Is acupuncture woo?

[SmallHope]

I really want to try something to help with my fertility and mental health.

I eat a very healthy diet, I practice a bit of yoga and mindfulness, I exercise a lot, and I've finished a 3-month course of CBT so I'm doing everything I possibly can but I'm still struggling with low mood and awful periods due to endometriosis.

I'm very unwoo, but has acupuncture helped anyone and is it worth a try?

But a medical treatment shouldn't be something you have to "believe in". You can believe in prayer, or Father Christmas, but a medical treatment - to affect real people's real diseases and medical problems - needs to be shown, objectively, to be effective, not just that people "think it works".

“I don't think you're being particularly helpful or useful here.”

Why not?

This thread is not “share your experiences of when acupuncture worked for you”

It is “Is acupuncture woo?” Which it is. Some people are saying that it isn’t and there is scientific research to prove it. There isn’t.

Is it not classed as ‘alternative therapy’ rather than ‘a medical treatment’. No one should be calling it a treatment it is not.

People use many things during the course of an illness including different type of therapies. No NHS physio or consultant I ever met called it a ‘treatment’ it is a type of therapy

As we know therapies help people in different ways. Accupunture is a therapy some people like and believe works for them and other people either never had it so don’t believe it, or it didn’t work. Like various therapies achieve different results and are not the same for every person

And seen as pain, stress, depression, illness, PTSD etc are felt and experienced differently by every single human, it is understandable that there is not one solution fix to these conditions otherwise we would not have such a vast range of medical treatments such as medications and therapies which are all experienced by people in different ways

I can’t even think of a medical condition in exsistence that only has 1 singular cure (except maybe a venom bite but even that must have exceptions) that works for every single person who suffers from it and there is no deviance, no rejection of the treatment with no exceptions whatsoever. 2 people don’t even have identical heart attacks. Medical research has to work within ranges and boundaries to make studies make sense hence why in trials people have to be similar. They don’t account for everyone outside of these ranges. So we use the research that seems to cover the most people/situations but it can’t cover them ALL

Ok so I am asthmatic. And my doctor and nurse have given me some medication that they think/hope might work for me over the years. Trials show they do work on asthma. But I wasn’t in the trial and no one has looked inside my lungs or subjected me to any of the same tests as the subjects. It hasn’t stopped me having asthma, and the medication sometimes doesn’t work and I have to change it. What works for Mrs Bloggs or Mr Smith doesn’t always work for me. I might have to change my medication during my life but I am trusting this research to treat me even though I know it isn’t 100% and never can be.

With acupuncture you should not be looking at it as a medication. But you can experience other therapies and alternative ways of combating other symptoms you have. Some people find meditation fucking boring and some people think it’s changed their lives for the better and love the experience. Some people become obsessed with the benefits of yoga but some people find it very stressful and painful to try to get into all of the poses and don’t find it helps them relax. Some people have acupuncture and think nothing of it and it’s a waste of time. Some people are having a stressful time and have some accupuncture and feel better about themselves, they don’t know why but it makes them feel relaxed and has helped their pain levels.

So go do yoga, meditate or have accupunture people, if it makes you feel good you aren’t hurting anyone else. Like anything therapeutic it isn’t going to cure something very serious but it could help you through that time in your life a little easier. Don’t go spending £40k on it and don’t go thinking it’s going to magically change your life because it is unlikely. But also don’t be down on people who find relaxation/pain relief in more unconventional ways. It’s ok if you don’t get it and none of your research papers can pinpoint it.

What is not ok is trying to make other people feel like imbeciles for trying something they might enjoy. So fuck off

@BertrandRussell

I think possibly others are finding your input not very useful because you kind of keep saying the same thing in different ways without accepting that others look at things differently to you.

This doesn't make them wrong.

All research papers can be interpreted in different ways - as I've said to you previously - for every negative research paper you throw at me I have a positive one.

At some point I think you need to accept that there is no 'argument' to be won here but just an acceptance that not everyone will agree with you, however 'right' you think you are.

As I said before - I hope you have something which helps you as much in your life as acupuncture has helped in mine and many others.

I know somebody who has it for their irritable bowel symptoms and it works she says ... so worth a try

All research papers can be interpreted in different ways - as I've said to you previously - for every negative research paper you throw at me I have a positive one.

That's why we have meta-analyses. It's the meta-analyses that are saying it doesn't work.
If you have one positive research paper and @BertrandRussell has 199 negative ones will you still wave your positive one?

“What is not ok is trying to make other people feel like imbeciles for trying something they might enjoy. So fuck off”
There have been lots of actual medical conditions mentioned here which acupuncture is supposed to cure. Not just a case of something people might enjoy. Something people think might cure them.

No practitioner should be telling them it’s a cure for anything If they are - then they are wrong.

I don’t see anyone here saying that it cured their cancer

But it is not unbelievable that people find relief for conditions that often are not treated by 1 medicalised regime. Back pain or unexplained infertility for instance are literally have widest open range or possibilities of why, how, when, where etc. IBS can be linked to stress and anxiety in some people

If this is ONE way that people can find relief without having any further invasive medical procedures (expensive to the NHS) or taking medication with side effects why not let them? Why be so fixated on trying to talk people out of something alternative that might help their mental health or stress or pain? It’s not harming you to let them try it

“Why be so fixated on trying to talk people out of something alternative that might help their mental health or stress or pain?”
I’m not. You’re just too busy shouting at me and telling me to fuck off to read what I’m actually saying.

Reading back through the thread the themes people have mentioned are:

• Mental health is a strong one inc anxiety
• Relaxation
• Pain relief (some temporary, some in conjunction with other therapies which is basically a holistic approach)
• stress, has been quoted in relation to fertility issues. People seem to have it for fertility and perhaps have fallen pregnant. Agree there is no direct link as to why, but it made them feel proactive/better about themselves. I imagine infertility is a very stressful and anxious time
• depression
• muscle issues
• nerve problems

I myself experienced a very intense tingling, the skin was warm to the touch after. I didn’t always get the tingling so I wasn’t imagining it happening as I didn’t know if it would or not each time.

This should not be about why you feel so determined to tell everyone it’s woo, just let them do it if they want to with an open mind.

You aren’t saying anything you are just linking papers no one wants to read

And talking about your pony

3 papers. Why wouldn’t anyone want to read them?

And I thought my pony story was quite sweet and relevant.

Haven't RTFT but this is my experience of acupuncture:

TTC for a year before went to acupuncturist (a good one). She said it'll take 3 cycles...which it did. My cycles had been 31-32 days long - should be 28. 1st cycle : 30 days. 2nd: 29. 3rd: pregnant.

I got terrible heartburn when pregnant, every time I lay down in bed, I'd get reflux and my throat would burn. I said it at my next appointment (kept them up) and never got heartburn again that pregnancy. It was like flicking a switch, I couldn't believe it. Was expecting more like a gradual improvement.

Later on, after 8 months ttc after a mc, I went back to acupuncturist- again, got pregnant within 3 cycles. Both dc now happy and healthy children, and I definitely believe acupuncture played a big part. I had been putting it off when a friend recommended it for fertility.

For me the issue is, either it works and has an effect - in which case we should not be telling people "what's the harm in trying?" or it doesn't have any but we can tell people what's the harm in trying for placebo/relaxation or we don't have enough evidence and give the information of risks and benefits as the NHS site on it does and NOT be saying it's curing anything.

It would unethical to say it definitely has an effect or is a cure and tell people "what's the harm in trying?" or "don't knock it until you try it", any treatment that has an active effect should be discussed with its benefits and risks. Good practitioners obviously would, but the industry unregulated and I can't recall anyone ever saying they've been turned away for not being appropriate for it which does happen for most other treatments. Even OTC medicines come with warning labels. Even mindfulness meditation is said to not be appropriate for people with trauma-based conditions and yoga is obviously not suitable for many physical issues and there are warnings about doing it alone with hypermobility or similar issues.

Even the previously mentioned vitamins, which may give a placebo or nocebo effect alongside their active effects, typically come with warnings, studies of their benefits and risks especially at high dose, and people who should not supplement. If I went on about how, entirely truthfully, being given my latest 15 day course of 20,000ius of Vitamin D, I a day later got my first normal period in years, had the more energy and responsiveness, less pain and hot flushes, and impact on my well-being and showed all the studies on Vitamin D and told people "what's the harm in trying it" and not to think of it like medicine, I would an unethical asshole. See an accredited regulated professional about if it would suitable, sure, but - as much as I'm all for testing things out - the idea that something can have a major effect like curing depression or majorly altering someone's fertility and then act like it's unlikely to cause significant harm just sets off my bullshit meter. I can't even take most OTC medicines without it fucking up my blood pressure (and, on the high dose Vitamin D, I have experienced significantly increased lightheadedness and weird-ass mood oscillations so not even that's been all shiny) and people want to try saying something with apparently this much effect is unlikely to make any of my many problems worse. Yeah, that's a major red flag for me that it's either really fake or I would get messed up badly by people dismissing just how easily some of us get hurt.

As a pp noted, it's the meta reviews you have to look at. And time and again, they show little to no effects of clinical significance. When you take away all the emotion, it's really very simple. Acupuncture has been shown to not work.

When I think back to my ttc /ivf years, and all the anxiety and pain involved, it angers me that I only added to the stress and coats by spending time and money on this therapy, which I now understand has no evidence base. All because my fertility clinic, in their wisdom, chose to have leaflets in their waiting room from an acupuncturist which claimed it was effective. I trusted the clinic, because you expect doctors to come from a more scientific perspective

I do take pps point re placebo though. If you feel emotionally better after an acupuncture session, then fair enough.

*costs

*BertrandRussell

I am very sorry about your family member, @Abraide. Very sorry indeed.*

Thank you.

I am recovering from lymphoma cancer in my spine. I currently have pain in one of my vertebrae and am taking strong opioid pain killers twice a day that last for 12 hours. I am thinking very seriously about trying acupuncture, I am in the US and found a Chinese doctor who has trained in China and the US. My insurance also would cover her. The fact that my insurance company is willing to cover her is quite interesting to me. I can’t see why they would cover her services if patients are not benefiting. It may be a placebo effect but if it lessens my pain, especially to the point I can cut down on my meds I would be delighted, obviously. So if I give her a whirl I will let you know the results. She is a Chinese doctor so also offers herbs and has a massage therapist on staff. As I mentioned up thread, my husband uses it and he is an MD and some of his patients find their migraines are resolved.