this post was submitted on 04 Jul 2024
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Acupuncture is a bit of a different animal though, there's been some research coming out that it triggers a different layer (connective tissue iirc) in ways that we don't really understand but seem to promote beneficial responses through triggering various receptors and nerve responses. I would still group it closer to alt med but it's one of the ones I think might have a grain of usefulness underlying a bunch of less helpful ritualism.
One of the claims with acupuncture is that everyone has Meridian Lines and master practitioners find and put needles in them to manipulate the body or something. Those lines are suppose to be constant for the same person. It's been years, but someone decided to schedule several acupuncture appointments with several different masters and each master put needles in different points.
If any part of acupuncture turns out to have some real deep tissue therapy application, how it's practiced would end up changing so much, it wouldn't even be called acupuncture anymore. Shit like reusing needles or Punctured Lungs are not something that has any excuses to happen in real medicine.
Anyway, this group also likes to claim that cupping, reflexology, chiropractic, or any other "eastern medicine" is being kept down by racists in the American Medical Association.
Yeah and those would be a lot of the less helpful ritualism described.
It may get a new name when the actual medical use is determined and demonstrated but for now it's still acupuncture.
There's a lot of terrible things that shouldn't happen in real medicine (like pretending different races have different pain tolerances, or over prescription of medicines like opioids or even antibiotics) but we don't blame the technique or medicine in those instances so much as we blame the individual doctors doing that shit and the groups that perpetuate it.
Would I go get acupuncture treatment now?
Maybe if I had certain assurances like clean needle use and the use is limited to areas like joints but even then probably not until I see better evidence of cause and effect for the treatment. I just keep an open mind to avoid what could be inherent biases that would discount the idea in it's entirety instead of trying to understand why there are some successes. Kinda like how I'm not going to go eat a bunch of herbs from traditional Chinese medicine but would be interested in understanding how the components of those herbs affect the body to see if there is something that can be pulled and enhanced to modern medical treatment.