Recent Blog Posts

View Post: The New Zealand Skeptics The New Zealand Skeptics The New Zealand
26 Oct 2009 by rossir24  
There is no anatomical or physiological basis for the existence of either acupuncture points or meridians. The concept of the auricular homunculus is a scientific absurdity. There have been extravagant claims made for the success of ... It is not applied to emergency surgery and, when used on carefully screened patients, is often used in conjunction with local anaesthesia or narcotics. In New Zealand, approximately 14% of doctors practice acupuncture on the basis that ...
View Blog: Docstoc feed for: Medicine - http://www.docstoc.com/documents/medicine/most-recent/

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View Post: Science-Based Medicine » Acupuncture Does Not Work for Back Pain
13 May 2009 by Steven Novella  
It is dependent entirely on the TCM philosophy of acupuncture, including the flow of chi. Medical acupuncture is pure pseudoscience without any basis in science or evidence and does not require further consideration. ..... Trigger point injections with local anaesthetic are a less painful and (I think) more reliable way to diagnose and potentially treat severe myofascial pain. The injections or needlign are only as good as the stretching and retraining of the muscle that ...
View Blog: Science-Based Medicine - http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/

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View Post: High Technology meets Ancient Medicine : Roberta Mittman ...
30 Jun 2009 by Roberta Mittman  
I believe that it can and should be used to help recognize a patient's organ dysfunctions even before physiological symptoms manifest themselves. It can identify pathogens and toxins that are making the patient sick, and ascertain what medicines, ... Electrodermal screening, or EDS, unites 20th century technology with the ancient healing arts of homeopathy and acupuncture. It was first developed around 50 years ago in Germany. It has been continually improved since then. ...
View Blog: Roberta Mittman - Acupuncturist & Virtual... - http://robertamittman.com/

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View Post: NeuroLogica Blog » Why I Am Skeptical of Acupuncture
25 Aug 2008 by Steven Novella  
Reports of acupuncture anaesthesia are also misleading. Independent investigation shows that patients having surgery under anaesthesia (dramatic reports of which are largely credited with acupuncture's popularity in the West) reveal that patients ..... Moreover, acupuncture was touted as having value for conditions and procedures for which there is no plausible (or even mildly plausible) physiological mechanism by which it could be reasonably postulated to have an effect. ...
View Blog: NeuroLogica Blog - http://www.theness.com/neurologicablog/

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View Post: Chinese Medicine
Full text
Effects of tender point acupuncture ... ...
View Blog: Painful stimulation inhibits pain, and DNIC has been proposed as a physiological basis of acupuncture analgesia [24,25]. In fact, six subjects complained of dull sensation (known as deqi) during non-tender acupuncture treatment. Therefore, we used non-tender point .... Takahashi K, Taguchi T, Itoh K, Okada K, Kawakita K, Mizumura K: Influence of surface anesthesia on the pressure pain threshold measured with different-sized probes. Somatosens Mot Res 2005, 22(4):299-305.

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View Post: Yet another acupuncture meta-analysis: Garbage in, garbage out ...
3 Dec 2008 by Orac none@example.com  
Writing in Anesthesia and Analgesia, they said 53 percent of patients given true acupuncture were helped, compared to 45 percent receiving sham therapy involving needles inserted in non-medical positions. .... using this method found positive results in response rate, but no significant difference between acupuncture and sham in headache frequency and intensity. However, it has been argued that needling at nonacupuncture points may produce similar physiological effects. ...
View Blog: ScienceBlogs Select - http://www.scienceblogs.com/

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View Post: Yawn. Another worthless acupunct--I mean acupressure--study ...
8 Oct 2008
There's no physiological mechanism discussed, no potential reason discussed, not even a speculation. Why this particular point? It's just a spot between the eyes. There's no plausible mechanism or reason to suspect that it would work. ... Indeed, a previous functional magnetic resonance imaging study by our laboratory indicated that acupuncture-induced blood oxygen level dependent signals were suppressed by propofol general anesthesia.25 A similar observation was seen ...
View Blog: Respectful Insolence - http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/

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View Post: Why We Fall For Alternative Medicine
Rebuild Your Back
3 Feb 2009 by Dean   ...
View Blog: http://www.rebuildyourback.com/

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View Post: Lemon and Lyme: The Lightning Process
18 Jul 2008 by Lemon  
Personally speaking, I get very irritated at all this psychologising of illness that actually has a biological basis. The evidence for such physiological causes is mounting. 26 July 2008 11:43 ... Let's take acupuncture for example. There's a massive body of research that tells us conclusively that acupunture works - as anaesthesia in surgery, back problems, migraine, ME, lots of common ailments. Even the NHS prescribes acupuncture sometimes. ...
View Blog: Lemon and Lyme - http://lymey.blogspot.com/

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View Post: Chicken soup for the soulless : Effect Measure
2 Dec 2006
What exactly is the mechanism of counter-irritation, say, for acupuncture anesthesia? If you give me one then aren't you giving me an explanation for how acupuncture really does work? If you can't, why isn't that a "magical ..... Chicken soup may not "cure" a cold, but it's interesting to see that there's a biochemical basis for how it can help to decrease the symptoms while providing some much needed nutrients and electrolytes to help you fight off the infection. ...
View Blog: Effect Measure - http://scienceblogs.com/effectmeasure/

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