The reliability of TCM (traditional chinese medicine)

[Cairber]

I know a lot of people who swear by Pulsatilla (? sp maybe) to turn a breech baby, but, in my opinion, it just so happens to work because they get later into their pregnancy and the babe turns head down naturally as most do.

I feel the same way about moxibustion, which supposedly has the same effective of getting a breech baby to turn. Though I admit I considered it when I got to 36 weeks and my last baby flipped head up But she turned back head down after I spent the day hanging out with my hips higher than my head.

[Cairber]

Oh, and this is the study most people raving about moxibustion use when talking about the procedure:

study link

[Melchior]

If your in a nice place with nice people who cater to to every whim you will come out feeling better, the fact that your there to have needles jamed into you is meaningless when you consider how they present it.

I do not think that it works because the patient is scared of the needles, the placebo effect doesn't work that way. It could be that the patient is more convinced than usual of the effectiveness of the treatment because of the atmosphere and the strange implements.

[PainRack]

Of course, if you haven't an effective remedy the placebo effect is better than nothing... but these days we do have effective remedies.

The possibility is that accupuncture may work not because of needles poking accupoints and the like, but rather, because of sensory stimulus on the body .Its may be similar to how one uses bio-feedback and other alternatives such as the "gate" theory to control pain.
Once the science figures it out, we probably be reduced to people just poking at you with blunt sticks at random spots all over.

If you ever been to a place when acupuntcutre is preformed it can best be described as a "spa like atomsphere", very nice people, strong (But not bad) smells such as flower scented candles, insesne and very conformable padded tables.

I been in a place which offers accupuncture. Not to mention that electric thingy they use to rehab stroke patients. Let just say that the only thing pleasant was that the nurses attending to you aren't as haggard as other nurses in other places because rehab patients don't offer as much a workload and are stable. Although that compounded by the existence of the renal patients on the other side......

[Majin Gojira]

My concept of Chinese Traditional Medicine stems from this: the use of fossilized bones in traditional cures as "Dragons Bones" when it is nothing more than injesting silicate.

And destroying fossils.

[Alyrium Denryle]

You still have to ignore the part that says there's no measurable difference between the sham and "real" acupuncture. It might indeed help lower back pain, (even if only as a placebo) but it can't be claimed it was necessarily due to Chinese ingenuity in medicine when sticking the needles anywhere produces the exact same result.

Well then, I'm glad I never ignored the part where they said real acupuncture was no different from fake acupuncture.

Though I will say that in a round about way ancient Chinese ingenuity is responsible. Because if it is a placebo affect, then thousands of years of tradition would only strengthen it's effect. And if there really is something to it, then they found that jabbing needles into people made them feel better, even if their theories as to the best stabbing locations were wrong and unnecessary. And their discovery led to current research in the area.

Alright, here is the deal.

The back is one of those nasty things, it is poorly constructed and most people have bad posture. This leads to chronic back pain. Excercise is n ot usually done correctly, and the impact can lead tom further back pain. Drugs and physical therapy only help you cope with pain.

What does acupuncture, real or fake do? It releases endorphins.

Think about it. You lare laid down comfortably, you relax, you take weight off your spine, then someone you are conditioned to trust begins making physical contact with you. Physical contact is a good way to reduce pain though the placebo effect. Then you get poked with needles. The needles are small and dont do much more than tickle, which further releases endorphins. If they are slightly painful, your body releases more.

Your body IIRC does not release endorphins with chronic pain.

This is just mechanistic conjecture mind...

[Darth Wong]

Disclaimer: I myself have never had any kind of acupuncture. My wife Rebecca, on the other hand, started having it done occasionally, a few years ago, when she was suffering from chronic fatigue syndrome that sometimes left her too weak to stand (to which the doctors' recommended therapy was "Your blood tests show that there's nothing wrong with you"). She claims it helps dramatically, and I don't particularly care whether it's real or placebo as long as it makes her feel better.

With that out of the way, the National Institute of Health in the US says that the jury is basically out on acupuncture, which is not surprising since it's a rather difficult subject to perform decent controlled studies on. For one thing, even if we adopt the hypothesis that acupuncture is real, there is no effective licensing scheme for practitioners; there are people who have literally taken one-week "vacation resort" training courses and then hung up an "acupuncturist" sign. That makes a controlled large-scale study virtually impossible, because the field itself is not controlled.

[mr friendly guy]

Well traditional herbs Artemisia annua had some effect for malaria. So we ended up using it to mass produce anti-malaria drugs. And yeah I am too lazy to search for other sites than wiki. Unless the herb costs markedly cheaper than the drug, I would say the advantage lies with the drug.

Alyrium Denryle and Painrack has touched on some of the hypothesis for acupuncture. Basically the two I have heard are

a) it releases endorphins

b) the gate theory of pain - essentially pain impulses and non pain impulses say light touch compete along the same nerve fibers. Thus theoretically one could reduce pain by simply flooding the patient with non painful stimuli, so that less pain signals reach the brain. This is a similar to the way we might rub our arm or leg when we get injured. Acupuncture needles are generally very fine, thus they don't particularly hurt when you are pricked, but you will feel the touch stimuli.

From Zod's article it seems sticking needles into people help (could be placebo), although the gate theory would explain why sham and real acupuncture does better than standard pain relief treatment.

Also I have to add that the controversial TENS machine which uses electrical stimulation shares some similarities to accupuncture in the sense that IIRC the frequency of the electrical pulses were supposed to mimick those schools of acupuncture which also twirls the needles.

[Civil War Man]

Disclaimer: I myself have never had any kind of acupuncture. My wife Rebecca, on the other hand, started having it done occasionally, a few years ago, when she was suffering from chronic fatigue syndrome that sometimes left her too weak to stand (to which the doctors' recommended therapy was "Your blood tests show that there's nothing wrong with you"). She claims it helps dramatically, and I don't particularly care whether it's real or placebo as long as it makes her feel better.

I don't know whether she's going through with it, but my grandmother is considering acupuncture for back pain, since any exercise that would help would run too much of a risk of injuring her, and she's old and doesn't want to deal with surgery and the following therapy (probably thinking "I'd probably be dead by the time I'm feeling better").

Her attitude, as well as mine, is that even admitting it's a placebo effect, it's better to trick yourself into feeling okay if your other option is having to deal with constant pain.

[mr friendly guy]

Just a few more thoughts.

If we speculate that accupuncture / sham accupuncture has effects from endorphins, then one way to test it (although most probably unethical) is to give the patient opiod antagonists, eg naltrexone. We should expect accupuncture to lose its pain relieving properties then. I am unsure as to whether this has been done.

The other comment I would like to make is that from Zod's article, it must have been a good placebo effect, since they compared it an establish treatment. Generally establish treatments are better than placebo, heck unless its loooong established by practice (ie we don't bother to test it any more), an establish treatment tends to be compared to a placebo and been proven superior. From the comments of the article's author they seemed to think maybe sticking needles in anywhere and not to a particular depth may do the trick.

[Twoyboy]

Just a few more thoughts.

If we speculate that accupuncture / sham accupuncture has effects from endorphins, then one way to test it (although most probably unethical) is to give the patient opiod antagonists, eg naltrexone. We should expect accupuncture to lose its pain relieving properties then. I am unsure as to whether this has been done.

I read a newspaper article once about this kind of test with other placebos, and it worked the same as it would have with normal drugs, ie what would have prevented the real effect prevented the placebo too. Thus, this test wouldn't work. Like I said though, this is just what I read in a newspaper, someone might be able to shed more light on this effect.

The other comment I would like to make is that from Zod's article, it must have been a good placebo effect, since they compared it an establish treatment. Generally establish treatments are better than placebo, heck unless its loooong established by practice (ie we don't bother to test it any more), an establish treatment tends to be compared to a placebo and been proven superior. From the comments of the article's author they seemed to think maybe sticking needles in anywhere and not to a particular depth may do the trick.

It would seem to show that the conventional treatment is either a) also a placebo, just not as good a placebo or b) has a small effect and the nature of the treatment stops the placebo effect working (due to people's expectation that it won't work, etc).