Q: Are acupressure and acupuncture treatments effective? Are they backed by or supported by scientific proofs or they are just another form of alternative treatments having a cult following?
As practiced today it is often combined with other interventions, such as sending a small current of electricity through the needles or burning herbs on the acupuncture points (a practice called moxibustion). The effectiveness of standard treatment (medication and injectable therapies) is supported by much stronger scientific evidence than acupuncture, including large clinical trials with thousands of subjects.
Except for anecdotal evidence, there are no such clinical trials in traditional practices. Most studies examining the effectiveness of acupuncture are not rigorous. Those that are more rigorous fail to show that acupuncture is more than a placebo in managing depression and other conditions. The published evidence on acupuncture indicates that it might be helpful for some types of pain and possibly for postoperative nausea and vomiting, but not for any other indications. All the evidence is compatible with the hypothesis that acupuncture is no more than a placebo.
According to science based medicine, (2) acupuncture was developed in a pre-scientific culture, before anything significant was understood about biology, the normal functioning of the human body or disease pathology. The healing practices of the time were part of what is called philosophy-based medicine, to be distinguished from modern science-based medicine. Philosophy-based systems began with a set of ideas about health and illness and based their treatments on those ideas. The underlying assumptions and the practices derived from them were never subjected to controlled observation or anything that can reasonably be called a scientific process.
Centuries of advancement in our understanding of biology has made the notion of life energy unnecessary. Further, no one has been able to detect life energy or formulate a scientifically coherent theory as to what life energy is, where it comes from, and how it interacts with matter or other forms of energy. Within science, the vitalists lost the debate over a century ago. Without chi, there is no underlying basis for acupuncture as a medical intervention.
The most common example of the “bait-and-switch” for acupuncture are studies that examined the effects on pain of electrical stimulation through acupuncture needles. This is not acupuncture – it is transcutaneous electrical stimulation (TENS), which is an accepted treatment for chronic pain, masquerading as acupuncture.
Therefore, acupuncture is considered as a pseudoscience, the theories and practices of traditional Chinese medicine are not based on scientific knowledge, and it has been characterized as quackery. There is a range of acupuncture variants which originated in different philosophies, and techniques vary depending on the country in which it is performed.
These procedures can also have negative effects. Acupuncture is relatively safe when the practitioner uses single-use, sterile needles with a clean technique. Side effects can include skin infections, bleeding, and pneumothorax (collapsed lung) if the needles are inserted too deep in the chest.
However, some people say (1), Researcher bias tends to intrude in assessing TCM's efficacy because acupuncturists are the ones providing the therapy. Patients who don’t believe in acupuncture are not likely to volunteer for an acupuncture study; those who accept the possibility that acupuncture will work may be biased. Also, the very nature of acupuncture insures that there will be a strong placebo component and it is impossible to do double-blind studies. For instance, patients will notice if you stick needles in them and acupuncturists know whether they are doing sham or real acupuncture.
To sum up, acupuncture is not modern science based and there is no evidence that life energy or CHI exists and therefore the very basis on which this alternative medical practice is placed is highly questionable.
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