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?

NHS doctors don’t have an hour to spend talking to elderly patients with incurable cancer. They are wonderful and their treatment has helped but the pain caused by myeloma cancer is very hard to control. The reason we are thinking about acupuncture is that there’s an hour of talk and then lying on a couch, very relaxing, in itself a kind of therapy.

I don’t think Smarties are quite the same thing.

Smarties are tricky...I mean they could be an ace placebo...but they are full of actual chemicals and lots of sugar, both of which are having actual demonstrable physiological effects.

In other words, smarties aren't 'woo', they actually work!

And perhaps we aren’t being as thick as you think as far as accupuncture and myeloma pain is concerned.

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/28920142/

Or the benefits of placebo as discussed by Michael Misled:

www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/health-45721670

It can be very calming. But yes, it's woo.

No, you’re right. She can just keep taking increasing doses of fentanyl.

I was offered acupuncture for migraine by my gp and there was no charge. It worked for a bit. He then moved to another practice and another gp at ours offered it but I didn't ask for any more sessions.

I saw a documentary about pain management...

somebody was essentially weened off all pain medication and onto sugar tablets over a two month period...with absolutely no noticable impact on her pain levels.

When it comes down to it, a lot of chronic pain, like depression etc. is a brain thing....that can often be addressed with either therapy, exercise or placebo.

There is nowt wrong with placebo, as people note, but their are far cheaper placebos on offer than acupuncture.

It does make me sad, however, that some people seem prepared to spend a lot of money (which sometimes they can't afford) on these treatments and just think, "Oh well" if it doesn't work rather than having some professional body to complain to about it.

I think people underestimate this. DM spent over £40k on alternative therapies in her last 18 months, although the lost cash was nothing compared to the false hope and the crushing realisation that nothing had worked.

sinkgirl . I find it quite hard to think well of people who peddle placebo as treatment.

NHS doctors don’t have an hour to spend talking to elderly patients with incurable cancer.
This is very true sadly. And, I suspect (I don't know, obviously), why a lot of these treatments any perceived benefit.
The woo bit could be acupuncture/homeopathy/reiki... take your choice.

HAVE any perceived benefit

M3lon unfortunately my mum had a great collection of those. When it became clear that their distance healing, oils and various bullshits weren’t working, they blamed the chemotherapy she’d had, or they blamed her being in a hospice (which led to our last conversation being a row where she begged me to take her home otherwise she would die). They were still calling the day before she died, trying to get another session in. I cannot even voice the contempt I hold for people like this.

Complementary therapies where you’re honest about the likely outcomes and best case scenarios? Sure, knock yourself out, but that’s rarely what happens.

Sorry—old post that I had not finished writing and posted accidentally! Too much going on to finish.

It's woo. I accepted some from the NHS (WTAF) because that's what they offered. 1. it was not pleasant, not relaxing, it hurt sometimes when she put the needles in. It did not help in the slightest and from what I could hear from other patients around me it didn't help them in the slightest either. There is no scientific evidence that it does anything at all that can't be explained by regression to the mean or whatever.

The only way it could possibly be of any assistance that I can think of in a more generous moment is that the presence of a foreign object might increase blood flow to the area warming muscles providing some temporary relief. But they don't claim that, they claim all sorts of bollocks that has no basis in anatomical, physiological, psychological or other medical science.

I've had it for addiction issues and it worked

Yes, it is.

Something very curious about the placebo effect: apparently "recent studies report intriguing evidence that placebos may work even without deception".
So all these woo merchants need not lie to their clients after all. I'll be interested to see future research in this area.

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5841659/

It’s all fucking bullshit IMO. Went to have it for infertility and was told I would have a hard time getting pregnant due to all sorts of bogus reasons (like I did have actual fertility issues but they were serious - not the acupuncture people saying I had a “clammy and cold uterus” 🤣) - anyway I was pregnant at the bloody time and didn’t know it so I think they are just full of shit!

My earlier link to Michael Mosley (not Michael Misled LOL) has some interesting observations on placebo. I read it when I was working out whether we should try acupuncture.

Michael Misled

Freudian slip?

Bad joke, I know.
Do you think there's any place in NHS medicine for using placebos?
It would save a lot of money.

My iPhone has a sense of the ironic. Dr M M seems very convinced though.

I have just been told that I was wrong about the best colour for a placebo pill- it’s blue, not red. I would hate to misinform
anyone!

I thought it was black!

I haven't read the whole thread but I never believed in it until I went to a physio for severe neck pain and she gave me acupuncture. It definitely worked for me. I've no idea if it would help with MH and fertility though.

“I went to a physio for severe neck pain and she gave me acupuncture.“

Was it just acupuncture- or did she do anything else as well- massage, relaxation, manipulation?