Astana used acupuncture

faceplant wrote:ronin wrote:I

faceplant wrote:

ronin wrote:

I remember a Chinese Acupuncture doctor from France. She felt my wife’s pulse and told her that she was pregnant, and indeed she was (she wasn’t showing any visible signs of being pregnant at that time).
In Chinese medicine the pulse is measured in a different way, not just bpm. I was at the clinic to be treated not my wife at that time, the doctor was just being friendly.

Do you also believe that fortune tellers can see the future? It’s easy to trick people in to believing you can do things you can’t. See: any magician. Traditional Chinese Medicine is not rigorous and does not produce consistent diagnoses between practitioners. A stronger pulse can indicate pregnancy, but it can also indicate lots of other things. Which is why in modern medicine, it is not used as a diagnostic test for pregnancy.

ronin wrote:

In martial arts, methods were developed to target certain areas of the body with certain force. Knowledge of human body mechanics and manipulation of nerve function and blood flow. Just as acupuncture does but for beneficial function. Not really complicated, if you have the knowledge.

In essence, learn to cure first before you learn to harm. That is much harder.

That’s all for today :D

How is martial arts relevant to acupuncture? Martial arts (and I mean real the stuff, not harnessing your chi to one-inch-punch) is the application of force in order to disable an opponent. You’d be more accurate in describing it as the opposite to physiotherapy (which actually works, unlike acupuncture).

Martial arts and acupuncture? Didn’t you read what I wrote? If you have an understanding of the body as a doctor does, you an use that knowledge to cure or cause pain right. Martial arts is no different. You learn about the body in acupuncture.
Inch punch is more body mechanics, you must have seen Bruce lee do that right, but I once knew a man who told me that his teacher broke his arm, through his radius, with 2 fingers. In fact his teacher’s son still makes a bruise rubbing medicine, it deals with bruises in 3-4 days. I always go to stock up when ever I’m in the area. Anyone can say placebo effect, but when you’re training everyday, you need such things otherwise you just wouldn’t be able to train. A bit like a Thai boxer breaking baseball bats with his shins, if you try, your shins will break, but with the proper training it’s possible.
And as for magicians, believe what you want, but until you travel in the land, it is just opinion. But ultimately, nothing good will come out of it, and i am not talking of magic tricks. Science in 2014 cannot explain everything.

farrell wrote:Bike forums,

farrell wrote:

Bike forums, hey?

hahaha no problems

Now did someone say something about Road tax

Again, thank you for a
Again, thank you for a comprehensive response, I’ve skimmed the seemingly big points but will revisit when im not having a few beers before doing a gig.

As I said, I have no agenda, I may have appeared confrontational in a devils advocate way but I am genuinely open to being proved wrong. I find being proved wrong and told why is the best way of learning more.

I’ll probably come back with more mithering in the future if thats ok?

Quite a comprehensive
Quite a comprehensive response, so thank you for that.

what you’re saying is its my lack of knowledge or understanding when reading these reviews that is holding me back? Thats is not a trick question by I’m the way, I’m genuinely willing to hold my hands up and admit ignorance.

Reading through the reviews, and im far from reading all of them, it seems to me to be contradictory and inconclusive, is that simply just down to me being a lay person as it were?

Again, yes I have read them
Again, yes I have read them all, but thanks far asking for the clarification, if you are interested I have also read over 600 reviews of Homeopathy and about the same on TCM…

You are saying that you have no agenda, but you asked for

Farrell wrote:
I am more willing to be proved wrong and hold my hands up to it just being a placebo effect if you can point me in the direction of such evidence?

So I posted a link to the most respected repository of the information you asked for, I did not say at any time that this was information only on back pain, it is however a brilliant start point for evidence on the efficacy of acupuncture, I could have sifted through them, or I could have posted 100’s of other links that have similar information, but I am sure you would have come back with the same response, without reading the information provided any way. So you asked for the information, I provided it, you did not read it, rather you looked for some information that you though may have helped prove your point.

I have read the review on the neck pain, as I said, I have read them all, what you will find is most of the reviews do go along a similar line, they will either out and out disprove the research or say at best, as it has on the neck pain

The trials were of moderate methodological quality

the number of participants in each trial was relatively low

so we could not combine the results of the trials to get an overall picture

However, a large proportion of the reviews will state along the lines of

Further methodologically robust studies are needed to generate evidence-based conclusions.
There is no reliable proof of effectiveness of xxxxx for xxxx due to lack of randomised controlled trials up to now.

these are red flags straight away, I am looking for the words Statistically significant, not moderate. why? well If I were trying to get a drug to market and the results were moderate, I would not get approval at all, so why would you want to use a lower standard for any treatment.

Back to the neck review, it says

We did not find any trials that examined the effects of acupuncture for acute or subacute pain, but we found 10 trials that examined acupuncture treatments for chronic neck pain. Overall, methodological quality had a mean of 2.3/5 on the Jadad Scale.

Unfortunately not a lot of people understand this last part, anything under a JS of 3 is considered to be a low quality trial, generally as its not been correctly blinded or randomised, and importantly, the drop out rate, if the drop out rate is high, the trail needs to be completely ignored as pts will drop out of they don’t feel better, so if 100 people start, 50 drop out because they are getting worse or not seeing improvement, and out of the 50 that stay, 25 report vast improvement but the other dont, the result will incorrectly show as 50% showed improvement as the pts that drop out do not measure in the end result, I havent looked at the drop out rate for this review as it is not really significant given the JS score, unfortunately they do not always use a JS,.

Back to the review

Authors’ conclusions:
There is moderate evidence that acupuncture relieves pain better than some sham treatments, measured at the end of the treatment. There is moderate evidence that those who received acupuncture reported less pain at short term follow-up than those on a waiting list. There is also moderate evidence that acupuncture is more effective than inactive treatments for relieving pain post-treatment and this is maintained at short-term follow-up.

You need to pay attention to the term moderate evidence, under the Cochrane guidelines this means

Moderate evidence denoted findings in a single, high quality RCT or consistent findings in multiple low-quality trials.

being that there is a review of 10 trials, there is a fair assumption that this score is given due to consistent findings in low quality trails (low JS scores)

So let me ask you this, if I offered you a treatment that I have proven with 10 trails, but the trials were of poor quality, there was a high proportion of drop outs, blinding and randomisation was in question, but the results I publish are ok…would you actually pay me for the treatment?

either way, you asked for proof, and I have provided not only the resource, but now a very brief introduction on how to understand and rate the results of the reviews, if you take the oppertunity to read through these reviews, and happen to come upon a Meta anaysis with a >4 JS or one with Strong evidence under the Cochrane Qualitative Analysis of Trial criteria, I would be more than happy to discuss

jason.timothy.jones wrote:if

jason.timothy.jones wrote:

if you want to know if its harmless or not, have a look at this http://whatstheharm.net/acupuncture.html and its true people do have reactions to medication also, but medication is studied and reviewed, doctors have regulatory authorities and bodies that keep them (or try to) in line, CAM practitioners do not

There are sharks in every are of life where money can be made, but that link proves nothing. What about GPs and surgeons who have killed patients, by a genuine prescription error, with a needle or scalpel, either through incompetence or even deliberately?

Compare the number of people infected by acupuncture needles with those by health professionals.

Compare the side-effects of CAM to that of pharmaceuticals.

My boss died of cancer last year. Billions of dollars have been spent on cancer research yet the horribly toxic chemicals they pumped into him still didn’t help. He’s not the exception, yet we are led to believe that it’s black and white, that Chemo is a good thing but Chiro is snake oil. The human body is not that simple.

farrell

farrell wrote:

jason.timothy.jones wrote:

it actually is irrefutable evidence, these are not studies, they are meta analysis of ALL the available research, this is not cheery picked information from a part of a study, how can you even say that without reading the research

Have you read it all? I very much doubt you have even clicked on the link because its just a list of summaries of studies.

Actually, yes I have, I am in the middle of writing a thesis on the dangers of misrepresenting or misinterpreting research. I have read more research information than most practicing MD’s

Sooo, ummm there is that

jason.timothy.jones wrote:If

jason.timothy.jones wrote:

If you don’t believe this is what happens read Bad Science and Bad Pharma, its all in there and all backed up by actually experts in medicine and science, not just some guy with a blog on the internet

So, if I don’t believe you then I must be listening to “some guy with a blog on the internet”, but you must be correct because you’ve referenced some guy who is a columnist for the Guardian?

By the way, I’ve attended Ben Goldacre giving a lecture on Bad Pharma and read a lot of his work so I’m not really intending to besmirch or discredit his or anyone else’s work.