Yes it is a placebo. Show me a peer reviewed study that shows otherwise. Acupuncture when tested against a placebo, whether it be inserting needles into the wrong points, not inserting the needles at all, etc correctly done acupuncture never works any better than the aforementioned placebo. There was a time that I believed in and used acupuncture and it is a complete sham. It does nothing but effectively triggers a placebo effect. You can do the same thing with sugar pills and they don’t cost $100 a treatment with a ten treatment minimum.

I was wondering how long it would take the argument from antiquity logical fallacy to show up. Just because “people have done it for thousands of years” does not provide and scientific proof that a treatment works any better than a placebo. At best it could prompt a hypotheses that would need to be tested. If we follow the same logic should you not be blood letting to cure disease after all people did it for thousands of years or maybe we should preform an exorcism when someone has a seizure after all the did that hundreds of years ago so it must be right. Again I challenge you to show me any published peer reviewed study that shows acupuncture works better than a placebo.

You also tell me that I am misinformed. Nothing could be further from the truth. If you had read my previous post you would have learned that at one time I bought into the whole alternative medicine sham. I had acupuncture performed on me more that 40 times for both a lower back injury and for sinus pain. Low and behold it never worked but strangely enough my doctors recommendation or rest, ice and iduprofen worked for my back injury and the Claritin D worked for my sinus pain. Now of course you will tell me that I did not want it to work and my doubt inhibited the flow of my qi. Again nothing could be further from the truth. I have spent most of my life in martial arts. I witnessed my sensei perform acupuncture more times than I could count and I wholeheartedly expected it to work, ergo my qi was doing just fine.

In regards to your criticism of my ” jamming of needles” remark all I can say is that there is this concept called sarcasm that you might want to look into. Quite a few people us sarcasm these days and the ability to recognize its use is a valuable tool. I will however revise my statement so that you can understand it a bit better.

It had to be the acupuncture because we all know that our diet has considerable less to do with our health then inserting and manipulating fine filiform needles into one or more of the points on the meridians in which you qi flows.

Now I know you think me to be a monster or some tool of big pharma. I truly believe that the majority of people performing acupuncture believe that they are helping people, providing a valuable service and that acupuncture works but the science simply is not there to support it. At best studies have shown It to be an incredibly good placebo when it comes to pain management. If you feel that it helps you get through your daily aches and pains and you get your money’s worth then who am I to argue. But when someone has a real medical crisis and they convinced by misinformation to forgo medical procedures that are proven to work I take issue with it. If you claim that acupuncture is harmless I will refer you to this link to prove otherwise. http://whatstheharm.net/acupuncture.html