Through time, studies haven’t been able to
present convincing results about the effectiveness of acupuncture. Anyway, the
popularity of this alternative medicine, which involves inserting needles into
specific points in the body, has increased considerably during the last years.
Recently, some studies have shown that acupuncture have effects, but only
modest effects. This result doesn’t give a clear answer to the main question
and the debate keeps going.
The important issue is to have instructed professionals applying the acupuncture to patients. All kind of medicines have side-effects if they are performed or supplied by inexpert people.
What doctors agree with is -an effective treatment or a placebo- acupuncture has helped since ancient times to cure different types of pains such as chronic pains, back pains or headache, chemotherapy nausea and vomiting and in postoperative dental pain addiction, stroke rehabilitation, menstrual cramps, tennis elbow, fibromyalgia, osteoarthritis, carpal tunnel syndrome, and asthma. In all these cases, this treatment may be useful as a whole alternative medicine or as an assistant treatment.
What doctors agree with is -an effective treatment or a placebo- acupuncture has helped since ancient times to cure different types of pains such as chronic pains, back pains or headache, chemotherapy nausea and vomiting and in postoperative dental pain addiction, stroke rehabilitation, menstrual cramps, tennis elbow, fibromyalgia, osteoarthritis, carpal tunnel syndrome, and asthma. In all these cases, this treatment may be useful as a whole alternative medicine or as an assistant treatment.
After all, what is more important: Whether the treatment is
helping people or not, or the technical data?
In my opinion, as long as something is not alleged to bring possible bad consequences to health, it can be a complement to conventional medicine.
ReplyDeleteThe problem is when people rejects completely conventional medicine, which is the one proved to be effective because of the researches carried out through history, and only look for alternatives therapies that are not 100% dependable.
ReplyDeleteI think that most conventional doctors don’t believe in alternative medicine. However, the most important thing is that acupuncture treatments have helped a lot of people. Maybe it is just expectation or a belief that it will work, but if you are sick, you have to end all the possibilities and try new things. In my opinion, if people want to get the best result, they should combine both, conventional and alternative medicine.
As far as I know there is no enough evidence that can prove the effectiveness of acupuncture. It is difficult to conduct trials on this type of alternative medicine, because there is no way of having a control group and an experimental one. In that sense the only data that can support the benefits of acupuncture might be the people who have tried with the purpose of getting better from a specific and complicated pain (adding sciatica and rheumatoid arthritis to those you already mention). Any type of therapy is going to be helpful as long as you are rigorous and careful with you doctors instruction, no matter if s/he is an alternative or conventional doctor.
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