Using acupuncture for facial “rejuvination” seems completely silly to me. This is merely people trying to capitalize on the CAM fad through people’s vanity. We agree there. However, I am undecided on acupuncture as a CAM treatment for other conditions.

These are the reasons I’m undecided and will continue to wait for more studies:

1. There is evidence that it may not be effective compared to similarly designed placebos.
2. It likely doesn’t work from the mechanism originally thought. (No big surprise there. New science usually bests older untested theory.)
3. There are some studies that have shown it works better than a non-sham-acupuncture placebo, and occasionally there is a study showing it works better than conventional medicine.
4. Much much more study is needed. It needs to be double blind and placebo controlled. Placebos should themselves be inert. (If one placebo gives a clinically significant positive result as compared to another placebo or traditional medication, that is evidence that the placebo is not inert and therefore not producing a “placebo effect.”)

I also want to know why you have ignored the information from the NIH that one user posted. Surely, this is a legitimate source.

The jury is still out on acupuncture, and I’m not ready to dismiss it completely. I do believe there MAY be some legitimate uses for acupuncture, but it may be years before we know for sure. In the meantime, as long as you use a qualified practitioner who uses fresh needles every time and don’t have any contraindications (there are a couple), acupuncture is perfectly safe to use in addition to conventional treatment or after all conventional options have been exhausted. (Personally, I would not use any alternative treatment INSTEAD of conventional medicine, but that’s just me.)

More studies need to be done, older studies need to be replicated, and there needs to be a way to design better sham acupuncture techniques, which is a problem when trying to design placebos for these studies. Even the NIH has said that there are difficulties in using sham acupuncture as a placebo. I am posting the conclusion from the NIH consensus statement on acupuncture below. Follow this link to find more information about research techniques and sham acupuncture: http://consensus.nih.gov/1997/1997Acupuncture107html.htm

NIH Consensus Statement:

Conclusions

Acupuncture as a therapeutic intervention is widely practiced in the United States. There have been many studies of its potential usefulness. However, many of these studies provide equivocal results because of design, sample size, and other factors. The issue is further complicated by inherent difficulties in the use of appropriate controls, such as placebo and sham acupuncture groups.

However, promising results have emerged, for example, efficacy of acupuncture in adult post-operative and chemotherapy nausea and vomiting and in postoperative dental pain. There are other situations such as addiction, stroke rehabilitation, headache, menstrual cramps, tennis elbow, fibromyalgia, myofascial pain, osteoarthritis, low back pain, carpal tunnel syndrome, and asthma for which acupuncture may be useful as an adjunct treatment or an acceptable alternative or be included in a comprehensive management program. Further research is likely to uncover additional areas where acupuncture interventions will be useful.

Findings from basic research have begun to elucidate the mechanisms of action of acupuncture, including the release of opioids and other peptides in the central nervous system and the periphery and changes in neuroendocrine function. Although much needs to be accomplished, the emergence of plausible mechanisms for the therapeutic effects of acupuncture is encouraging.

The introduction of acupuncture into the choice of treatment modalities readily available to the public is in its early stages. Issues of training, licensure, and reimbursement remain to be clarified. There is sufficient evidence, however, of its potential value to conventional medicine to encourage further studies.

[b]There is sufficient evidence of acupuncture’s value to expand its use into conventional medicine and to encourage further studies of its physiology and clinical value.[/b] (emphasis mine… if xml tags work…)

[end quote from NIH]

I’m also posting an article from Science Daily about a recent acupuncture article that did not show acupuncture as successful. The article is helpful because it talks about one of the problems with sham acupuncture procedures, the weaknesses in current studies (not enough double-blinded, placebo controlled studies), and the weakness in the study itself (did not contain a third control that does not use sham acupuncture.) Here is the link and a quote from the article:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/11/081112194913.htm

“The meta-analysis showed that acupuncture on the day of embryo transfer leads to a significantly higher pregnancy rate when compared to controls. But in the vast majority of the studies included in the meta-analysis, the controls received no acupuncture and the patients were not blinded. My current study compared real and placebo acupuncture in a double blind setting, which should be the ideal model in research. However, the results suggest that placebo acupuncture may not be inert.”

Here is a link to another study in which the real acupuncture is not shown to be more effective than the sham acupuncture: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/news/fullstory_74040.html

The interesting point here is that the sham and the real acupuncture BOTH WORK better than the preventative drugs in some trials. This is a fascinating quote:

“Skeptics,” Linde said, might consider this to be a sign that acupuncture works only by placebo effect — that is, patients think their pain is better because they’ve received the therapy. [b]But, he added, the fact that acupuncture bested preventive drugs in some trials suggests otherwise. [/b]

“So it is effective,” Linde said, “but other mechanisms besides correct location of needles seem to have a major role.”

(again, emphasis mine if xml works)
[end quote]

Lastly, I feel your comment to the nurse was very dismissive, almost to the point of being mean. Was that really necessary? The nurse freely admitted that she had tried western conventional medicine first, and it did not work for her. Yes, the placebo effect happens in knowledgeable people as well as those who are less well informed, but there is SOME evidence that acupuncture DOES work. The nurse did not automatically dismiss western medicine or science, as many people here have. The nurse did not suggest that there isn’t some placebo effect at work at least some of the time. She did not use the same tired arguments of testimonials (other than her own), claiming it’s worked for many people without evidence to back it up, or claiming that alternative medicine is “better” because it has been used for thousands of years, blah, blah, blah. She merely offered her experience, and you came across as accusing her of lying, when you could have acknowledged the placebo effect as a possibility rather than the definitive cause of her relief. Gee, how scientific of you.

You seem more interested in insults than education. If the method is effective (beyond a simple placebo effect), please provide proof and stop wasting time with insults and personal attacks.

If I am to educate myself, what sources should I consult to become educated?