Post subject: Acupuncture

What do other members think about acupuncture? It seems to work, but we do know why?

Aaron

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First, let's check Wikipedia, shall we?

Acupuncture (from Lat. acus, 'a needle', and pungere, 'to prick') is the practice of inserting very thin needles in particular acupuncture points on the body to improve health and well-being, and is one component of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM).

Acupuncture has long been used by the Chinese for a wide variety of health complaints. This practice spread throughout Asia and eventually the world. The Chinese practice of acupuncture is at least 2,000 years old, with physical evidence having been found dating to the Han dynasty. Forms of acupuncture are also described in the literature of the traditional medicine of India. Possibly the earliest evidence for the practice of puncturing specific points for health purposes has been found in Europe, of all places. Ötzi the Iceman, a 5,000 year old mummy found preserved in an Alpine glacier, has tattoos on points which correspond to points that a modern acupuncturist or tui na (Chinese acupressure) specialist would use to treat symptoms of diseases that Ötzi seems to have suffered from, including digestive parasites and degenerative bone disease. One theory being that Ötzi's points were routinely "needled" using thorns from various plants, the vegetable residue left in the insertion sites eventually building up to produce tattoos. More recently in the West acupuncture is usually considered a form of complementary and alternative medicine.

In China, acupuncture is known as zhēn jǐu (針灸). Zhen means needle, jiu means moxibustion. Historically, it was generally understood that to warm an acupuncture point (moxibustion) was a stronger treatment than to needle the point. Moxibustion is still used today in varying degres by different schools of TCM thought. Nowadays, acupuncture needling of points is performed with a very fine gauge of disposable stainless steel needles which are sterilized with ethylene oxide or by autoclave.

The document was originally published at Wikipedia and the document is licensed under GNU Free Document License. If you'd like to find out more about obesity, you might be interested in visiting this page in Wikipedia.

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But what's the science behind it? Why is it that sticking a load of needles into your body seems to help? Surely we have a scientific explanation of exactly what's going on here, and why it might be helping... no?

Aaron

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It puzzles me as much as water divining (which I have tried and can assure you, it works!). What in God's name made someone (the first person to ever try acupuncture) think "He's got a bad back... I know what, I'll stick a load of needles in him". Weird indeed.

Aaron

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You may want to check out this website. It still doesn't tell you whole lot of acupuncture's origin though. This is when we need a time machine.

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When did someone first chop the tongue out of a dead cow, & think "oh yummy, looks good enough to eat"???



There are no answers to these questions.

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I can understand ancient peoples trying most parts of an animal as food...but, the tongue?? Yukkkk! Have you ever seen a cow's tongue?? It's the most obscene looking thing!!

I should think that humans first tried meat as a food supply after watching predatory animals ripping their prey to bits & eating it. They must have thought well, if it's good enough for them, it's good enough for us!

Now, eating snails....that's another one that's beyond my comprehension!! Probably poverty started that habit!

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(Sorry I've kind of got off the topic of acupuncture!!!)

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"(Good forum stays on topic; whereas, great forum gets off-topic and then come back on-topic magically)"

...and there's no logic or scientific base for magic, is there??



(PS Have you ever been brave enough to put a snail in your mouth, chew it up & swallow it, iRule?? I haven't!)

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Back to topic....

"Why acupuncture works..

British press has been filling its pages in recent days with news that acupuncture actually works, which comes as a surprise to nobody - except the British press, clearly.
The news that pushed coverage of a boring election campaign from page 492 is the report of a trial that demonstrates that acupuncture can genuinely relieve pain.

The main ambition of the study was not, however, to test whether acupuncture is a pain-reliever - enough trials have already established that. Instead, it set out to discover why it works.
Up to now most scientists (and doctors) were convinced that acupuncture works only at the placebo level - in other words, the patient believed that acupuncture would work, and so felt better as a result. But the new study has discovered that the brain responses are different to acupuncture compared with 'dummy' acupuncture, which simulates 'real' acupuncture.
Study group leader Dr George Lewith said that acupuncture achieved similar results to those of pharmaceutical drugs for chronic conditions - but without the potential adverse reactions.
In his new trial, Dr Lewith tested acupuncture on a small group of arthritis sufferers, each of whom had sessions of real acupuncture, and two dummy versions, which involved using blunt needles that either failed to puncture the skin or retracted like a stage dagger when it touched the skin's surface. Scientists who monitored the participants' brains during treatment discovered that pain-relieving natural opiates were released during both the real and dummy acupuncture sessions, but that only the real acupuncture triggered other brain activities that also helped the patient.

So it seems that acupuncture works at a level that goes beyond the placebo effect, which is more than can be said of pharmaceutical drugs. Dr Lewith has pointed out that the antidepressant Prozac works in 80 per cent of cases - but 70 per cent were because of the patient's expectations, and just 10 per cent could be attributed to a chemical change caused by the drug.
Conventional medicine? It's all placebo, isn't it?"

(Source: Nature, 1 May 2005; doi:10.1038/news050425-12).

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