and worthless to study. But compared to what exactly? The next Pfizer pill that might kill me? Expensive and often dangerous experimental pharmacology that has been shown to cripple people, give them heart attacks, drive them crazy, bleed internally?...acupuncture has no such side effects. There is a global prescription painkiller and narcotic abuse crisis, and a lot of it starts with licensed MDs handing out drugs as if they are candy. Yet that same profession seems to feel it is their moral duty to "protect" the public from the holistic, natural, and age old practice of acupuncture, which has never killed anyone or made them sick, and whose overall mechanisms are still so poorly understood, we still have trouble developing accurate ways to test it. My guess is that when all is said and done, they will find some basic scientific foundation for why acupuncture appears to work. There is no need to try to rationalize the ancient, prescientific model of meridians etc with modern science. Science must build its own model of what acupuncture is really doing, and only after we have all that data and understand it can we accurately say how off base the old model was.
I really feel that the medical profession should capitalise on placebo. It would also add a certain theatrical flair to medicine that is sorely lacking. Let's get the witch back in doctor! [I don't like to do this, but for the stupid: this is tongue-in-cheek] I doubt whether the pharamaceutical industry would like it though. Has there been any conclusive evidence of acupuncture effect beyond placebo? The studies I've read about suggest that it works with random placement if the person applying it looks and sounds like they know what they're doing. I have a hard time accepting something based on chi flow and meridians could have real effects. What is the mechanism at work? Or maybe I misunderstand acupuncture in general, which is more than possible.
Of a few physicians I know, and have been treated by, they, by their own admission, have NEVER stated that their practice and modern medicine as INFALLIBLE. But unlike naturalists, they continue to look for advances in medicine. Of course, modern medicine and drugs have a price tag. But shall we frown upon this price tag, as sure a accupuncturist, as well as a martial art instructor also deems a monetary compensation So does accupuncture. A so-called accupuncturist has crippled one of my relatives. There are always side effects to any type of treatment A lot of it is people getting these illegally Disagree. As said, a relative has. Science has this data. If or not "naturalists" except it is another issue Here is a thought: Before the breakthrough of much modern medicine, including "certain" drugs, the average person died long before 65. Now that "modern medicine" advances, people live beyond their 70's One cannot dismiss "modern medicine"
Sorry, didn't mean to come off that way, I guess I was frustrated because I realized that I was typing off something that was really boring. You're right though, I should have written more. Different aspects of experimental design and statistical analysis determine how sensitive your experiment is to 'true' differences between your populations (let's say sample A is a control of 20 people and sample B is 20 folks who have been exposed to a certain chemical called Explodafolk). We assume that these populations are representative of a larger population, say all people who have been exposed and all those who have not. So we have two hypotheses: H0 - Explodafolk has no effect on human health. H1 - Explodafolk causes folks to explode. A type 1 error would occur when we affirm H1 without due cause. For example, included in our sample of 20 folks exposed to the chemical, maybe due to the random nature of sampling our scientists included 20 mouth breathers who like huffing gasoline and smoking cigarettes at the same time. We would conclude that explodafolk causes folks to explode without any reason to do so - a false positive. But then there are type 2 errors in which we affirm H0 when there actually is an effect. Let's say that a certain percentage of people exposed to explodafolk actually do explode, maybe 80-90% of them. Let's also say that 5-10% of people randomly do explode from other, non explodafolk related reasons (See? Science is fun. Explosions!). From these numbers, we can easily conclude that there is a significant effect, but our scientists don't have those. Once again our samplers contacted 20 gasoline huffers except this time they were placed in the control group! Because of random sampling, we just see that 90% of our sampled people explode and are not able to reject H0 - a false negative. What we're looking for is how likely it is that the differences in our samples reflect a 'true' difference in the populations that are being sampled, and not simply that our samples are different. To ascertain this, we'd use a statistical test (such as the t-test) which would calculate our p-value, the probability of observing an effect when H0 is actually true, or our chance of getting a Type 1 error. Simply because of the nature of sampling, inevitably some studies which have concluded that a treatment has an effect are in fact committing a type 1 error. Often in biology a cut off for publishable results is a p-value<0.05, but this would mean that 1 study out of 20 is actually committing a type 1 error. So the fact that there are some studies that show some statistical significance does not necessarily mean that there is a 'true' effect in the larger population of folks who have been stuck with a needle. Here is a good source that explains it better: http://www.statsdirect.com/help/default.htm#basics/p_values.htm
Was this a licensed acupuncturist? How was your relative crippled? Science has some data. "This data" is reference to your own conclusions about the data gathered so far. Nobody really dismissed modern medicine. Modern, legally prescribed drugs kill people every day, though. So, can you name someone killed by acupuncture?
I totally should have put a smiley at the end. I didn't have to look up what you were saying, I caught what you meant by just what you wrote. I was just posting a "looking through the window at those reading" sort of post and relating how I would assume most people would react to such a post. The reaction being "well, scrolling past this one!" of course. I just want you to know that I did read your entire, lengthy post out of respect and acknowledgment of your work and the sharing of it.
Yes. He went in to take care of a shoulder and the condition fell worse. Thus he went to a real doctor Didn't say someone had. I simply made a statement not to dismiss it. Modern drugs have to be taken with precautions. To reiterate, if it weren't for modern medicine, including modern drugs, human survival percentages will be low (This is not to state that these are without flaws)
