Acupuncture

Yes, in short. I think its great. I busted my knee up, broke my other leg and fractured both Pelvis. Needless to say that I get a lot of grief from it all, but I have found acupuncture very helpful. It doesn't work for everyone but its worth a try.

What i find strange is when people tell you that they feel better with acupuncture you all go to Google and try to research websites that give you data to prove that we are wrong and fully believe the data that you read because that's what you want to see.. Try to be a bit more open.

Wow this thread has grown! I'll star at the beginning and see how board I get.

I am open, thank you. Open all hours.

I appoligise for swearing "at you"* but it was the implication of your post was incredibly insulting to me

The 2000 year argument is a terrible one and I think you know that, it proves nothing.

I state that you have to be careful and link to a blog with some good links.

I also link to a WHO review paper and state that there appear to be some situations for which it appear work. I state what is the current general opinion of science at the moment. I never say that it can't ever work. That is the way science works, you go on the weight of evidence.

I also say in many respect it does not matter if it's a placebo, because if causes the desired effect if it's purely mental, if it's almost like through some sort of meditation type effect, it it's whatever it's still good if it effect you in a positive way. Placebo is in a way really the ultimate drug and there is debate in the introduction of placebo tablets to give people, but the problem is the misplacing of trust e.t.c Now is science could find a way to consistently switch on this effect in people brains it would improve so many drugs, and negate the use for many.

Once again I apologizes for swearing, I should not get angry, but due to your incredibly insulting post I can't help but do so.

*At you, in terms of a internet discussion.

I really don't care to argue with you. I doubt you'd find a more cynical, logical and ruthless person on here when it comes to applying science to life. But having experienced back pain, and having exhausted the answers science proposed... acupuncture worked.

You're going to get a fierce response to what you are posting though.

By responding to my response with the "it's a placebo" line, you must clearly hold the view that the pain that I experienced was not real. In fact you're implying that it was invented, that it was in the mind, that I had no physical manifestation of the injury and that there was no physical pain... in effect, I feel that your line is that I am effectively lying about the pain I experienced. Could that be more offensive to me?

No, that's not what I'm saying at all, I apologies if that is how it came across it's problem of no inflection on the internet, not able to evolve the answer when gaining input from you in conversation e.t.c I can understand your anger though if that is what you thought I meant.

It was more of a question of how can you tell that it was not a placebo by definition of what placebo effect is.

From your post there was clear actual damage to your body and actual pain. I wouldn't doubt that.

A placebo is a sham medical intervention intended to lead the recipient to believe that the intervention may improve his/her condition. In one common placebo treatment, a patient is given an inert "sugar pill" and told that the pill may improve his/her condition. The fact that the pill is inert is withheld from the patient. The intervention may cause the patient to believe that the treatment will change his/her condition; this belief sometimes causes the patient's condition to change, a phenomenon known as the placebo effect.

Lots of things can make you feel better. IF it is placebo in many respect it does not matter. How it works does not matter and in many respects placebo is the ultimate in cure. Which I would not say your was or wasn't, only that I am entertaining both possibilities. As I have said I'm not even saying it can't work, just that there is a general consensuses that most of it seems to be placebo, but it's also difficult one to test. Your may very well be one of the cases where it works.

As I state above I also say it may well work in some cases and yours may be one also link to a WHO paper with some case where it is believed to work.

I you miss understand me if you think that I'm saying do didn't feel pain. Please do not think I meant that.

I'll probably get shot down in flames here but, this is how I see it knowing people with difficult to treat ailments:

Western medecine: Very good with fixing mechancal type problems with the human body - say a knee reconstruction. amazing stuff, glad it's all possible.

Eastern/traditional medecine: very good with painfull/annoying ailments in areas western medicine struggles to treat. Example. My dad kept getting styes on his eyelids. 1 after the other. The doctor kept cutting them off. He's had about 5 or so removed, and on the 6th one his doctor said " you know, I've had one guy in here 35 times for this." My dad thought, there must be a better way. He went to see a naturopath, he said my dad's system was acidic and was causing the styes. My dad changed his diet as per the recommendations, hey presto, no more styes.

My mother has arthritis in her spine. The doctor just says take pain killers. She tried everything and in the end a naturopath recommended lifestyle changes - diet and exercise and various natural remedies. The pain is now managable.

If it works for you / your family, however it works that cool.

I think there is a danger as with any simple grouping of doing a Eastern / western medicine. There are cross overs and many parts of "Eastern" medicine have scientific basis, but not all, just because one part eastern way works doesn't mean another is valid.

Even if something is not tested dose not mean it's right or wrong, it just mean it's unknow.

Holding hands and humming while eating a banana, although quite feat to hum and eat is clearly rubbish , other method do have methods behind the madness so to speak.

P.S If anyone really want to read the WHO paper and can't download it PM me.

I have had acupuncture before to treat chronic fatigue and it worked amazingly well.

I'm probably a bit of a middle ground in this argument. 'Western' medicine has made some amazing break throughs, as others above have already described, but I find that modern science does bring its drawbacks in how things are looked at, particularly the 'we can't prove it in tests so it obviously doesn't do anything' aspect which can be all too commonly applied to all manner of things. I can think of any number of native herbal remedies which have been dismissed by 'western' scientists as folklore and mysticism until they actually bothered to look into them and, voila, another new 'drug'. Acupuncture sometimes suffers in a similar way.

I agree with a lot of what hoonz says above. My view of 'western' medicine is that it is amazingly good at treating acute, localised injuries but it tends to run out of options for treating more holistic ailments that cannot easily be nailed down to this gland or that organ. That's where some of the older and more holistic treatments still work better, IMO, because they focus on how the body is working as a whole rather than a series of connected pieces.

Each style of treatment has its advantages and its uses, but I do not believe that modern medicinal techniques and approaches are even close to really understanding how the human body works as a complete entity.

I dont trust the acupuncture here in england i tell you.

Its witchdoctery.

I can think of any number of native herbal remedies which have been dismissed by 'western' scientists as folklore and mysticism until they actually bothered to look into them and, voila, another new 'drug'. Acupuncture sometimes suffers in a similar way.

Think you have badly misunderstood the scientific method here.

Sorry... I dont actually know, I was just stirring the pot, so to speak.

goes off to eat dried bear penis

I dont trust the acupuncture here in england i tell you.

mate, that was a teenager mugger with a knife, not a therapists poking needle in you.

Acupuncture seems a little pointless to me.

some people have whatever therapy they practice dialled, others are shit at what they do, u just got to get the one that works for you....

for me

Acupuncture

Roberts St NW1, there is an old chinese guy there that is awesome man, he know's his shit, visit him, have a chat.

masaage/osteo/chiro

Bow Osteopathy, Roman rd e3 - Darren Chandler is a fucking genius that charges working man's prices

good luck dude

Acupuncture seems a little pointless to me.

well not entirely, there's no definite answer, but so far it's likely that it motivate the body in releasing endorphins*.

*well known as a runner's high, when a runner pushed his body over the theshold, endorphins is release to reduced the pain the runner's suffering when they're pushing their body over it's capacity.

basically like morphine really.

I was having back trouble which my physiotherapist attributed to muscle tightness in my legs. After some sessions of massage, he identified a particularly troublesome area in my left calf and suggested accupuncture. He had a really cute intern there and i didnt want to look scared so i agreed.

On the second session, I felt a large knot release from my left calf. Result.

Acupuncture seems a little pointless to me.

See what you did there!

I'd say CAM is now a lot more careful about grand claims to treat cancer etc, but that wasn't always the case - and there are still some practitioners of some treatments that do a lot of damage by making inflated claims about their efficacy, but let's not get into that.

CAM is very good at treating cyclic conditions, like chronic pain (stuff that gets worse for a while, then gets better for a while). Humans are very good at seeing patterns in random data. Just saying, like. Also, and perhaps more importantly, people seem to frequently misunderstand the words "no better than placebo". That doesn't mean "no clinically significant effect" - it just means "probably not doing what you think it is". The placebo effect is very powerful and useful. If it wasn't for ethical considerations about misleading patients, then it would be used a lot more in "Western" medicine (? Science is not a western enterprise btw, and it's only westerners who believe in "Eastern" medicine that use that term. I'd prefer to use EBM, instead).

Finally - and this is getting a bit tl;dr - but someone mentioned that Chinese remedies are 2000 years' old. Well, willowbark has been used to treat pain for much longer than that. By the 1800's doctors had realised that willowbark extract was the really interesting thing, and by 1850 or so somebody had isolated the active ingredient by reaction with acetyl chloride to form an orally-bioavailable solid, acetylsalicylic acid, or Aspirin. 150 years later and this has given rise to the class of NSAIDs (non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs) that includes ibuprofen. As well as pain management, NSAIDs are useful for lowering fever (Aspirin was used to treat the Spanish Flu pandemic in 1918) and, at least while I was still in science (eyebrows might correct me) they were being investigated for the treatment of neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimers. They don't have to be injected and they don't make you sleepy.

We could also talk about digitalis, which has a very similar history, or the excitingly-named, excitingly-structured and excitingly-discovered Vancomycin, which is about the most powerful antibiotic we still have, and was isolated from a soil sample taken by a missionary from a jungle path in Borneo.

I just think it's easy and lazy to dismiss scientific advances, or take them for granted, without knowing much about what life is like without them (ask someone with arthritis about painkillers, since we're big on personal anecdotes in this thread). And it's easy to romanticise treatments from other parts of the world that may (or may not) have long and mysterious histories, without realising how open-minded science is. All that is required is that a treatment works. There is no "bias" there before the evidence has been sought.

Well said, word for word - well said.

I agree with that too but lucas has referred to acupuncture as mystical bullshit (on another thread). I didn't read that as someone being open-minded and wanting evidence.

My tone was unnecessarily harsh, and many who know me describe me as blunt, abrasive and outspoken. However do not confuse me with someone who will disregard hard evidence because I do not want something to be true. If tomorrow meridians and Qi flows were discovered to exist without a shadow of a doubt, I will change my tune.

I am genuinely glad that those that have used it have had positive results, but I will remain sceptical.

. . . . but acupuncture does engage with mystical bullshit (and openly) - regardless of any genuine efficacy it might derive from real world mechanisms such as endorphin release - or a placebo/nocebo response.

and the fact it's pretty much come from the world of herbal treatment, where you get those story of people using water as a treatment to cancel.

with that connection, it's no surprise people are a little sceptical about acupuncture.

. . . . but acupuncture does engage with mystical bullshit (and openly) - regardless of any genuine efficacy it might derive from real world mechanisms such as endorphin release - or a placebo/nocebo response.

I quite agree. Sums up my sentiments on it quite nicely.