New study exposes acupuncture as pseudoscience

[Dusty Bake Activate]

Placebo effect

http://www.sfgate.com/technology/bu...oses-Acupuncture-As-Pseudoscience-5094637.php

Acupuncture has been practiced for thousands of years — but that doesn't mean it actually works.
A new study published online in the journal Cancer suggests that any relief acupuncture brings may be the result of a placebo effect.

Researchers followed a group of 47 women being treated with aromatase inhibitors, a breast cancer medication that can cause menopause-like side effects (hot flashes, night sweats) as well as joint and muscle pain. Twenty-three of the women received eight weeks of acupuncture; the rest received eight weeks of something called "sham acupuncture," where needles are placed on the skin somewhat randomly — not at traditional acupuncture points — and then not actually inserted.

The result? All of the patients reported that their side effects had improved, especially the severity of their hot flashes.

The power of the placebo
There was no significant difference between the group that had received real acupuncture and the group that had received "sham acupuncture." So why the improvement in both?

"You could conclude," study author Ting Bao of the University of Maryland, Baltimore told HealthDay, "that it's a placebo effect."

Traditional Chinese Medicine practitioners explain acupuncture as a way to rebalance the energy, or "qi," that flows through specific pathways in the body by applying needles to designated points along these pathways.

"Sham acupuncture" is notoriously difficult to design. Unlike a sugar pill given in place of a real medicine, it's more complicated to convince patients that they are actually undergoing acupuncture without doing anything that might affect them physically. The authors of the new study caution that even fake acupuncture might yield some unknown physical effect.

While some studies show a "possible positive effect" when acupuncture is used to treat conditions like lower back pain and menstrual cramps, most research on acupuncture is inconclusive. Still, while there's no evidence that energy flows are involved, a placebo effect is not the same as no effect.

Steve Silberman, in an investigation for Wired, documented how the mind can be so powerful that promising drugs end up looking ineffective when they're stacked up against placebo pills.

And that's not necessarily a bad thing. All of the patients in the new Cancer study reported that their symptoms had improved, so the takeaway is not necessarily that acupuncture is worthless — it's that the power of the mind to mediate physical symptoms is anything but imaginary.

As Bao told The New York Times, if you think acupuncture could help you and you're not foregoing conventional treatments, there's no real harm in giving it a try: “It has a minimal risk and potentially significant benefits.”

Spoiler

@LeyeT

 

[Spoonz]

no it's real my uncle used to have severe back pain but that acupuncture shyt helped, he got no more back pain.

 

[Dusty Bake Activate]

no it's real my uncle used to have severe back pain but that acupuncture shyt helped, he got no more back pain.

The study says it can be beneficial, but it's a placebo effect, and the science behind it isn't real,

 

[ExodusNirvana]

If it didn't work for the people in that study, I assure you they probably got treatment from a shytty practitioner.

I have personally gotten treatments for both hamstrings, a fukked up collarbone injury and recently for my right knee where I currently have a sprained ligament.

Acupuncture doesn't "cure" anything the same way cough syrup doesn't cure you of the common cold.

Be careful what western medicine deems hogwash. The western world of medicine has been infiltrated by big pharma and it's interests long ago...and I'm not even on some "liquid life energy" shyt like Leyet but it's helped me.

If you been shot...all the acupuncture in the world will not help you, you should probably go to the ER. If you've gotten out of surgery and the arm still hurts and you need something to help alleviate the pain, THAT'S where acupuncture comes in.

 

[Brosef]

You posted a useless article...there are thousands of studies on acupuncture and you just posted one of them

In general there's no science behind it, most studies show no difference between it and placebo

There IS evidence for it in rare cases, for example short term relief of low back pain like one of the guys above said

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/...ionid=A821476A060BDA2ADD15C2E9F0EDF3E2.f04t04

 

[thekingsmen]

Key sentence here..where needles are placed on the skin somewhat randomly — not at traditional acupuncture points — and then not actually inserted.

Flawed article. It's saying it doesn't work because they actually didn't even use it right and alot of cases at all.

 

[Ego Noir]

I actually did acupuncture for physical therapy after a car accident.

terrible terribly worthless stuff.

 

[Dusty Bake Activate]

You posted a useless article...there are thousands of studies on acupuncture and you just posted one of them

In general there's no science behind it, most studies show no difference between it and placebo

There IS evidence for it in rare cases, for example short term relief of low back pain like one of the guys above said

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/...ionid=A821476A060BDA2ADD15C2E9F0EDF3E2.f04t04

So you said the article is useless than proceed to claim the exact conclusion of the article?

 

[Dusty Bake Activate]

Key sentence here..where needles are placed on the skin somewhat randomly — not at traditional acupuncture points — and then not actually inserted.

Flawed article. It's saying it doesn't work because they actually didn't even use it right and alot of cases at all.

My god your idiocy knows no depths.

You just described the "sham" treatment used for a side-by-side comparison with real acupuncture.

How can your reading comprehension be this poor????? @88m3 @Serious

 

[thekingsmen]

Want the night-sweats and hot-flashes to go away...take them off the medication. Try another way to treat the other issues.

 

[88m3]

My god your idiocy knows no depths.

You just described the "sham" treatment used for a side-by-side comparison with real acupuncture.

How can your reading comprehension be this poor????? @88m3 @Serious

It's sad really, I don't even engage him anymore. The guy is a complete imbecile. He clearly can't read, and more than likely has some serious psychological/ learning disabilities.

@LeyeT is just woefully ignorant. You've got a grown man who believes in things children don't even believe in.

 

[Julius Skrrvin]

If it didn't work for the people in that study, I assure you they probably got treatment from a shytty practitioner.

I have personally gotten treatments for both hamstrings, a fukked up collarbone injury and recently for my right knee where I currently have a sprained ligament.

Acupuncture doesn't "cure" anything the same way cough syrup doesn't cure you of the common cold.

Be careful what western medicine deems hogwash. The western world of medicine has been infiltrated by big pharma and it's interests long ago...and I'm not even on some "liquid life energy" shyt like Leyet but it's helped me.

If you been shot...all the acupuncture in the world will not help you, you should probably go to the ER. If you've gotten out of surgery and the arm still hurts and you need something to help alleviate the pain, THAT'S where acupuncture comes in.

Yeah. I won't lie, ive had help from acupressure and tuina . Was it placebo? Who knows, but it seemingly helped.

 

[88m3]

Yeah. I won't lie, ive had help from acupressure and tuina . Was it placebo? Who knows, but it seemingly helped.

roasting my own coffee beans on my roof reset my spine, breh

 

[Field Marshall Bradley]

Got an uncle that don't believe in hardly nothing...Did 11 years on a drug case.......nikka in his 50 having back problems and says the only thing that begins to help is that "lil asian man with them needles"

My uncle testimony>>>>than this study.......

 

[Brosef]

So you said the article is useless than proceed to claim the exact conclusion of the article?

no you simple muhfukka there's different levels of evidence in science

the article you posted means next to nothing (case-control study)

you posting 50 articles with the same conclusion holds more weight

1 article doing a rigorous review of those 50 articles holds the most possible weight

the article I posted is from the highest possible level of evidence (systematic review), so it's conclusion can actually be useful

see this tower

the shyt nikkas are posting like "this worked for my uncle" or my brother etc is so meaningless that it's not even on here.