Acupuncture

[InfiniteNow]

I have been trained to cause some serious damage by hitting various pressure points, and having been hit several times at my own points, I can attest that there is something to it... hard to explain, but real enough. Most commonly in medicine, the same points which lead to damage can also be manipulated to lead to healing.

 

 

"What do you mean, you're putting a pin in my bladder meridian? That's the corner of my eyeball!" :beer:

[Tormod]

I actually asked her today about the depth of the needles etc. We looked at some needles and they come in various lengts (up to several inches). They are extremely thin. The length varies and depends on where they are to be used. For example, really long needles are used to treat points inside the upper leg etc. Mostly the needles are about 2 inches long and the most common depth seems to be around half an inch or so.

 

I also asked about nerves and blood vessels. She does hit nerves sometimes, which gives the patient immense pain but only for a very brief moment. I guess it's because the needles are so thin. She said that it's impossible not to hit a few blood vessels now and then, but again, since the needles are so thin, the blood coagulates immediately.

 

I had no less than 4 needles in my left ear today (in addition to 20-25 needles somewhere else) and I can tell you it hurts like hell when she places them there, and after that you don't feel a thing. Most other places you feel nothing, or just a pinprick at most.

[infamous]

I'm dealing with bone spurs in my right heal and sometimes the pain is quite unbearable. Acupuncture is one treatment I hadn't even thought about and might be an interesting possible choice. There's just one hangup; when I was in the Army a medic broke a needle of in my arm. Ever since, I've had a deathly fear of needles of any kind. It's almost impossible for me to get the courage up just to take my annual flu shot. For me to endure all those needles placed abundantly in peculiar locations all over my body is more than I am willing to deal with. Maybe I need some hypnotherpy or some such help in this matter? If I could get over this fear of needles, I'd be willing to try acupuncture.................................Infy

[Tormod]

I can understand that particular fear, infy. My suggestion would be to call an acupuncturist and explain this situation - ask to come in to see the needles. They are very thin (and they don't look like syringes) and AFAIK they cannot break.

[InfiniteNow]

Infy, I'd suggest some exposure therapy.

 

Have a friend put a needle somewhere benign, like across the room above the tv. Leave it there for a few days, then move it closer, maybe to the end table. Then, once you're comfortable, likely a few more days later, pick it up. Look at it. Think of all the times people have been helped by needles. Then, watch someone else getting a shot and live to tell about it. Someone else get acupuncture and depart with a smile. Then, you slowly go in, educate yourself about it, and soon enough you'll be saying "Acupuncture? Smackupuncture! Let's do this!" :shrug:

[HydrogenBond]

Acupuncture has a logical explanation. It manipulates the charge that collects in ganglions and nervous tissue that can cause things like muscular tension. The ganglions, etc., have their own memories to assist in quick reflex responses before conscious awareness. Charge can accumulate keeping muscled flexed for extended periods. A little nervous charge tweak works wonders.

 

The nervous system not only controls the muscles but also the organs of the body. These also have hierarchies of nervous branches. These may be a little harder to tweak with superfisical needling. The methods attempts to set up complex superfiscial needle arrays that affect the spinal current with the hope of shunting the current to the organs. Sometimes it works sometimes it doesn't. Longer needles are may be better but also do more harm than good.

 

But even this is secondary to the brain, which controls the whole shooting match. Often reversable body symtoms can be traced to the brain and the unconscious mind. A symtom, can at times, be a symbol, by which the unconscious mind is trying to tell you something. For example, a pain in the neck may actually reflect someone or something in one's life that is a pain in the neck. If you see the connection the pain goes away. If not acupunture can shunt the nervous energy that has accumulated in the local nerves. If that doesn't work there are pain killers.

[CraigD]

First, I think, one must address the common skeptical and medical opinion that acupuncture is no more effective than the same procedures (a quiet room, palpitating flesh, etc.) without the needles. Accupuncture has been demonstrated in large, well-controlled studies, to be more effective in treating lower back pain than no treatment or “sham” treatment. Although some evidence supports its efficacy in treating headache, to date, this has not been established in a well-controlled study. In most other treatment areas, acupuncture, including variations involving heated and electrified needles, has been demonstrated to have no significant beneficial effect.

… She does hit nerves sometimes, which gives the patient immense pain but only for a very brief moment.

…

I had no less than 4 needles in my left ear today (in addition to 20-25 needles somewhere else) and I can tell you it hurts like hell when she places them there, and after that you don't feel a thing.

According to most scientific explanations of the efficacy of acupuncture, it works because of the pain involved in the treatment, causing the release of natural painkillers (eg: endorphins) .

 

The ancient (3rd century BC, perhaps much earlier), pre-scientific theories of acupuncture are practically completely discredited by modern science. These theories explained acupuncture’s efficacy in terms of the flows of qi energy and other subtle bodily fluids along a very elaborate and extensively documented system of pathways. Although ancient acupuncture theorists appear to have considered these flows to be physically real, as techniques for measuring them became available, they failed to find them. As with many ancient physiological theories, this appears to have resulted in some people proposing that the old theories were describing supernatural, not natural, things.

 

In 20th century china, one of the major centers for accupuncture, it was first widely dismissed as backward and superstitious, then, as the initial scientific fanaticism of China’s government lessened, promoted in order to further the prestige of traditional Chinese culture. In the 1970s, several Chinese hospitals claimed consistent effective use of acupunctures for such things as anesthesia during open chest surgery. Investigation of these claims showed them to be fraudulent.

 

It appears that acupuncture may provide pain management options that are very complementary to conventional medicine, which has marked shortcomings in the treatment of chronic pain. I’m hopeful that scientific, evidence-based medicine will incorporate the effective elements of acupuncture into it, providing a “best of both” situation.

[HydrogenBond]

The ancient (3rd century BC, perhaps much earlier), pre-scientific theories of acupuncture are practically completely discredited by modern science. These theories explained acupuncture’s efficacy in terms of the flows of qi energy and other subtle bodily fluids along a very elaborate and extensively documented system of pathways.

 

Modern science has disproven nervous currents along nerves (qi energy) and the movements of ions in water (suble body fluids)? This is agenda driven science that instead of figuring out what they meant, begins under the assumption it has to be wrong and then presents bull crap to justify their ignorance.

 

If I remember, acupunture uses pressure points. These are typcially nerve junctions. Dah. Empirical science needs to be junkyarded because it is making scientists lose their common sense.

[InfiniteNow]

Dah. Empirical science needs to be junkyarded because it is making scientists lose their common sense.

What is science if not the proposal of predictions and empiricism to validate/discredit them? Your comment vexes me deeply, HB.

[HydrogenBond]

By that comment I meant that empiricism placed acupunture in the black box and showed it was not as effective as claimed. It then threw out the baby with the bathwater based on those results.

 

A rational approach would have said, acupunture may not be perfect but there are many documented cases. How might it work? If we know that maybe we can modernize it, like the rest of medicine and use it much more affectively. It wasn't too long ago western medicine was a combination of alchemy and witchcraft. The tools of physics and chemistry made it what it is today. Without that modernization we may still be doing blood lettings, i.e, we still do that during blood drives. It makes people feel good about themselves.

 

Lets look at this logically. We have pressure points and metal needles. That sounds like nervous manipulation. Maybe qi is simply them trying to say nervous impulses before the invention of the microscope and all the other tools modern medicine. Their charts may be useful. They are empirical just like the rest of medicine so maybe not that useful. But on the other hand, these evolved over centuries so that is quite a long empirical study even by modern standards.

 

Let us work under the assumption of nervous manipulation. What type of simple experiment could we do to show it was possible. Not to say that the whole system is correct but maybe the principle is sound. Then we modernixe from there using special probes.

[Tormod]

Yes, I think HydrogenBond's argument is correct. As Craig says, no evidence has been given that acupuncture works better than other methods (even no better than placebo - google "acupuncture during surgery"). However, the placebo effect is as good as any if it works.

 

I think that acupunture works better than some prescription medication in certain areas because it involves therapy, ie the act of treatment by a therapist. Often a prescribed medication involves only routine visits to the doctor, whereas acupunture not only involves therapy but active participation and feedback.

[Racoon]

Yeah - welcome to the club. The thread is from 2004... :)

 

*But* - earily enough - last week I started to go to the very same acupuncturist mentioned in the first post in this thread! I am having acute inflammation in both my achilles, something which has become worse since I have been running with it for a while.

 

I've had three treatments so far so it's too early to say if it works or not. Will report back!

 

You know, the Achilles tendon is a tricky thing.. Tendo calcaneus doesn't heal well at all.

 

If your experiencing problems and pain, Tormod, because your running, then I'd say stop running, and perhaps start walking, biking, or hiking instead...

less impactful

 

Acupuncture has definite merit, so lets wait and see what they say... but I don't think for the time being that accupuncture can help with an achilles problem, although I'd be happy to be proven wrong. :)

[HydrogenBond]

Here is something additional when thinking about how acupuncture might work. Typically gold or other precious metal needles are inserted into pressure points. These needles are excellent conductors of electricity. While the pressure points contain nerve junctions and charge.

 

To complete the circuit, the therapists tweaks the needles with their fingers. If the fingers of the therapist are moist, there is a conduction from the nerves in the pressure point of the patients into the nerve at rthe tips of the fingers of the therapists.

 

Lets get a little sci-fi. Picture if the needle was a type input-output device. In this case, a signal from the brain of the therapist, that is based on a healthy body, is compressed (jpeg) and then focused at the nerves in the finger tips. This compressed signal goes through the needle into the nerve junction of the patient, where it is decompressed by the hierarchy of the nervous system of the patient. Because there is data loss during compression and decompression the technique is only maybe 20-40% effective.

 

Maybe someday with better probes and better data compression we can reprogram the nervous junctions more effeciently.

[CraigD]

Lets get a little sci-fi. Picture if the needle was a type input-output device. In this case, a signal from the brain of the therapist, that is based on a healthy body, is compressed (jpeg) and then focused at the nerves in the finger tips. This compressed signal goes through the needle into the nerve junction of the patient, where it is decompressed by the hierarchy of the nervous system of the patient. Because there is data loss during compression and decompression the technique is only maybe 20-40% effective.

I believe HBond is being too modest – that was a lot sci-fi!

 

A question comes to mind – if it’s possible for a therapist to transmit a signal from their brain, through their nerves, and through the skin of their fingers, why is a skin-penetrating needle needed to transmit the signal to the patient? Wouldn’t skin-to-skin touch work? If not, wouldn’t it be more effective if needles, connected by conductive wire, were inserted both into the patient and the therapist?

Maybe someday with better probes and better data compression we can reprogram the nervous junctions more effeciently.

More important than better probes, I think any technique to rearrange nerves using needles and electrical signals would need a theoretical model of how such a thing could work. Without such an understanding (to continue using the computer analogy) the effectiveness of any technique seems to me akin to the effectiveness of attempting to program a computer by randomly applying voltages to every accessible conductor in it – you may eventually cause something to happen, but its unlikely to be anything beneficial. In the case of human beings, very small currents are unlikely, I think, to cause anything to happen, beneficial or otherwise – all indications are that the human body and nervous system isn’t well-suited to handling small electric currents.

 

A notable exception to this is the direct stimulation via arrays of fine electrodes of the visual cortex or the brain to produce a crude approximation of vision in blind patients. Though nearly 50 years old, this technology has still not produced an effective enough therapy for widespread use, and remains controversial, thought very interesting, neuroscience.

 

The use of larger currents have been demonstrated to be useful. For example, electronic muscle stimulation devices have been used by body builders to tone specific muscles, and in clinical setting with patients suffering from coma or nerve injuries to prevent muscle atrophy, and Electroconvulsive therapy has been used to induce seizures to treat psychiatric conditions that fail to respond to less intrusive therapies.

[Jay-qu]

Or perhaps the process will just equalise the charge between the two, making successive treatments in one day not as effective..

[InfiniteNow]

A notable exception to this is the direct stimulation via arrays of fine electrodes of the visual cortex or the brain to produce a crude approximation of vision in blind patients. Though nearly 50 years old, this technology has still not produced an effective enough therapy for widespread use, and remains controversial, though very interesting, neuroscience.

Interesting indeed. Part of the issue currently with it's lack of effectiveness is that they are stimulating large areas of occipital cortex with a supercortical patch, instead of intracortically probing the regions needed to create the visual refinement people are after.

 

Following HB's tendency toward analogy, most of the current procedures where they surgically implant visual prosthetics are a bit like trying to move a single feather off of a pile of millions of feathers using the rotary blade of a helicopter. It's not focussed enough yet...

 

Here's what they poke into the brain:

Courtesy: The Laboratory of Neuroprosthetic Research

 

 

[HydrogenBond]

The art of acupuncture already has some of the body mapped out. It is only empirical science, and not fully rational, but it may provide a basic foundation for better strategies.

 

I think the needles are needed because the signals from the hands and fingers are usually not strong enough to reach deep into tissue. If just he hands and finger could do it, it would be called a miracle.