Acu-bunk-ture

[Jack Squat]

There are many placebo-controlled, double-blind studies on acupuncture, both on animals and humans.

For human studies, visit Medscape, the internets largest provider of free, peer-reviewed medical studies (www.medscape.com) and simply search "acupuncture". A good review of the current published medical literature can be found in the study article titled "Acupuncture: A Clinical Review" which comes up when searching acupuncture at Medscape.

There are other websites which publish peer-reviewed medical literature, but they charge to view anything more than the abstracts (PubMed for example).

Research in the U.S. is currently being done thanks to grants from the NIH which finally became available in the mid 1990's. Many difficulties with acupuncture research including the task of making the studies double-blind and placebo-controlled, but after a rocky start in the 1970's, the field has produced solid research. There is a speciality for physicians called "medical acupuncture" and they have their own peer-reviewed journal which publishes evidence-based clinical papers and research findings. The journal is called The Journal of the American Academy of Medical Acupuncture. Google it and I'm sure you will find more information.

Hope this helps all involved...

Jack

[GeneChing]

I don't make the news. I just report it.

19 January 2016
Acupuncture for Menopausal Hot Flashes: A Randomized Trial
Carolyn Ee, MBBS; Charlie Xue, PhD; Patty Chondros, PhD; Stephen P. Myers, PhD; Simon D. French, PhD; Helena Teede, PhD; and Marie Pirotta, PhD

Background: Hot flashes (HFs) affect up to 75% of menopausal women and pose a considerable health and financial burden. Evidence of acupuncture efficacy as an HF treatment is conflicting.

Objective: To assess the efficacy of Chinese medicine acupuncture against sham acupuncture for menopausal HFs.

Design: Stratified, blind (participants, outcome assessors, and investigators, but not treating acupuncturists), parallel, randomized, sham-controlled trial with equal allocation. (Australia New Zealand Clinical Trials Registry: ACTRN12611000393954)

Setting: Community in Australia.

Participants: Women older than 40 years in the late menopausal transition or postmenopause with at least 7 moderate HFs daily, meeting criteria for Chinese medicine diagnosis of kidney yin deficiency.

Interventions: 10 treatments over 8 weeks of either standardized Chinese medicine needle acupuncture designed to treat kidney yin deficiency or noninsertive sham acupuncture.

Measurements: The primary outcome was HF score at the end of treatment. Secondary outcomes included quality of life, anxiety, depression, and adverse events. Participants were assessed at 4 weeks, the end of treatment, and then 3 and 6 months after the end of treatment. Intention-to-treat analysis was conducted with linear mixed-effects models.

Results: 327 women were randomly assigned to acupuncture (n = 163) or sham acupuncture (n = 164). At the end of treatment, 16% of participants in the acupuncture group and 13% in the sham group were lost to follow-up. Mean HF scores at the end of treatment were 15.36 in the acupuncture group and 15.04 in the sham group (mean difference, 0.33 [95% CI, −1.87 to 2.52]; P = 0.77). No serious adverse events were reported.

Limitation: Participants were predominantly Caucasian and did not have breast cancer or surgical menopause.

Conclusion: Chinese medicine acupuncture was not superior to noninsertive sham acupuncture for women with moderately severe menopausal HFs.

Primary Funding Source: National Health and Medical Research Council.

[herb ox]

I don't make the news. I just report it.

Well, of course I was interested in this study. Unfortunately the outcome measurements given in the abstract are essentially meaningless given they have no context outside the article itself other than to show there was no statistically significant difference between the two groups.

Verum (i.e. "real") acupuncture vs "sham acupuncture" is a poor measure of efficacy as "sham" acupuncture is not physiologically inert. Moreover, there is no "non-treatment" or "conventional treatment" control group to compare the outcomes to.

What most "sham" controlled studies find is that verum acupuncture and sham acupuncture both bring improvement in symptoms, often significantly, when compared to non-intervention groups or conventional treatment groups.

The popular media jumps on this and says "acupuncture no better than a sham" (which raises my hackles) - but really it is not a correct conclusion especially when it is based on a crappily written abstract that gives insufficient information to base an educated opinion upon. No news article I have read on this study actually goes into the details of the study which implies poor reporting based upon the abstract alone or simply parroting other news articles that are saying the same thing....

[GeneChing]

This might have nothing to do with acupuncture. Maybe it was a Kiss of the Dragon assassin who just missed his mark.

Oh wait...that would still fall under acupuncture.

Pain in the neck: doctors find Chinese man’s aches and numbness caused by needles inside his body
PUBLISHED : Friday, 11 March, 2016, 4:17pm
UPDATED : Saturday, 12 March, 2016, 4:42pm
Kathy Gao kathy.gao@scmp.com


The two needles found inside a Chinese man's body (left), which were spotted after a scan carried out in hospital. Photos: Chutian Metropolis Daily

Doctors examined a Chinese man suffering from neck aches and numbness in his hands found he had two needles stuck inside his body, mainland media reports.

Surgeons have since removed the needles, which appeared to be moving around near to the abdomen of the man from Wuhan, the capital city of Hubei province, Chutian Metropolis Daily reported on Friday.

Both needles had already started to corrode, which led doctors to believe that they had probably been inside his body for the past two years.

The discovery was made after the man, identified in the report only by his family name, Wu, was given a computer scan at a hospital after complaining of pains in his neck and numbness in his hands.

Wu, 43, said he had no idea how the needles had come to be stuck inside his body.

One needle, which was 2cm long, was removed from close to his abdominal cavity. The other needle, which was more than 5cm long, was found inside the abdominal cavity.

Examinations carried out on two different occasions also revealed that the positions of the needles had changed, suggesting that the needles had been moving inside his body, the report said.

Doctors at the Hubei Provincial Hospital of Traditional Chinese Medicine were able to remove both needles using minimally invasive surgery.

[herb ox]

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This could be the death blow to acupuncturists around the world!



And I love the stock photography for "Safety is top priority" - looks like it should be used for birth control or something.

[SoCo KungFu]

Verum (i.e. "real") acupuncture vs "sham acupuncture" is a poor measure of efficacy as "sham" acupuncture is not physiologically inert.

It doesn't need to be, this is a ludicrous assumption

Moreover, there is no "non-treatment" or "conventional treatment" control group to compare the outcomes to.

There are many ways to control.

What most "sham" controlled studies find is that verum acupuncture and sham acupuncture both bring improvement in symptoms, often significantly, when compared to non-intervention groups or conventional treatment groups.

I see you still don't know how to interpret an effect size...

The popular media jumps on this and says "acupuncture no better than a sham" (which raises my hackles) - but really it is not a correct conclusion especially when it is based on a crappily written abstract that gives insufficient information to base an educated opinion upon. No news article I have read on this study actually goes into the details of the study which implies poor reporting based upon the abstract alone or simply parroting other news articles that are saying the same thing....

You, complaining about people stopping at the abstract? Ohhhh there's some irony....

[herb ox]

You again? Obviously you have time to kill SoCoKungFu

Enjoy arguing with the wind, Sir.

[Mor Sao]

Way too many sissies and girly men seem to think we want to listen to their hysterical *****ing and moaning.

[Jimbo]

My first experience with acupuncture was 12 years ago when I was suffering from a serious case of tendinitis in my right elbow (tennis/pitcher's elbow?). I had it for weeks, and was so serious I could barely put on and take off a shirt by myself without difficulty. I did NOT want to get a cortisone shot for it, and suffered until a friend of mine was visiting back in town. He's an experienced acupuncturist and always takes his needles/kit wherever he goes. He gave me a general assessment by asking various questions. Then he had me lie on the floor and put the needles wherever he put them, and had me lay there for about 45 minutes. Then he took them out, had me stand up and that was that. Although I always believed in the possibility of acupuncture, I felt no different when I stood up, so I thought, "Well, I guess that didn't work."

Next morning when I woke up, I tried moving my elbow and it was totally healed! And it never came back. Now, someone might say it's all bunk, or a placebo effect. To that I say BS. It couldn't have been a placebo effect, because I already half-believed it wouldn't help my situation. And I didn't care either way; it worked, and that's all I care about. Since then, I occasionally will get acupuncture if I start feeling tendinitis in my wrists or hands (I'm a professional massage therapist). Usually it takes one or two treatments to go away; sometimes more, but not often.

That friend who treated my elbow tendinitis was one of the first graduates of Pacific College of Oriental Medicine (PCOM), which is a school with extremely high standards. I also know others who are graduates of PCOM or are in the program right now. The acupuncturists I occasionally see now are all PCOM alumni.

BTW, my friend who treated me that time did it for free.

Former PKA world kickboxing champion Bill "Superfoot" Wallace said he thought acupuncture was a bunch of nonsense until he suffered an injury to his left leg in the early 1970s. He kicked almost exclusively with that left leg, due to a serious judo injury to his right knee years earlier. He was told by doctors he would never kick with that left leg again. Elvis brought in an acupuncturist to work on Wallace. Wallace claimed he felt energy moving immediately, and eventually he completely regained his ability to kick with his left leg. He said he didn't understand how it worked, but he's a believer now.

[GeneChing]

Actually, this is totally OT. I only post it here because there are needles. And it's one of those stories that needs to be shared on this forum.

After shoving 15 needles up his pee hole over past year, man finally forced to seek medical help
BY ALEX LINDER IN NEWS ON JUN 23, 2017 10:50 PM

[IMG]http://shanghaiist.com/attachments/alexlinder/needle_*****.jpg[/IMG]

Recently, a man arrived at a hospital in Shenyang, Liaoning province to receive treatment after sticking more than a dozen needles up his urethra.
The man, in his thirties, had been shoving sewing needles inside his ***** for the past year, the victim of some extremely undesirable mental disorder. Eventually, he couldn't take the pain any longer and was forced to seek medical help. Doctors successfully removed 15 needles from his urinary tract, some of which had already begun to rust.

[IMG]http://shanghaiist.com/attachments/alexlinder/needle_*****2.jpg[/IMG]

One of the doctors who performed the operation on the man urged those with friends and family members who practiced similar "unusual hobbies" to help seek out medical attention as soon as possible -- rather than wait around until they've shoved over a dozen needles up their pee hole.
[Images via Pear Video]

The links won't work because our forum censors *****, but I'm sure you can figure out what that is.