Is acupuncture a sham?

Razz, I get your point. But since the topic is acupuncture I will not comment on active release technique or sauna stick hitting, since that would be avoiding the main issue. Namely that it doesn't seem to matter where you stick the needles, whether you stick them in deeply or twirl them, or whether you stick them in at all.

Maybe it's the ritual that gives people the illusion of its efficacy.

Luckily the burden of proof is always on the person making positive truth claims.

This will be my last post on this topic as I think I have made myself very clear. Back to geeking out about training.

Namely that it doesn't seem to matter where you stick the needles, whether you stick them in deeply or twirl them, or whether you stick them in at all.

Maybe it's the ritual that gives people the illusion of its efficacy.

I don't know if i understand you (because of my english level), but it really does matter where you put the needle. You can't feel nothing or see the stars of pain when touches the nerve (or whatever it touches) and it has to touch that in order to relieve pain.

I'm not talking about rituals, i'm talking of physioterapy (not Chinese medicine, although the origin of it it's from there) and the use of needles on muscles to relieve muscle pains, nor to uses needles on ears to quit smoking which i'm very sceptical about that. I was greatly surprised of the effect. I'm biochemist, so i am a science man, i don't belive in things about auras or spirits or rituals.

There were somethings that my sceptical science mind didn't belive at first, and those were trigger point therapy (six months of treatment with drugs couldnt be as beneficial as a few sessions of preassure on my lower back, the needles (in fact is one needle on one point) and TENS (which also works great).

I'm also surprised how someone can google for an article and say that this is the truth because i found that on pubmed. Scientific articles are not meant for ordinary people are meant for scientist that can apply the knowlege of the others, judging the experiments or view if the procedure lacks or rigor or if it's genial. Also nobody says in which magazine is done public which is also important, and if it's done, you don't know the credibility or prestige of it in the sciencific world.

trianglechoke7 said:

The Hansenator said:

trianglechoke7 said:

Depends. Don't you think? Can't you imagine any circumstance in which the conclusions you draw from your personal experience could be mistaken?

Here's an example: Acupuncture made my pain go away. My wrist hurt and, after getting acupuncture, it didn't hurt. When someone says that acupuncture doesn't work, that doesn't change the fact that my wrist doesn't hurt anymore.

I'll give you another example: Eye exercises are generally laughed at by the medical community but, in my experience, there's something to it. I don't have any research to prove it but I can see things without my glasses that I couldn't before and no amount of medical evidence to the contrary will change the fact that my prescription is weaker than it used to be.

You completely dodged my question.

I apologize, I didn't intend to.

I suppose you're right. Someone could think they see something or hear something when they're actually hallucinating. In the case of acupuncture though, if it reduces someone's symptoms, how can I tell them it didn't work?

If something works for me, placebo or not, when trying to obtain a goal; I will definitely use it.

If I am a sprinter who runs the 100 meter dash a whole second faster after sitting in a completely dark room for a few minutes before a race, do I need science to explain it? I would rather just use it.

The more scientific you become the less placebos work for you. Do you remember when you were a baby? I bet a kiss fixed all of your "bobos" and "booboos."

Being susceptible to the placebo effect just makes you easier to fix. If it takes believing in sunshine and fairies for this to happen, why not?

gymgreg said:

Razz, I get your point. But since the topic is acupuncture I will not comment on active release technique or sauna stick hitting, since that would be avoiding the main issue. Namely that it doesn't seem to matter where you stick the needles, whether you stick them in deeply or twirl them, or whether you stick them in at all.

Maybe it's the ritual that gives people the illusion of its efficacy.

Luckily the burden of proof is always on the person making positive truth claims.

This will be my last post on this topic as I think I have made myself very clear. Back to geeking out about training.

So it's only on this topic you don't want to believe in anecdotal evidence? It sounded like you didn't believe in it AT ALL.

Razz said:

No offence taken here at least, I was hoping to convince you that anecdotal evidence can be a powerful tool in winning the race to becoming the best athlete/coach/whatever. Many times anecdotal evidence is way ahead of science. Many times it's the opposite. Do you have any evidence that going in the sauna and hitting each others with sticks help recovery? Maybe not but certainly it has helped the russians many times. What do you think came first, science or anecdotal evidence on hot/cold showers? I know many cultures have been using this to their advantage way before science researched this stuff. Hope you get my point here

There's a major flaw in your thinking, Razz. You say even in the absence of evidence that saunas helped many Russians. But how do you know that going into the sauna helped the Russians recovery? Surely the Russians did many different things for recovery such as eat food, or sleep or whatever else. They might not of kept those things constant all the time and confused their recovery from better application of food, sleep, or something else with effects of the sauna. Also, it's possible that the sauna reduced PERCEIVED exhaustion but did not result in any actual performance benefit, and therefore they confused perceived benefit with actual performance. Perhaps the Russians were deceived by selective perception bias? Or maybe the cognitive bias illusory correlation causes a misstep in their thinking - that is, they looked for instances in which they had good recovery and did the sauna but ignored all the times they had bad recovery and did the sauna? Why would they do that? Perhaps because the sauna made them feel good which primed them to look for the confirmation of the hypothesis in only one direction.

The Hansenator said:

I apologize, I didn't intend to.

I suppose you're right. Someone could think they see something or hear something when they're actually hallucinating. In the case of acupuncture though, if it reduces someone's symptoms, how can I tell them it didn't work?

There are people who see reductions in symptoms after acupuncture for a multitude of conditions. What do you think is more likely - that a single treatment cures dozens or hundreds of totally different conditions with totally unrelated causes, or that a lot of people, for some reason, are confusing correlation with causation? The former is implausible, whereas the latter is a scientifically validated, common psychological phenomena. If other people are confusing correlation with causation, what makes you think that your perceptions are more likely to be accurate than theirs?

Very good argument Triangle, I put it out there as one thing mainly because if it didn't work, I believe they would've found something else. Of course there is a large chance of this being affected by some kind of bias. Then again even if it made them 'feel good' that may be enough to improve recovery/performance but that's a completely different topic. My point is you can't ignore anecdotal evidence completely.

Razz said:

Very good argument Triangle, I put it out there as one thing mainly because if it didn't work, I believe they would've found something else. Of course there is a large chance of this being affected by some kind of bias. Then again even if it made them 'feel good' that may be enough to improve recovery/performance but that's a completely different topic. My point is you can't ignore anecdotal evidence completely.

Anecdote is what you use in the meantime to fill in the blanks where science has yet to tread (within reason), and something that scientists can use for coming up with things to study.

But the thing is, Gregor and I are saying that acupuncture isn't a blank - it's bunk.

We agree then, about the anecdotal evidence

Oh well, another "last" post.

trianglechoke7 said:

Anecdote is what you use in the meantime to fill in the blanks (within reason), and something that scientists can use for coming up with things to study.

But the thing is, Gregor and I are saying that acupuncture isn't a blank - it's bunk.

+1 to that.

They may be a starting point, but are in no way something to rely on and draw conclusions.

Razz said:

My point is you can't ignore anecdotal evidence completely.

But you have to be able to let go when a treatment is shown to not be the cause of the "making me feel better" and look into what the actual cause of this is.

Serotonin, what I mean by saying that is, that randomized double blinded controlled studies have shown that acupuncture does not work better than sham acupuncture or even not penetrating the skin.

One of the many pitfalls of acupuncture is the lacking definition of what it is. Some say it's the traditional way, some say it doesn't matter were you put the needles and as was shown, you don't even have to use a needle.

The whole thing is a swamp of logical fallacies and cognitive biases. Like Naturalistic fallacy, Appeal to tradition or Argument from authority.

gymgreg said:

But you have to be able to let go when a treatment is shown to not be the cause of the "making me feel better" and look into what the actual cause of this is.

Sure I wasn't talking about acupuncture in my previous posts, just had to point out that anecdotal evidence shouldn't be ignored as it sounded like you were saying it should always be ignored but that may just have been my misinterpretation.

Now for some humor....

trianglechoke7 said:

There are people who see reductions in symptoms after acupuncture for a multitude of conditions. What do you think is more likely - that a single treatment cures dozens or hundreds of totally different conditions with totally unrelated causes, or that a lot of people, for some reason, are confusing correlation with causation? The former is implausible, whereas the latter is a scientifically validated, common psychological phenomena. If other people are confusing correlation with causation, what makes you think that your perceptions are more likely to be accurate than theirs?

I see what you're saying but I still think anecdotal evidence is worth looking at, especially if there's a lot of it. Science is great but it hasn't explained everything yet. If it had, all the scientists in the world would no longer have anything left to do.

Well may be is a sham, but what i felt after the needles was a something i've never felt in my life, like DOMS pain for one day all around the area treated that i can asure that the body knows that you have been pricked (no placebo or imagination). That for just a few seconds with just one needle. And it has nothing to do with the needle, i'm blood donor and the feel is nothing the same. If this can kill pain, well i don't know but that the body knows that something happened, i can assure that.

I understand that you don't belive in some therapys but after the trigger point treatment i had with just pressure on some points and how my pain went away, i changed some of my previous conceptions about what works for pain treatement. I went 6 months of doctors that the only solution to my hernia is paracetamol, TENS and infrared (oh! and of course surgery). Why they didn't send me to a physioterapy to relive my muscular pain, well, because they know how to relive pain with drugs, but don't study how to do it without them. Physioterapists study how to treat pain without drugs, and have another weapons to work against pain. And they have found that needles can be one of them as the pressure on trigger points.

serotonin said:

Well may be is a sham, but what i felt after the needles was a something i've never felt in my life, like DOMS pain for one day all around the area treated that i can asure that the body knows that you have been pricked (no placebo or imagination).

They've done studies where "real" acupuncture was compared to "fake" where no needle was inserted and there aren't differences in outcome.

Ha, ha, I can assure you that you know when the needle touches your motor neuron because you feel an electrical pain (the type of pain that you feel when you hit your nerve elbow) that can't be imagined. I don't know which studies and what type of acupuncture was studied, but exciting the motor neuron is something you can't imagine.

Acupuncture, like acupressure and chiropractics can be hit and miss. Same thing with physical therapy. If very much depends on finding a good practitioner and that may take some leg work. Some could be quacks, some aren't. Nothing is 100% in life.