"Sham" acupuncture could be as effective as the real thing

Reference:
Nightingale S.(2010, September 13) "Sham" acupuncture could be as effective as the real thing. Republished on 2010-09-13 from: http://lubbockonline.com/interact/blog-post/sarah-nightingale/2010-09-13/sham-acupuncture-could-be-effective-real-thing

Summary:
The article “"Sham" acupuncture could be as effective as the real thing” by Sarah N.(2010) shows that acupuncture works the same as a placebo. A new study which is on patients who have a knee problem, the result implies that there is no difference between real acupuncture and sham acupuncture. Both of them work. From the National Institutes of Health reports, we know that Osteoarthritis is a normal disease of American people; mostly the acupuncturist uses thin needles and electricity to cure it. Dr. Suarez. Almazor expresses the function of acupuncture. An issue of Arthritis Care and Research also adds up to this opinion by their research. And NIH workers will still work on sham acupuncture to see how it works.

Response:
As a traditional treatment, acupuncture has the same status as Chinese herbs and massage. Eventually, acupuncture is underlined as the most important treatment in a Chinese medical system. Now, people do not focus in on the debate of meridian, they are studying the function of acupuncture to make sure it works as a placebo or not. From many studies, the evidence shows it is a placebo. On the other hand, some studies prove that acupuncture has influence more than placebo. From my experience, acupuncture can act as a placebo; meanwhile, it works more than a placebo does. With a placebo, when you stop using it, it doesn’t work. But with real acupuncture, when you stop using it, it still works. We call that continual treatment, which means the function does not deteriorate. That depends on the. For example, if a lady has insomnia because she worries too much, we need to make her relax first. And we choose some points for her to do the real acupuncture. When she can sleep, we will cut down to the needles, or just make the needles as a placebo, which the lady will fall back on. But later, just show her that she has recovered. Some patients still need the needles though the needles work as the placebo. But that’s good for the patients.