In my younger, more impressionable days, I tried acupuncture for numerous ailments, ranging from lower back pain to opiate addiction. I reached the conclusion that it’s a load of utter bunk.
I recently came across this article from The World Authority On Everything, Cecil Adams: straightdope.com/columns/rea … eally-work
Sifting through the data, I arrived upon this interesting article: quackwatch.com/01QuackeryRel … s/acu.html
As with most “Chinese medicine”, I scream “nonsensical quackery!”
I’m with you on this 100%, jimi. Unless Chinese medicine is willing to undergo basic scientific testing with double blinds and compare the results to placebos, I’m not spending one NT on it.
Western medicine doesn’t have all the answers, but there is a better guarantee that if a treatment or drug has made it through with FDA approval, it’s going to work better than a placebo.
How cool that they’ve developed needles that can fool patients. I read something about how acupuncture was recently put to the test against fake needles and failed (again). Unfortunately, the proponents of acupuncture tried to claim victory because there was some effect (although no better than a placebo). :aiyo:
I’d do Acupuncture if they let take some placebos first. Otherwise, no way.
I came across a good article in the economist the other day about alternative medicine - 95% of what has been tested is no better than a placebo.
My mom had frozen shoulders when she came to visit Taiwan. My son was born then and she couldn’t even lift a cup of tea from a table. Some one suggested voodoo doll method 3X a week and in the 2nd week, she was raising her arm high enough to stir the pot. She had come from India with her surgery date scheduled, armed with MRIs and all possible reports. Then once they got the the shoulder ball rolling, they put her on conventional physiotherapy of traction, exercises et al. I’ve seen it work!!!
As for other alternative therapies, I do use homeopathy for the kids only, but I know I got my tonsillitis cured (when I was 12) and I mean acute tonsillitis after a 3 month treatment of drinking horrible potions from an Ayurvedic doctor. Are there quacks?? Sure?? Do therapies fail, sure?? Does it mean it’s all placebo??? NO.
What most of you don’t realize, is that what you call ‘alternative’ was mainstream before the advent and spread of allopathic medicine.
Three acupuncture sessions worked pretty well for me a few weeks ago. It was a back thing. Had had it checked out and treated in various other ways before. The acupuncture finally did the trick, for the most part. The back feels 80% better even though my general posture is still pretty lousy and nothing else has changed.
Of course people should be thoughtful about what medical treatments they have. I have plenty of experience throwing money down the drain with various other alternative practitioners (including two who were recommended on Forumosa). And I’ve had acupuncture before for other stuff and it wasn’t that helpful - relaxing but no real long-term benefit. Definitely did the trick this time though.
Anyway, I don’t have time to get into a big discussion - just thought it might be worth mentioning.
Anything that requires you to believe that it works is basically bogus.
Word. There’s not a shred of evidence to support the validity of acupuncture. If you believe in that yin-yang stuff, no doubt it will work. The human mind is a very powerful curative agent.
God, Love, Prayer, Trust, but anyways all technology required you to believe it first. the telephone, T.V., airplane, radars…people had to believe that it works and that’s how they developed. Do planes crash? That doesn’t mean they are unflyables.
Jimi, I am seriously curious, how is your lower back pain?? Gone?
Very kind of you to inquire after my health, Divs. 
I am much better now after surgery.
It’ more that people see that it works through demonstration and experience, and can scrutinize it out for themselves. And if you want to learn the mechanisms behind the technologies, you can do so. That’s why science rules and mysticism is bogosity.
If you look up the database of China Medical University in Taiwan, various faculties have published double blinded randomized clinical trials and a lot of’em are statistically significant, back then TCM theories were developed under case studies, which are widely used among medical publications too. So TCM is definately scientifical, it’s just that the theories were rather abstract camparing to Western med.