Alternative therapies (OT)

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while I'm no expert on the subject I would think that sham acupuncture, at least for terms of testing, would consist of insertion of acupuncture needles at nontraditional sites rather than pressure at traditional acupuncture sites (for those of us who remember the 60s this was called "acupressure")

When I was a fellow we had a visiting professor who in his real life was chairman of surgery in Beijing and he and I became quite friendly. I helped him with the-then modern-audiovisual portion. His presentation, given to a large number of scoffers, was on acupuncture anesthesia. I'm a firm believer in the placebo effect, and to be fair there was some sedation involved with the procedure he presented, but there is no way you could placebo or sedate me enough to remain awake and still have my thyroid taken out. I have to say that this individual was no rabid supporter of the then Chinese Communist government nor an exponent or exporter of their policies. In other words I don't think this was a propaganda piece, I had a year to get to know him.

As an aside he told me that even as a full professor and chairman he still had to see general clinic once a week and when I asked him what was most common thing he saw he said "lower back pain to get off of work". guess it's not quite the workers paradise portrayed.

I think the thing that has to be separated here is whatever factor is from the acupuncture itself from the "interrupting or changing the flow of yin and yang"- not a whole lot different from channeling life forces or moving life energy, or again for that matter, healing hands. 
all traditional therapy's whether valid or not have to be separated from the New Age nonsense that always seems to come with them. We do have to keep an open mind, not a vacuous mind. Remember that toxicity of the black widow spider was considered to be folklore by the scientific community until 1928. I am sure there is even some symptomatic relief given by Quackapractic manipulation, but certainly not for the reasons they cite.

The late, great, Isaac Asimov said, along these lines and if anybody can find me the exact quote I'd appreciate it, "we have to keep an open mind but crap is still crap"

R Wigle MD FACS
LSUHSC

--- On Sat, 6/13/09, Tom Riley <tom at tomriley.co.uk> wrote:

From: Tom Riley <tom at tomriley.co.uk>
Subject: Re: Alternative therapies (OT)
To: "Trauma-List [TRAUMA.ORG]" <trauma-list at trauma.org>
Date: Saturday, June 13, 2009, 7:27 AM

At the risk of inviting trouble, surely the question is whether the
"sham-acupuncture" is actually a placebo and therefore there is no
difference between the placebo and the treatment. Sham acupuncture does
involve applying pressure to the skin in a particular place and may not be a
genuine placebo, as we don't know what it is about accupuncture that is
meant to be therapeutic designing a true placebo becomes difficult. I'd ask
similar questions of cholesterol lowering drugs that lower cholesterol
relative to an olive oil placebo.

My anatomy lecturer at medical school was convinced that acupuncture works -
there are small FMRI studies showing that acupuncture generates activity in
the periaquaductal grey matter which is a region involved in mediating
analgesia. Additionally studies in people with nerve damage, doing
accupuncture in insensate areas produced no benefit. Unfortunately having
graduated from medical school I can no longer get hold of the references,
but it would seem perfectly reasonable to me that mildly stimulating
nocireceptors could produce some inhibition of stronger pain signals.
Afterall perception of pain can be influenced by an enormous number of other
factors (fear, anxiety etc.).

 I suspect accupuncture may end up being something like phantom limb pain,
allodinya or RSD that was treated as nonsense for years but once the
mechanism is understood suddenly becomes reasonable.

Dr. Thomas Riley
FHO
Derriford Hospital, Plymouth.
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