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I know the show you're talking about. NOVA has done some pretty decent work on CAM therapies but there's only so much you can communicate in one hour. My reading on CAM therapies is that when subjected to the kind of testing we put every OTHER medical intervention through (or did before the Republicans decided that the FDA and the NIH were boondoggles and gutted them) there's no healing ability beyond what we would expect from the placebo effect.
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derail here.................
Actually acupuncture does work in certain cases and when used the way it is practiced in China. It is a 3000+ year old system of medicine.
When Nixon went to China he took a bunch of western docs with him. They were STUNNED to find the Chinese preforming surgery using acupuncture as anesthesia. STUNNED does not even describe their reactions.
The Community Program for Clinical Research on AIDS (CPCRA) did a large study comparing acupuncture to elavil for pain relief in peripheral neuropathy. I was a member of the team that designed that study. It was an amazing thing to watch Japanese and Chinese acupuncturists argue about which meridans to use for neuropathy. If memory serves the study was equivocal when the data was analyzed. I could be wrong as I was out of the biz by the time the study was finished.
On a anecdotal note from my personal experience......Many years ago (like 25) I was having huge amounts of trouble with my asthma due to eucalyptus allergies (I had just moved to the Bay Area). It was so bad I was on high dose (with a taper) prednisone 4 times in a year.....asthma out of control with nothing really working. My color was that gray you get when you don't move oxygen well.
A friend hounded me into going to an old chinese woman (Madame Wu) who was a chinese doctor for acupuncture. She did not speak much English....she just patted my hand and said.....no worry me fix.....as I was filling out paperwork. She watched me, took my pulses .........smiled and said.....you strong me fix.....
She put me on a table and stuck about 30 or so needles in my body..........I promptly went sound asleep for about 45 minutes..........this in a strange woman's house deep in Chinatown SF who spoke very little English. She finally came in and started taking out the needles......I woke up as she was doing that. She patted my hand and said........you fix now........and took me to a mirror.........I looked in the mirror and damn if I wasn't all pink and I could breathe.......I could feel the air moving in my lungs. I did not have any issues with my asthma at all....no meds....no nothing......for 3-4 years.
Flash forward about 15 years and I am living in Santa Fe NM. My lungs started acting up again..dirt allergies..I had been working with an acupuncturist designing a study using acupuncture for fatigue/quality of life issues. So.........I am in the middle of an attack....lips turning blue I need to go to the hospital....epi pen in hand....and I go to her office. She put about 6 or so needles in my back and my lungs opened up immediately........Air moved.........no western inhaler acts that fast..........
So from my experience acupuncture works great for asthma. And I would much prefer some needles to all those nasty western drugs.
Anyway............derail over