Acupuncture

[Quixote1818]

[Archae]

1. Woo advocates throw tantrum in 3-2-1...

[whirlygigspin]

2. the Politics of Placebo

So the political lesson here is: No matter what type of prick you chose to insert in the body politic you will remain in the same condition.

[Quixote1818]

3. Well, at least this placebo prick gives you 2% more pleasure

at an average cost of $75 per session. It's like buying an extra thin rubber for $75 rather than using the normal thickness. Sounds like a good deal.

[AtheistCrusader]

4. There's some clinical data on pets, who arguably could be free of placebo effect

http://www.academia.edu/4178689/Gulanber_veterinary_acupuncture_retrospective_study


However, I remain skeptical. This may reflect owners more likely to walk/exercise/otherwise care for their pets, leading to better outcomes than owners that simply medicate their pets to control for pain. Could even be owner perception, in that they WANT their pets to be pain free, so they ignore symptoms that indicate pain, or over-alert to symptoms that indicate comfort, like we forget losses and remember wins, when gambling. After all, you've 'bet' that acupuncture will help your pet.

I have a personal suspicion that this technique trips the regeneration systems that your body possesses for healing cuts and other injuries, causing your body to allocate resources to the area, and that might have an effect on the long-running injury that people are trying to treat with acupuncture. After all, you are puncturing the body, introducing a foreign body, even if temporarily, and with minimal damage. Your body still has to heal that. Perhaps it heals that, and a little bit more? Or causes it to release cortisone, or other anti-inflammation tools? But that's just speculation. It's not something I would spend money on, personally, since I am pretty much immune to placebo effect.

[drynberg]

5. There was no control for doctor and I believe WHO puts the needles in

Is the difference between effective and non-effective treatments. The smart ass attitude didn't help me either. Point is, thousands if not millions of Americans have had tremendous success with acupuncture, as I have. My doctor is about 80, with more than 40 years of experience, going to China yearly for a two week extension of her skills. She probably is not "typical". I was disappointed by this "scientific" video.

[Quixote1818]

8. See my post below

http://www.democraticunderground.com/1017168084#post7

[panfluteman]

6. Proof That Acupuncture is Not a Placebo

As a licensed acupuncturist, I thought that this video might present a progressive complementary and alternative health care slant on acupuncture and its great cost effectiveness. But I was terribly disappointed when it presented just the same old worn out placebo theory hogwash, and couldn't stomach watching the video all the way through. As any acupuncturist knows, there is a very good piece of evidence that acupuncture is NOT just a placebo: ACUPUNCTURE WORKS EVEN ON ANIMALS, WHO CANNOT "PSYCH THEMSELVES" INTO THINKING OR BELIEVING THAT IT WORKS. In fact, many holistic veterinarians practice acupuncture on animals with great success, relieving not just pain, which can be seen as a more subjective thing anyway, but also facilitating actual healing and recovery from non-pain related disorders, just as it does in humans. The beneficial healing effects of acupuncture have been measured not just in terms of pain relief, but also in other objectively measurable biomarkers, such as immune response, white blood cell phagocytotic activity, etc..., as well as in beneficial changes or adjustments in organ function. THIS VIDEO IS NOTHING BUT MODERN SUPERSTITION AND SKEPTOMANIA.

[Quixote1818]

7. Unfortunatly the science doesn't back that claim up with people. It just doesnt.

This is the most pro acupuncture study ever to come out and it's pretty lukewarm suggesting it's mostly a placebo but not entirely.

http://archinte.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=1357513

CNN sums up the research here:

What's more, he adds, the modest difference between genuine and sham acupuncture may not be meaningful for the average real-world patient.

"Acupuncture does appear to have some very small benefit above and beyond placebo acupuncture or sham acupuncture," says Avins, who wrote an editorial accompanying the study. "But the effects really are pretty small, and the majority of the effect is a placebo effect."

Acupuncture skeptics will likely seize on this point, Avins says, but the study findings don't mean that acupuncture doesn't work, or that doctors shouldn't refer pain patients for the treatment.

Acupuncture, he suggests, should perhaps be viewed as a way of providing modest pain relief while also harnessing the placebo effect.

"In the past, people have viewed placebos as negative things, (but) they could have some real benefits for patients," Avins says. "I would be hard-pressed to tell a patient who says they're benefiting from something that's 'just a placebo' to stop using it."

http://www.cnn.com/2012/09/11/health/health-acupuncture/

However, science has warmed up to placebo's and here is a discussion on that: http://harvardmagazine.com/2013/01/the-placebo-phenomenon

[AtheistCrusader]

9. I'd be pretty annoyed too, if I thought my profession was a hoax.

Animals may not exhibit placebo effect, but the owners of those same animals might. All they have to do is treat the animal different in some manner.

It would be trivial to design some double-blind studies to test this. Could probably gather some interesting data for human perception flaws.