Acupuncture Poked at on NYTimes

"Acupuncture, Real or Fake, Eases Pain" was published last week in the Times. I missed the boat on this one, only reading it last night for the first time. Once again, research shows that acupuncture works to treat pain (in this case, arthritis of the knee). And, once again, sham acupuncture works too! Most acupuncturists or those familiar with our medicine are far from shocked at results like this.

Equally valuable to the article itself, are the readers' comments that follow. Folks are very opinionated and fortunately, most are respectful in their responses.

You may wonder, why would I draw attention to an article that demonstrates 'fake' acupuncture is as effective as the real deal?? I, of course, have my own opinion on the matter. For one, trying to establish a control in any acupuncture study is difficult - placebo acupuncture is still acupuncture. And while most studies compare TCM (Traditional Chinese Medicine) style Acupuncture, there is much more out there.

As one of my most favorite articles boasts:
We found an 80% correspondence between the sites of acupuncture points and the location of intermuscular or intramuscular connective tissue planes in postmortem tissue sections. We propose that the anatomical relationship of acupuncture points and meridians to connective tissue planes is relevant to acupuncture’s mechanism of action and suggests a potentially important integrative role for interstitial connective tissue. [download the full text from my site here]

As my patients and practitioner-patients will tell you, many of my acupoints are not found in any text book. And treatments work. VERY well.

But I'm curious, what do YOU think?