Comments on: Why I Am Skeptical of Acupuncture

By: sfacupuncturist

sfacupuncturist — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 23:11:54 +0000

I am a licensed acupuncturist and I would like to address your article. I wholeheartedly agree that the majority of acupuncture studies are poorly written and often show conflicting results. It is a huge problem that our profession in this country is attempting to address. I also think it is highly valuable to be skeptical of anything because it fosters further study and understanding. We need further understanding and study of this medicine to ensure that patients are safely and effectively taken care of, as with any other medical system.

I have been studying body energetics for many years and I can feel and visualize the flow of qi in a patient as I perform acupuncture on them. This idea of qi is something that many in the scientific community do not accept; however, I feel it everyday. We need to stop debating whether or not it’s real and start looking at what this qi is. What is the energetic force that acupuncture, reiki, healing touch, and clairvoyance work with? Is it a manifestation of the electrical charges in the body? Will it end up being explained via quantum physics? Will its understanding lead us to an incredible new medical discovery?

Another point I would like to address is the training process that I went through to receive my Masters degree. One of my appreciations is for how much emphasis was placed on safety. We were repeatedly educated on herbal and pharmaceutical interactions, red flags and protocols for patient referral, as well as actual technique safety. One of my disappointments was in the lack of focus on research and efficacy compared to learning the material found on the certification and licensing exams. I believe this is a huge problem in all the major TCM schools as their pass rates on these exams increases their prestige.

Many people turn to alternative medicine to give them relief, answers, comfort and effective care. My profession needs to embrace scientific scrutiny in order to make sure our patients are receiving the best care available.

I want to do more than see and feel that acupuncture works, I want to be able to effectively communicate why it does.

By: Rational Moms » Blog Archive » How Infertility Made Me a Skeptic

Rational Moms » Blog Archive » How Infertility Made Me a Skeptic — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 09:30:05 +0000

[...] Steven Novella does a great job of breaking down the reasons to be skeptical of acupuncture here. [...]

By: Joe

Joe — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 22:55:24 +0000

pekka s on 11 Dec 2008 at 4:36 pm

What do you make of systematic reviews like this one: “Because most of the studies were of lower methodological quality, there certainly is a further need for higher quality trials in this area.”

Acupuncture for this condition is unsupported.

By: pekka s

pekka s — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 20:36:59 +0000

What do you make of systematic reviews like this one:

http://www.cochrane.org/reviews/en/ab001351.html

“For chronic low-back pain, acupuncture is more effective for pain relief and functional improvement than no treatment or sham treatment immediately after treatment and in the short-term only. Acupuncture is not more effective than other conventional and “alternative” treatments. The data suggest that acupuncture and dry-needling may be useful adjuncts to other therapies for chronic low-back pain. Because most of the studies were of lower methodological quality, there certainly is a further need for higher quality trials in this area.”

By: Science-Based Medicine » On the dangers of using valid placebo controls in clinical trials of acupuncture

Mon, 17 Nov 2008 08:03:39 +0000

[...] However, because unlike so many other “energy healing” methods, acupuncture involved an actual physical action upon the body, namely the insertion of thin needles into the skin to specified depths, it did not seem to me entirely unreasonable that there might be some sort of physiological effect that might produce a therapeutic result. At least, that’s what I used to think until I actually started paying attention to the scientific literature on acupuncture. That’s when I started to realize that “there’s no ‘there’ there,” if you know what I mean. Horribly designed studies with either no controls or utterly inadequate controls tend to be the norm in the acupuncture “literature” (if you can call it that). Moreover, acupuncture was touted as having value for conditions and procedures for which there is no plausible (or even mildly plausible) physiological mechanism by which it could be reasonably postulated to have an effect. Arthritis, allergies, headache, back pain, gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD), Parkinson’s disease, post-operative nausea, hot flashes in breast cancer patients caused by the anti-estrogen drugs they have to take, infertility, it doesn’t matter. Seemingly acupuncture can do it all; it’s the Swiss Army knife of CAM therapies. Moreover, the “explanations” given to explain “how acupuncture works” seemed increasingly less plausible to me. Most of these explanations involve counterirritation or the release of opioids, and I’ve had an increasingly hard time believing that, even if these mechanisms are at play, they could have anything other than nonspecific effects, with no mechanism to explain how acupuncture could possibly do all things attributed to it. One rule of medical skepticism is that you should be very skeptical of modalities that are touted to be useful for a wide variety of medical conditions that have very different pathophysiology. Indeed, a funny thing happens when rigorous placebo controls are introduced, and that’s sometimes the placebo control does better than the “true” acupuncture; i.e., the evidence for acupuncture, taken in its totality, is completely compatible with placebo effect. [...]

By: Science-Based Medicine » National Health Interview Survey 2007 - CAM Use by Adults

Wed, 10 Sep 2008 13:00:50 +0000

[...] the population. Less than 4% of the US population have ever used homeopathy, despite all the buzz. Acupuncture is less than 7%, despite the nearly weekly press releases falsely claiming new evidence that [...]

By: NeuroLogica Blog » An Acupuncture Debate

NeuroLogica Blog » An Acupuncture Debate — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 15:16:53 +0000

[...] I pre-published (with permission) my side of the debate on “Does Acupuncture Work” here at NeuroLogica. Taking the pro-acupuncture side is Bill Reddy – his profile states that he is “currently [...]

By: Joe

Joe — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 16:48:30 +0000

@mat alford, good job!

“A different type of testimony on German New Medicine” http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2006/11/a_different_kind_of_testimonial.php

By: NeuroLogica Blog » Another Worthless Acupuncture Study

NeuroLogica Blog » Another Worthless Acupuncture Study — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 11:01:09 +0000

[...] (by coincidence) on the heels of my recent blog entry on why I am skeptical of acupuncture, another major acupuncture study has just been published. This study looked at acupuncture for [...]

By: mat alford

mat alford — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 23:29:30 +0000

I’ve rumbled you suszennn….. or should I say the evil Professor Dr. Hans Ulrich Niemitz (mat pulls off the mask scooby-doo style) :

http://www.newmedicine.ca/science.php

You woulda got away with too, it if it wasn’t for us pesky kids, etc, etc