The difference, like most of these semi-quack treatments, is in the placebo effect, which is far more powerful than anyone gives it credit for. Though it seems to be gaining some respect lately.

@oldtaku: Beat me to it....

Placebo effect for the win. It's the power of positive connection of the human mind. If the people getting the treatment think it will work (or don't know it ""shouldn't" work), the mind helps them along. Same reason stress does the opposite.

What's more, just telling people that they should feel better does not translate well to the subconscious. Internal Positive reinforcement that the treatment should work does.

Of course it's a placebo effect. People who think they're receiving some kind of magical voodoo or a miracle cure that will make them better will often become better because the mind believes it, and the mind controls the body, especially when the symptoms are mental (such as perceived pain).

The opposite holds true as well, since people can actually exhibit symptoms of a disease or condition they believe they have, simply because the mind believes it so. The power of suggestion is potent stuff.

I remember a friend once told me you could alleviate the itching of a mosquito bite by pressing the tip of your nail against the bite. She truly believed it, so it worked for her. I knew it for the placebo it was, so the technique failed me. Still, I began to offer that advice to friends who had an annoying bite because if they didn't know it was a placebo it gave them relief. My ex-wife also believed in a placebo for relieving ice cream headaches, which was cute because her explanation for why it worked sounded plausible even though I knew it wasn't true. I still offer that placebo to friends when they have ice cream headaches as well, because if they don't know it's a placebo, it works.

@WraithSama: For the ice cream, is it pressing your tongue against the top of your mouth? Because people always tell me that and it never works, but people telling me say it works for them.

The placebo effect is not as simple as it seems. I'm not going to run and look up the articles, but it's been show that:

Give the patient pain killer A for awhile. Switch the patient to placebo B without telling them. Patient continues to feel better with placebo. Give patient a drug that blocks the effects of pain killer A without telling the patient. Placebo B stops working.

So, while there is component that says if you believe something will work, it will, there's not much of an understanding as to why it works at all in the first place. After all, if it was merely 'all in the mind' why would the effect wear off when a new drug was secretly introduced to block the effects? It's more than the power of suggestion.

I've used acupuncture in the past and, in some cases, it's helped, while in others, it hasn't. I figure, something that's been around and relied upon by millions of people for at least 2000 years can't be that bad. The side effects are a lot easier to deal with than modern drugs, too. :)

I prefer laying on hands, myself. Y'all cn keep your upity, high falootin' "science" mumbo jumbo.

I don't know much about acupuncture, but if the researchers were pressing the toothpicks over legitimate acupuncture points, then they were effectively performing acuPRESSURE, which is also a form of traditional Chinese medicine.

[en.wikipedia.org]

I don't have a belief regarding tradtional chinese medicine one way or the other, I just thought I'd point that out.

I'm impressed by the number of people jumping on this claiming the "placebo" affect, even when this study does not demonstrate that. As Fuji notes, acupressure is a whole branch of Chinese medicine on it's own.

If they were putting needles on random points and that was producing results, THAT would be a clear indication of the placebo affect. And studies like that might exist, I don't know.

There are quite few who are pseudo-knowledgeable about pseudo-science.

@zyodei: Yeah, yeah, yeah, pseudo-knowledgeable me ALSO happen to be familiar with the literature, mister smugass. There have been other studies which show that just barely inserting needles at random points works just as well. Hell, it was even on Consumerist. See [www.msnbc.msn.com] for example.

@oldtaku: All right, I hadn't thought it necessary to do this (and I'm lazy) but placebos are so powerful that they even throw the entire design of double blind studies into doubt:

[www.newscientist.com] and
[www.newscientist.com]

@WraithSama: Do tell, what is the cure for the ice-cream headache?

@oldtaku: Meow! Hiss!

Lower back pain is caused by a variety of things, but increasing the blood flow to any part of the body experiencing pain often helps reduce the pain because the blood carries the cells which deal with damage. Also, if there is inflammation, increased blood flow away from the muscle reduces inflammation. This is part of why massage works on sore muscles.

So, I know a lot of smug people are crying "placebo" and "pseudo-science", but there are other possibilities.

Beyond that, does it matter if it is the placebo effect? If some a practice has the desired effect because the person somehow either heals themselves with their own body's healing capacity or no longer feels pain, that is what matters. And acupuncture/pressure is cheaper than traditional medicine. Let's not forget that modern medical practitioners are notoriously bad at "curing" back pain. In about 1/3 of cases with back problems, people get worse with modern medical treatment, 1/3 get better, and 1/3 experience no improvement. Alternative treatment is worth looking into.

@oldtaku: You can also buy Placebo pills from some Pharmacists, or get a prescription for them. I guess you need to come up with a good reason to need them.

@ajlei: I usually slam my hand in a car door, b/c then the headache doesn't bother me as much.

Brian Dunning over at Skeptoid JUST did a episode on Placebos: [skeptoid.com] . If you don't want to read it, you can listen to the MP3 of his podcast. It's only ~8 minutes, and he covers lots of other Pseudo-Sciences, like Chiropractic, Homeopathy, Monavie, etc....

@ShariC: People are being extremely short sighted if they toss out everything that isn't standard give you a pill or cut you open style medicine as falling under the placebo effect.

I had a number of procedures for a back pain problem the doctors could not quite pin down as far as the source. I wanted the various things they tried to work and hoped they would. None of them did. What did end up working was a couple of the more alternative treatments that were done by medical specialists. At the time they still were not 100% sure what was causing the problem. A later doctor was able to pin point the cause of the pain. I didn't get better because of the placebo effect, I got better because those two alternative type treatments were the ones that happened to be addressing what was actually wrong. The traditional medicine treatments didn't because they were missing the actual mechanical problem in my back.

@PartOfIMAXConspiracy_GitEmSteveDave:

Chiropractic has a limited scope of benefit for people. Adjusting portions of the back that are out of alignment and pushing on discs or nerves is a pretty obvious cause and effect treatment. Move the vertebrae so it isn't crushing a nerve, people hurt less.

That said there is a level of risk at the hands of an incompetent Chiropractor and all the nonsense about curing all sorts of ailments is BS.

@bennilynn: Yeah, I turned to acupuncture after an unsuccessful surgery, and unsuccessful and botched surgery that left me with permanent scare tissue, countless CAT scans and MRI's, and more than a few drugs with more side effects than positive results. Acupuncture somehow worked for me even though I don't have a spiritual bone in my body and I had pretty much given up on treatment by that point.

If that was a placebo effect it was one hell of a placebo effect. I still don't believe in eastern medicine and I feel like an idiot for admitting my acupuncture use. Still... It did was six years of specialists couldn't.

@oldtaku: Of course it is. It's demonstrably and amazingly effective. Sure, it's technically deception, but not maliciously so.

@bohemian: A lady I work with sees a chiropractic. He keeps wanting her to bring her baby grandkid in for an adjustment, and was telling her he could help the babies ear infection a month or so ago. I admit I'm no Dr., but I could swear infections had little to do with my bones being out of "alignment", unless of course, I have a compound fracture or something similar.

@WraithSama: For me, eating peanut butter right out of the container cures hiccups. It makes no sense whatsoever, but it works.

I can see this as a new category on Craigslist.

@oldtaku: I love how the word "placebo" is Latin for "I shall please".

@PartOfIMAXConspiracy_GitEmSteveDave:

Placebo effect and pills have long been known in the medical profession. I once saw a catalog for placebo pills from back in the '20s.

Big pills, little pills, red pills and blue pills. Thousands of pills of all sizes and colors. They even had suppository types.

Sometimes a good line and a placebo is the best treatment.

@Robobot:

The easy answer would be that acupuncture isn't 100% placebo effect. Many of our ancient treatments/folk remedies DO have some benficial uses - it's just that modern science can often refine and concentrate those benefits.

@WraithSama: I can't yet agree that the study is for sure due to the placebo effect based on the acupressure argument further down. But for the mosquito bite story, if your friend claims a temporary relief from the itching, then there's a valid scientific explanation to that. Apparently, there are two types of neurons that detect different types of pain: deep, "dull" pain (eg. mosquito bites, muscle soreness) and "sharp" pain (eg. pin prick, scratching yourself, high pressure points when you are massaged). The sharp pain neurons inhibit the signals of the dull pain neurons. This is why a massage or feels "good" -- the "sharp pain" from the pressure of the massage inhibits the "dull pain" from the muscle soreness or whatever. Similarly, for mosquito bites, scratching it (sharp pain) alleviates the dull pain from the bite and so scratching feels "good" by alleviating the dull pain of the itching. It's only temporary of course, so this is probably what your friend is experiencing

@ShariC:

Beyond that, does it matter if it is the placebo effect?

or the man who died of gangrene b/c he treated a cut on his foot w/honey, a natural remedy. An inquest found that if he had sought treatment two hours before his death, there was a 1/3 chance he would have survived. [www.google.com]

So yes, just b/c someone feels better, doesn't mean that they should forsake real treatment.

@Firethorn: Reminds me of that episode of MASH.

@oldtaku: The difficulty with this w/r/t acupuncture is that there are demonstrated effects of acupuncture in veterinary medicine, and animals aren't typically subject to the placebo effect ... especially when the effect is meant to be from someone coming at them with needles. :)

Not that there ISN'T a placebo effect (in humans) from acupuncture. Just that it doesn't explain the effect we see in veterinary medicine, so there's at least one other factor at work there that we haven't identified yet.

Orac doesn't think much of the study design and the conclusions drawn by the authors.

[scienceblogs.com]

@Woooot!-Offing_GitEmSteveDave: This is my dad's cure for everything -- he punches you in the upper arm hard enough for a charlie horse, and you quit worrying about your scraped knee/banged head/sucking chest wound.

My mother got a little upset, lol.

@Robobot: Acupuncture has a demonstrated effect in veterinary medicine, so there's at least something else going on. Animals aren't given to a placebo effect, especially when the "placebo" involves "strange person who smells like vet poking me with needles."

@oldtaku: Are you familiar with the veterinary literature as well?

@Woooot!-Offing_GitEmSteveDave: IANAD. Ear infections are caused in little ones because the canals don't drain as well (their faces will get longer eventually, so the canals will be at an angle). My understanding is that there's a point in the mouth near the back that you can stimulate in order to move things that might be stuck in the canals.

Yes, this involves a stranger sticking fingers in your child's mouth. I have no idea if it actually works or not. I'm lucky that my kid isn't prone to ear infections.

@Firethorn: From what I have read it probably has something to do with disruptions of nerve impulses. Rerouting or stopping a nerve impulse could stop a constantly firing nerve. Stubborn muscle knots (or chronic spasms) are injected with anesthetics to break the spasm cycle. Doing the same to a nerve path could do the same type of thing.

@Woooot!-Offing_GitEmSteveDave: It isn't realistic to lump anything outside of prescription drugs and surgery to be equal to homeopathy or people too foolish to seek treatment for an out of control medical problem.

There are a number of major hospitals that are implementing certain treatments that were considered alternative based on those that show some verifiable benefit. I don't see a major hospital implementing meditation classes in a pain clinic as equal to some idiot smearing honey on a major wound and refusing to seek treatment.

@Woooot!-Offing_GitEmSteveDave: The guy is a nut. Like I said, Chiro has a very limited scope of actual effective use. The doctors that focus on adjustments to correct verified dislocations have some documented success. The ones that start asking people to come in every month or bring in babies, or that they will cure diabetes are scams.

This is actually a very good way to sort out finding a Chiro that isn't a scam. If they are treating children, offering to cure illnesses etc. go find someone else.

@Eyebrows McGee (popping ~May 29): I'm sure DYFS would agree, bleeding heart liberals.

@bohemian: I also have no problem if a trained medical professional uses something like meditation, which can be shown with things like a FMRI to activate/stimulate parts of the brain from using that as PART of a treatment, especially if they are under care and observation during. That being said, if I went to a Dr. who suggested using an ear candle, I'd get out of there as fast as I could.
Now true, there are going to be Dr.'s that are going to push pseudo-science, as evidenced by the Dr's that endorse Jenny McCarthy and other of her ilk. Just b/c someone has went through training, doesn't mean they are above believing something based purely on logical fallacies.

@bohemian: This lady goes almost weekly to her Chiropractic, and I've gone as far as to show her the Penn And Teller Episode of Bulls hit! on it, and also the Skeptoid episode where they explain Chiropractic is based on energy balancing, since it was invented in 1895. She still went on to bring other members of her family to this quack and I can hear her on the phone talking saying "yeah, you should go back this week, and then go back next week if that's what he says you need". I suggested an actual Physical Therapist or Orthopedist, but it seems to have fallen on deaf ears.

@PartOfIMAXConspiracy_GitEmSteveDave:
In the Netherlands, I believe, a baby was killed some time ago after receiving neck manipulation from a quack - I think he was slightly different from chiro, but the point remains that babies have no business having their necks twisted around.
[anaximperator.wordpress.com]

Neither. Look up "placebo effect."

It's a badly designed study about a pseudoscientific subject.

Although I agree that acupuncture is not some kind of magical procedure, there are benefits to it as well as the Eastern medicine philosophy. Western medicine targets only the symptoms of an illness and often times ignores the cause which is usually some sort of imbalance in the body's overall health. I think a healthy combination of both philosophies is the best. Not everything should be handled with drugs or surgery, there are safer alternatives to try first, such as, "maybe you are having lower back pain because you're 30 pounds overweight and never exercise".

@Eyebrows McGee (popping ~May 29): I heard an interview on Fresh Air or a similar show that was interviewing a vet and they were saying that it's tough to diagnose a animal, b/c just touching them gently and calmly shows an effect. So if my dog is in pain, just me sitting down next to him and holding him seems to relax him. It becomes a problem in that he will not show me what hurts unless I press it very hard and/or I can see it bleeding/swelling b/c he's calm, and he "knows" I'm trying to help.

@oldtaku: I had mono for about 3 months.

I had been in and out of doctors spending nearly $2000 to have doctors take a look at me tell me I must have an immune system disorder because their antibiotics and steroids weren't helping. They repressed the symptoms but they always came back. I'm not saying I don't believe in antibiotics or corticosteroids and their effects, I just had serious issues with the way the doctors would see me for <5 minutes, give me a prescription then charge me $150 (I didn't have insurance at the time)

I'm the biggest skeptic there is, I'm agnostic and scoff at mysticism, but I figured: how could it hurt? I tried accupuncture and two weeks later I was better. I also haven't been sick since. I didn't believe it would work, it was almost a joke for me, but it did (it was also cheaper than the doctors visits and prescriptions), and I'm happy for it.

It's easy to dismiss as placebo because there is no observable effect, but I'm not so sure.

@WraithSama: I'll post this again:
@oldtaku: I had mono for about 3 months.

I had been in and out of doctors spending nearly $2000 to have doctors take a look at me tell me I must have an immune system disorder because their antibiotics and steroids weren't helping. They repressed the symptoms but they always came back. I'm not saying I don't believe in antibiotics or corticosteroids and their effects, I just had serious issues with the way the doctors would see me for <5 minutes, give me a prescription then charge me $150 (I didn't have insurance at the time)

I'm the biggest skeptic there is, I'm agnostic and scoff at mysticism, but I figured: how could it hurt? I tried accupuncture and two weeks later I was better. I also haven't been sick since. I didn't believe it would work, it was almost a joke for me, but it did (it was also cheaper than the doctors visits and prescriptions), and I'm happy for it.

It's easy to dismiss as placebo because there is no observable effect, but I'm not so sure.