Tuesday December 2nd, 2008
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Science Backs Acupuncture: Whether it Likes it or Not
Posted by Marisa Belger on December 23, 2005 - 7:23am.
To heal eye ailments, practitioners of acupuncture often insert a needle into the little toe. For acupuncturists, this is an obvious method of treatment as the toe and the eyes are on the same meridian. Scientists, however, weren't buying it.
Western doctors were free to doubt acupuncture’s power until a recent tool of their own making proved them wrong. A real-time MRI showed that the brain's visual cortex was stimulated by the acupuncture that was taking place in the toe.
Sorry, guys, this stuff is for real.
This is not the first case of science accidentally substantiating acupuncture, but the toe findings have pushed the modality into another notch of legitimacy. Americans are becoming increasingly interested in exploring acupuncture for themselves.
“Before, more patients were rather skeptical,” said Lixing Lao, associate professor at the Center for Integrative Medicine at the University of Maryland in Baltimore and a licensed acupuncturist who is also fully trained in western medicine. “Now, not only patients want to see me, but also doctors say, ‘Hey, I want to make an appointment.’ There’s been a big change.”
[via HealthDay]
(Photo: Chung Acupuncture)
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While a study like the one mentioned in this article is nice, let’s look at its relative value as a way of knowing and believing in something: Do we NOW think acupuncture at BL-67 will help vision because some research and an MRI showed it to be true? What about the way it was found to be effective by the Chinese over 1000 years ago? The empirical evidence rooted in the experience of millions of Chinese people over hundreds and hundreds of years is frequently invalidated by people with the notion that a single research study can show us the “truth.” WHAT IF that research had had negative results? How many of us would basically think that shows acupuncture doesn’t work? Would the experiences of those millions of people be suddenly wrong? Research is okay, but lets not fall into the trap of thinking it is the only way of knowing the truth. How many of you now believe that echinacea doesn’t work because a study came out this year saying so? Preposterous. The US Pharmacopoeia listed echinacea as an effective drug up until the 1930s. It was used by more than 1/10th of the doctors in the US between 1870 and 1900. Thousands of people were helped by it long before its more recent popularity since the 1980s. If a study tells you garlic helps your heart, but people have been using it for 400 years to help their hearts, is it the study or the 400 years that informs your belief? What happens if another study comes out saying otherwise? And then a further study the following year says that in fact it does? Research is fine, but it insults every tradition of medicine on earth to assume it is the only, or even the best, way of evaluating efficacy.
I couldn't agree more with this obsession with proving things scientifically. Descartes did humanity a great disservice when he drew up the two camps of science and the arts. I myself use and promote the use of apitherapy, specifically bee stings, for the management of M.S. I get some credibility because I am an entomologist. Others look at me and appreciate my personal experience. Most can not believe I have an incurable chronic illness.
One study that was carried out in the Netherlands claimed that bee sting therapy does not work for MS. No practioners of bee sting therapy were consulted for the design of the study. Meanwhile thousands of MS patients the world over successfully manage the disease with apitherapy. Personally, I am not waiting for a scientifically verifiable study to confirm what I, and sufferers of a host of diseases already know.
carolinagarciaw