Sham Acupuncture more effective than real medicine?

[Sentience]

Fake Acupuncture Better Than Medicine?

www.museumofhoaxes.com/hoax/w...s/4837/

Status: Medical controversy
A study conducted in Germany found that "fake" acupuncture worked almost as well as "real" acupuncture, and that both performed better than conventional care (which included painkillers, massage, and heat therapy). Reportedly, 47 percent of patients receiving real acupuncture to treat lower back pain improved, as did 44 percent of the fake acupuncture group, but only 27 percent of the usual care group got relief. The study has been published in the Archives of Internal Medicine, which is a reputable journal.

According to the AP report, this is what is meant by fake acupuncture:
For the sham acupuncture, needles were inserted, but not as deeply as for the real thing. The sham acupuncture also did not insert needles in traditional acupuncture points on the body and the needles were not manually moved and rotated.




Notice that real acupuncture did in fact outperform the sham acupuncture methods....but there is still the problem of the sham acupuncture methods not being purely inert which is part of the difficulty of finding a true control group. Even stimulation of the points with toothpicks seems to have an effect.

 

[RhythmSpring]

It doesn't surprise me that the abovementioned "sham" acupuncture works, considering accupressure works, which doesn't even involve penetration, just surface stimulation.

What would be "true" sham acupunture would be insertion of needles in incorrect locations.

 

[Sentience]

Even using incorrect locations might produce some pain reliving effects, since any number of sites can at least release endorphins. Pain relief is one of the easiest things to do with acupuncture and requires very little skill.

Its the more sophisticated applications of acupuncture that require more skilled insertion and the right combination of points. Getting into the specifics is probably a little too esoteric for many people, but it should be enough to say that finding a control that uses a totally inert therapy that looks and feels like real acupuncture is nearly impossible. Because of this there will always be skeptics who dismiss it as a placebo, even when it outperforms real medicine.

So I said "You know, I dont think its a placebo or else how could it outperform real medicine which also has its own placebo effect ontop of its physiological action".
And they respond with, "Well, maybe its just a much more convincing placebo".
And I say, "Well, that alone has to be worth something if the meditative state alone and the belief it gives these people appears to work better than drugs + physical therapy, though we know for a fact that endorphins are released and that parts of the brain light up when you insert the needles, so I dont think its only the meditation and suggestion....but even meditation and suggestion has benefits, so why are we resiting using this cheap and harmless therapy that is so effect?
So they just go back to their repetitive talking points like they didnt even hear me and again talk about how the real acupuncture group didnt beat the control by greater than the margin of error, completely ignoring the salient point I made like it went right over their head.

And that is how it usually goes, almost without fail.

 

[wizekrak]

Pain is very much a state of mind. Even giving placebos causes a decrease in pain if the patient believes its going to work. Of course this all depends on the type and severity of the pain. There are many non-pharmacological pain relief options supported by western medicine to, so it isn't a 'drugs or nothing' mentality. Hot and cold therapy, visualization, distraction, humour, among others work well.

 

[Sentience]

Acupuncture seems to drastically outperform a sugar pill. If it is just a placebo, then they have the science of enhanced suggestion down to a science, and that should count for something. However, they have found that the needling techniques do release endorphins so I do not believe it is purely placebo.

We dont understand the mechanism of action. When the sham techniques also work comparably well that does not necessarily prove that acupuncture is all placebo as some people have suggested it does. Rather, it could alternatively suggest that the sham methods are not inert but active in their own right.

Acupuncture without needles is older than acupuncture with needles, so they sham techniques are not sham techniques at all.