Acupuncture Re-examined

By Author: Steven Johnson
Total Articles: 494
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Here's a question for you. Can more than a billion people be wrong about something? And the answer, of course, is "yes" if they believe the Earth is flat or something so easily shown to be wrong. But the moment you get into beliefs, you hit a wall. Here, all you can go by is the sincerity of the believers since there may be no facts available to prove what they believe to be true. Let's apply this to acupuncture. In China and many Asian countries, this treatment is considered highly effective for a range of different healthcare needs. Some people even have surgery relying on acupuncture instead of an anesthetic. If ever you wanted proof of a person's sincerity, you can't ask for more than they lie down on an operating table and have a chat with the surgeon during the operation courtesy of the needles sticking in the relevant parts of the body. Yet, if you suggested the same procedure to Western patients about to go into an operating theater, they would ask for a psychiatrist to check you out. Only a few people in the West sincerely believe acupuncture is effective for any purpose.

The reason is the Age of Reason. We in ...
... the West are Enlightened. We became rational and accepted the scientific method. No primitive beliefs for us unless there's clear evidence to back them up. Only then can we move beyond a hypothesis through experiments to a theory based on empirical observations. So here comes a belief from China. Acupuncture is very useful in giving pain relief. As an example of recent Western research, a team recently gave two groups of women real and fake acupuncture. They were all diagnosed with polycystic ovary syndrome which causes a reduction the frequency of ovulation. This is due to a change in the balance of hormones. Drugs are available to correct this but most women don't want to take medication for long periods of time.

The clinical trial divided 84 women into two groups. They both received twelve sessions of either real or fake acupuncture over an eight week period. Ovulation increased in both groups: 37% of the women with real acupuncture and 40% of the women with the fake. In other words, there were real changes in the hormone levels and the number of periods increased courtesy of the fake treatment. This is a sensational performance by the placebo effect. Women who come into an impressively appointed hospital room and are tended by caring "experts" for an hour can produce measurable changes in their body chemistry. For the record, the average effectiveness percentage scored by the placebo effect across all clinical trials is around 33%. So acupuncture, real or fake, did significantly better than average.

This matches other research into back pain which shows no real difference in outcomes between real and fake acupuncture. All the research shows better than placebo average results with real improvements in physical mobility. So the Chinese have stronger belief and they are right when it comes to a remarkable range of treatments. We Westerners tend to be more skeptical. For us, there's always Tramadol to help deal with pain when it gets too much to bear. If you're one of those who finds acupuncture effective, you save on the cost of the Tramadol.