If you think acupuncture can help with your pains, you are more likely to improve if you get someone to insert the needles randomly, and not according to the non-existent qi points. Orac reports about a recent acupuncture study.
This time around, I've come across yet another acupuncture study that serves to demonstrate that acupuncture is nothing more than an elaborate placebo. The paper, published in the most recent issue of the Clinical Journal of Pain joins a long line of papers that show that, when the study is well-designed and includes true sham acupuncture, the results virtually invariably show acupuncture to be useless as a therapy. This particular study came out of a collaboration between Harvard Medical School, the University of Michigan School of Public health, and the Harvard School of Public Health and examined the effect of acupuncture on persistent arm pain due to repetitive stress injuires (RSIs). [...]
Here's where things get amusing. Both treatment groups, "true" and sham acupuncture, experienced decreases in the intensity of arm pain, arm symptoms, and noted improvement in arm function. However, patients in the sham acupuncture group improved more than patients in the "true" acupuncture group in the intensity of arm pain and just as much in measures of arm function and grip strength. The difference between the two groups was not sustained at a followup visit one month after the treatment ended, although the improvement in both groups remained detectable compared to baseline. Indeed, arm pain and arm symptoms scores declined faster in the sham compared with the "true" acupuncture group.
How did that silly old joke go? Contacting the acupuncturist he tells you to take two needles and call him in the morning.
