Acupuncture May Trigger a Natural Painkiller

Pickens writes "USNWR is reporting that the needle pricks involved in acupuncture may help relieve pain by triggering the natural painkilling chemical adenosine. There are also indications that acupuncture's effectiveness can be enhanced by coupling the process with a well-known cancer drug — deoxycoformycin — that maintains adenosine levels longer than usual. Dr. Maiken Nedergaard of the University of Rochester Medical Center and her colleagues administered half-hour acupuncture treatments to a group of mice with paw discomfort. The investigators found adenosine levels in tissue near the needle insertion points was 24 times greater after treatment, and those mice with normal adenosine function experienced a two-thirds drop in paw pain. By contrast, mice that were genetically engineered to have no adenosine function gained no benefit from the treatment." Read below for some acupuncture skepticism engendered by other recent studies.
However, many remain skeptical of acupuncture claims. Ed Tong writes in Discover Magazine that previous clinical trials have used sophisticated methods to measure the benefits of acupuncture, including 'sham needles' (where the needle's point retracts back into the shaft like the blade of a movie knife) to determine if the benefits of acupuncture are really only due to the placebo effect. 'Last year, one such trial (which was widely misreported) found that acupuncture does help to relieve chronic back pain and outperformed "usual care". However, it didn't matter whether the needles actually pierce the skin [paper here with annoying interstitial], because sham needles were just as effective,' writes Tong. 'Nor did it matter where the needles were placed, contrary to what acupuncturists would have us believe.'"

Comments

Where's your pseudoscience now!

[JamesP]

Now that I have your attention bear with me...

It's one thing to say "this is BS"

It's another to say "we don't know how this may work, thus it doesn't mean that it works BUT IT ALSO DOESN'T MEAN IT DOESN'T"

There are skeptics and there are "skeptics". "skeptics" make their first reaction to everything "this is BS"

"Look, arteries may not have air inside them after all" "this is BS"
"hey maybe interactions between charged particles can be abstracted by using 'a field'" "this is BS"

It's ok to be skeptic, just keep your mind open before calling BS on everything. Good thing is these people never come up with a new theory or a new experiment usually.

Re:Where's your pseudoscience now!

[Virak]

Ugh, there's another one of these a bit up, are we going to see a flood of stupid posts like these on this thread? Did you even read the rest of the summary, particularly the part about existing studies that conflict with this one? As it is, there's not a whole lot of research on acupuncture, and much of it appears to conflict each other. As a skeptic, my first reaction is indeed "this is BS"--as long as you don't have solid evidence for your claims. Guess what is not present here at all?

If you're suddenly rushing to mock skeptics on the results of a single study, when there's plenty of existing studies that conflict with it, you either don't understand how this "science" thing works at all, or you don't really care about science and are just latching onto this to confirm your existing unfounded beliefs. Either way, you're in no position to make this sort of post. Having an open mind is good, so long as you take care to make sure it's not so open your brains start falling out.

Re:Where's your pseudoscience now!

[Virak]

So, what you're saying is that studies that contradict this one are more important?? That they should be taken more seriously, because everybody knows "acupunture is BS" right?!

I'm saying they're CONFLICTING , nothing more, nothing less. It means something's up with something, and unless you've got some method of deal with this conflict (with supporting evidence, of course), it's quite early to go "LOL ALL YOU 'SKEPTICS' SURE WERE WRONG HUH"

So yeah, I'm in no position to question that, sir because obviously I don't know anything about science or history of science...

Again, you are leaping to the conclusion that skepticism against acupuncture was unwarranted based on the results of a single study which conflicts with multiple existing studies. You most certainly do not know how science works. You don't just pick and choose studies and go "welp I like the results of this one more so it's way more important than the others".

Acupuncture cult pseudo-science

[vorlich]

Acupuncture gained its present foothold in the subconscious of fools shortly after Mao took over China in 1949. The Communist party of China had promised everyone health care, but were in fact unable to deliver proper science-based medicine to the vast population. "Bicycle Doctors" were encouraged to promote herbal and traditional Chinese medical treatments to save money and hide the absence of proper drugs.

Not only did this let a thousand flowers of nonsense bloom and condemn thousands of Brown Bile Bears to inhumane torture, it also convinced gullible Western visitors that the Chinese had some miraculous medical treatments unknown and unexplained by modern science. Pretty much like the gullible Western visitors who went to the Soviet Union shortly after the revolution and declared that they had been to the future and it worked. This research is just another example of flying-saucer-science intended to sucker people into believing that paying out heaps of money for snake-oil is a good idea.

So just to be clear: acupuncture is a cult, a pseudo-science without basis in fact, just like its home companions homeopathy, yoga and Reiki.

I'm not going to provide links since the muppets who reply to say that their great grandmothers survived World War One and Two, smoked liked a chimney, drank like a fish, had unprotected sex with 9 thousand partners, consumed vast quantities of lard, fast food and chips, never ate fruit and attributed their excellent health to homeopathy, acupuncture and Reiki, will do those for you.

Re:Impressive

[ffreeloader]

I hate to break it to you, but you're a complete idiot. You know, at the babbling idiot level of intelligence. I'm surprised you can read and write.

I've suffered from frequent bad headaches since I was 8 or 9 years old and stumbled upon this remedy in my mid-30's. IOWs, and hopefully you'll be able to understand this with your level of intelligence, I suffered for decades with the MDs able to do nothing for me but feed me narcotics for the pain, which is not exactly a sustainable solution. Most of the time I just suffered through them as too-frequent requests for pain killers would bring on a doctor's accusations of being a con artist looking for drugs.

I just happened to eat a spicy meal one day when I had a bad headache coming on, and realized less than a half-hour later my headache was gone, which was not a common occurrence as once a headache sets in it's around for a day or more. The next time I had a headache I made myself a spicy burrito and it worked again. I found that spicy food worked every time over an extended period of time. Later I learned about capsaicin and tried the cayenne capsule method. It worked too. Because of this it's been 20+ years now since I've needed a prescription for a headache.

I gradually worked up a tolerance to the heat in the food so it doesn't bother me, and I now consider lesser levels of spice to be bland, but the same amount of pepper gives me the same relief now that it did more than 2 decades ago when I first realized it worked.

Like I said to start with, you're a babbling idiot.