Is curing your headache with acupuncture all in the mind?

mercurial

mercurial

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Many swear it is as powerful as any headache pill – but the benefits of acupuncture could be all in the mind.

Researchers have found a fake treatment is as good as the real thing at relieving the pain of headaches.

An analysis of dozens of studies involving almost 7,000 men and women showed the ancient Chinese art to be better than tablets at warding off migraines.

However, fake treatments, in which the needles were placed randomly on the skin, were just as effective at stopping migraines – and almost as good at preventing tension headaches. The findings suggest many of the benefits of acupuncture are in the mind.

Researchers say it is likely patients benefit from the 'placebo effect', in which care, attention and the simple belief the treatment will work, lead to improvements in health.
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Full story
 
lol. Sounds like the oil-lamp theory...
When the red oil light starts shining in your car... you have two choices:
1. Kill the oil light
2. Fill your car with oil.

Acupuncture and headache pills are exactly like option one...
 
I do it all the time, press the muscle in between your thumb and index finger on one or both hands, your headache goes away!:)
 
It is

Keep in mind that pain -is- all in your mind. So even if acupuncture is "all in your mind", that doesn't make it a bad thing. If it takes the pain away, then it worked. That study showed that it does take pain away, even if it is due to the placebo effect, yet that doesn't mean it didn't work.
 
If you can tell me how, as in what chemical process, sticking pins in my body, makes me stop having a headache, then maybe I will be interested.

If you can tell me how, as in what chemical process, taking an asprin, makes me stop having a headache, then maybe I will be interested.
 
Again, killing the warning light (headache) is not solving the problem... sigh
 
mercurial said:
I think the idea behind acupuncture is using pins to stimulate blood flow.
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Acupuncture works!
It cant be in the mind, because it "tickles" pressure points in the body.
Anyone been for reflexology? Same thing no?
 
My understanding in this is that medicine provides relieve by numbing your senses, it does not cure the cause of the pain.
Acupuncture on the other hand creates a lot of pain centers over your body, and your body compensates by creating its own drugs.

Thus in my opinion both works similar, and puts you on a trip without curing the real problem.
 
JK8 said:

Acupuncture works!
It cant be in the mind, because it "tickles" pressure points in the body.
Anyone been for reflexology? Same thing no?
Click to expand...

But people may go into the procedure expecting it to work, hence they have created this placebo effect in their mind.
 
mercurial said:
But people may go into the procedure expecting it to work, hence they have created this placebo effect in their mind.
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From personal experience it worked the other way around, I expected it not to work and it did!:)
Will infra red treatments fall in the same category?
 
JK8 said:
From personal experience it worked the other way around, I expected it not to work and it did!:)
Will infra red treatments fall in the same category?
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I expect you went there expecting it not to work, but secretly hoping it would work.

Im glad you were able to convince your subconcious to fix itself :D
 
JK8 said:
From personal experience it worked the other way around, I expected it not to work and it did!:)
Will infra red treatments fall in the same category?
Click to expand...

Let's say the first time it happened and worked, it could have been a co-incidence. Then all the times you went there after that, you knew it would work so you have by then created this expectation that it does work. That's the placebo effect.
 
Acupuncture is effective for the treatment of chronic pain and is therefore a reasonable referral option. Significant differences between true and sham acupuncture indicate that acupuncture is more than a placebo.
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http://archinte.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=1357513

A new study of acupuncture — the most rigorous and detailed analysis of the treatment to date — found that it can ease migraines and arthritis and other forms of chronic pain.

The findings provide strong scientific support for an age-old therapy used by an estimated three million Americans each year. Though acupuncture has been studied for decades, the body of medical research on it has been mixed and mired to some extent by small and poor-quality studies. Financed by the National Institutes of Health and carried out over about half a decade, the new research was a detailed analysis of earlier research that involved data on nearly 18,000 patients.

The researchers, who published their results in Archives of Internal Medicine, found that acupuncture outperformed sham treatments and standard care when used by people suffering from osteoarthritis, migraines and chronic back, neck and shoulder pain.

“This has been a controversial subject for a long time,” said Dr. Andrew J. Vickers, attending research methodologist at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York and the lead author of the study. “But when you try to answer the question the right way, as we did, you get very clear answers.

“We think there’s firm evidence supporting acupuncture for the treatment of chronic pain.”
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http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/...n-relief-in-study/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0
 
That was a meta-analysis that doesn't actually negate anything in the OP, which also showed that acupuncture was effective at relieving pain, due to the placebo effect...
 
DJ... said:
That was a meta-analysis that doesn't actually negate anything in the OP, which also showed that acupuncture was effective at relieving pain, due to the placebo effect...
Click to expand...

I adding it because it's a relevant study to this thread. The conclusion to the meta-analysis specifically states:
Acupuncture is effective for the treatment of chronic pain and is therefore a reasonable referral option. Significant differences between true and sham acupuncture indicate that acupuncture is more than a placebo.
Click to expand...
 
joelus said:
I adding it because it's a relevant study to this thread. The conclusion to the meta-analysis specifically states:
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They didn't test it against actual placebos. They tested the efficacy of multiple trials, is all. Their conclusions, as with many in science, go against what others have found. To be fair, I do believe that acupuncture can assist with pain. I don't believe it to be some mystical woo, or meridian lines in the body at all, as has been falsified already on numerous occasions. I believe the process stimulates pain centres in our brain to activate the body's natural pain relief systems. And only for very, very acute types of pains...

EDIT: I see you quotemined the actual paragraph, which goes on to state:

However, these differences are relatively modest, suggesting that factors in addition to the specific effects of needling are important contributors to the therapeutic effects of acupuncture.
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Tsk, tsk. That contradicts their position on the effects of "sham" and "true" acupuncture. Hardly surprising...
 
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