Acupuncture - Science topic

Thank you for your answers but your replies don't really meet the topic whether there are distinct effects of what different research teams consider as:

- magnetic upward and downward fields (relative to gravity) effects,

- or only magnetic field direction (regardless of spatial orientation),

- or magnetic north and south polarities (by the way, note that many papers in English use reversed namings of the North and South poles of magnets!).

To help understand this discussion, here are examples of papers mentioning this side of the issue (whether positive or no effect):

- Life on Magnet: Long-Term Exposure of Moderate Static Magnetic Fields on the Lifespan and Healthspan of Mice

- Hematological parameters’ changes in mice subchronically exposed to static magnetic fields of different orientations

- Effect of pre-sowing treatment with permanent magnetic field on germination and growth of chilli

- Effects of Cholinergic Receptor Activation and Magnetic Fields on Motor Behavior in Ischemic Gerbils

- Magneto-mechanical stimulation modulates osteocyte fate via the ECM-integrin-CSK axis

- Homogeneous static magnetic field of different orientation induces biological changes in subacutely exposed mice

- Comparative effect of positive and negative static magnetic fields on heart rate and blood pressure in healthy adults

Thanks for your patience!

yes, definitely dear Sir. If we proactively follow our traditional system of medicines we can prevent so many common seasonal diseases as well as minimizes the use of modern medicine except emergency conditions.

Yesterday kicked off the first-ever World Health Organization (WHO) summit dedicated to traditional medicine, including disciplines as wide-ranging as Ayurveda, yoga, homeopathy and complementary therapies. Billions of people use traditional healing systems, so some researchers have called for more rigorous science, such as randomized control trials or systematic reviews, to understand these practices and to ensure the safety of products such as herbal medicines...

I’m surprised that acupuncture didn’t help. Keep in mind that this is not a treatment recommendation but just a comment from personal 20-year-long professional experience as an acupuncturist. Here is what I do with patients with “neuropathy”: first, carefully examine what causes the symptoms. Oftentimes, the diagnosis is established purely from tests and, fortunately, does not reflect the reality. If the patient doesn’t have wounds that don’t heal on his or her toes, the toes are not red and/or red and/or swollen, has no sensation in toes, the toes are much darker than the proximal to them skin, and the main complaint is periodic tingling and/or numbness, then look over the feet. You should be able to notice any even slight difference in color or swelling. Then gently palpate the boundaries of the swelling—and I mean very slight swelling. You should be able to feel with your fingertips tightness along those boundaries. Acupuncture needles can be used, but so can be acupressure/tui na. Using your fingertips, you can massage proximally (in the direction of the patient’s heart) across those boundaries in soft tissues. Your goal is to gently stretch the soft tissues that form that tightness in the boundaries after which the circulation and nerve signal transmission is impaired. After a few minutes, the patient usually reports warms extending to his or her toes—this means that you found the cause of the symptoms. This treatment, if it works, would need to be repeated once every day for three days, then every other day for the next three days, then two and then one time a week, until the symptoms stop returning. I hope this helps.

There is a significant amount of peer reviewed articles on Western Medical Acupuncture showing a reduction of pain.

I am not an expert in this, but my understanding of a 'pragmatic' trial is that you are comparing existing usual practices, so if the protocol you have is for a 2 week course for usual treatment with this method ( are there studies that justify that, or is that just an arbitrary figure that has been plucked out of usual practice ? ) then that would be what you would compare. Possibly look further into the justifications for these time periods, what research or studies support or justify these time periods recommended, or is it simply usual practice but unjustified ? If it is simply usual practices then that is what you should compare. Find someone who has published pragmatic trials and contact them for their views on this and also someone well versed in research methods.

Of course, it can be said that it has started since the cities were formed.

I am not sure, if any of the journals would accept post completion registration. If the paper is already sent out for review, I do not see the need for protocol publication at this time. Some journals request authors to submit the protocol as a supplementary file, if it has not already been published. You can submit the protocol to the same journal as a supplemental digital content.

Please have a look at the following RG links and PDF attachment.

@ Dr. Md Rabiul Alam

In rural and semi-urban India, traditional medicines are still the first option for treatment of diseases. People of all generations understand the importance of traditional medicines, that's why they are gradually shifting towards natural and plant based medicines as stated by Professor Amit Baran Sharangi Sir in his post.

Thanks!

The neurological molecular mechanisms underlying the dysfunction associated with nonbacterial chronic prostatitis/chronic pelvic pain syndrome remain poorly understood. Most acupuncture remains quazi-efficient. I AM SIMULATING TOPOLOGICAL progress.

These days patients often ask health care providers about TCM. Therefore, curriculum for training health care providers should have at least basic content about TCM.

I had a good persistent result of treatment of the post-stroke patient with hemiplegia, which was the consequence of ischemic stroke.

First applied acupuncture, needles, two courses, then electroacupuncture three courses.

The patient was able to walk and independently move his arm, although the high muscle tone could not be completely reduced.

The "Gold Standard" is fMRI imaging.  Eg, if you stimulate a point near the 5th toe, areas in the occipital lobe "light up",  or stimulate a point on the ventral wrist between flexor carpi radialis and palmaris longus, near where your wrist watch might sit, and multiple centres in the cerebellum "light up". You need large sums of money, even in a small pilot study. Costs range from a low of AUD$360 per 1/2 hour at University of Melbourne, Australia through USD$621 per hour at University of Michigan to up to USD$800 per 1/2 hour at Indiana University.

In a situation where the researcher may be able to guess which group a patient belongs to, one strategy is to assess the extent to which the study was blind by getting those doing the assessments to record their guess about which group each patient belonged to. These data should be mentioned when the data are published. There are many published studies that are allegedly blind, but no assessment of blinding was done, so they may not have been blind.

Yes, self Surgical instinct in Animals to alleviate painful disease is a natural tendency, self surgical instinct creates an injury or painful site having high pain threshold than previous; so one forgets the previous pain. This tendency is also seen in some human beings also.

Dear surjit,

We do not know what will happen in coming days, but the issues that he raised in Indian life and literature remain alive today, in fact have become more urgent and are likely to remain urgent at least till the end of the century. The function of literature was both to reveal life and to ‘make men better’.  we will proceed different discourses like aadivasi, kinnar, pravasi, terrorism affected people, technological Hindi, translated literature etc. Prem Chand had identified himself and made the focus of his writings still remains on the fringe of our social, political and literary concerns. Hindi literature under the impact of the West as well through its own experience has become technically more accomplished, more sophisticated, its language more precise and less verbose and its mode more introvert and introspective. Human of all genders to maintain and balance the integrity, peace and purpose of the life and natural way of living with all its simplicity, values and strength. Therefore, although literature has to change with society, authors are still trying to address immutable human questions in new ways and reconcile them with the ever-changing technology that surrounds us.

Acupuncture can never be a part of allopathic medicine. It is an alternative treatment form.

Acupuncture is extremely practioner dependent. The acupuncture doctor has to be thoroughly trained and has to be in practice for years. Countries like China do produce the best of acupuncture medicine.

The experience in the USA  has been no better than placebo. Majority of the acupuncturists are not well trained. Some take a brief course and start an acupuncture clinic. I believe acupuncture can help people with headaches, neck and back pain.

To state ' acupuncture can treat almost all diseases ', sounds like fiction . I would like to see the research. I understand about activating QI. But your statement  provided implies we do not need conventional allopathic therapy any more. No more antibiotics, chemotherapy, radiation therapy , nerve blocks, etc.. 

I am glad you believe in your treatment . You have the passion.. Now, just make the statement true.

I am very interested in your comment regarding western approaches to PTSD and mental illness. I am interested in initiatives and strategies used in other nations and continents particularly for treatment of PTSD.  Please share your perspectives and that of your country.

How is hertongue and pulse?

Very commonly we are using a technique called Trigger point dry needling.  It is a tool used by physiotherapists/physical therapists that has is being used very succesfully.

A company that I trained with is Kinetacore.  If you google that company you can get quite a bit of evidenced based research supporting this techique.  It is a technique that one uses the same tool, the acupuncture needle but, the approach is different.  

STRICTA

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/.

We are considering starting a project at George Washington University.  For more information contact me at hvb@gwu.edu or 443-721-1074. Hannah Bradford

Surface skin contact only with a slight blunt needle which does not penetrate the skin is a good choice.  If the acupuncture is in a site not visible by the recepient. More tricky if they can see.  However, subjects should all be acupuncture naive individuals as those who have received it previously might be able to tell the difference between the actual penetration and the sham condition, which would introduce bias.

What about using a NMR spectroscopy/Gas chromatography/ Liquid Chromatography /metabolomics/genomics approach before/after placement and stimulation of ST 36?  It's the approach I'm trying to work out now to explore a different health intervention.  As a practicing acupuncturist though, I've been thinking it would be interesting to trial with acupuncture.

Rosi,

I don't mind sharing at all.  The primary rationale for our dosage and frequency were to make the treatments clinically feasible within our primary field of athletic training were providers sometimes have limited time with individual patients.  However, we also wanted to build in multiple treatment sessions so that we could potentially train/improve the sensory system on top of treating the symptoms.  Much of the literature suggests that while a single session, of shorter duration, could be effective, multiple treatments result in a more meaningful response in select outcomes.  This was our first effort to determine if the larger responses were train to altering motor control programs within the patient by improving the degrees of freedom available to them.  Based on these results, we believe that is possible and are now working on the next steps to confirm these results.  I hope this helps

Erik

sf36 before and after the trial and mymop before and after treatments.

When using sham acupuncture you need first to answer the question, what variable are you the using sham acupuncture to control. Are you using it to control the placebo effect or are you using it to control the the non-needling aspects of the practitioner interaction with the patient. As previously discussed, needling even minimally has a benefit as does the intention have an effect. It is called sham acupuncture not placebo acupuncture which in itself gives some insight into the issue.

Dear Dagoberto Miguel Hernandez,

i found  lot of paper about that...but I think that paper will be very important for you study.

Have a nice scientific journey!

Dear Murugavel.

Apologies for my delay.

The references given for the Aamir colleague are quiet good.

Nextly I´ll get to publish in Manual Therapy about the evidences of dry needling in cervical muscles at C3 Level regarding to the Deep needling. I´m waiting to the autorization.

I´ve attached the draft paper in advance. I hope it´s interested for you.

Best wishes.

There were studies trying to demonstrate effects of acupuncture to sport performance such as in cycling, etc. Only studies from China that showed a little effect of ear acupuncture in lactic acid clearance after exertion. To my best knowledge, no study showed its effect on speed or any other kind of sport performance.

In my experience.

Acupuncture helped reducing pain particularly due to myofascial trigger point. In addition, some elite athletes will be so nervous or excited that they can not sleep the night before competition. This could be a BIG problem. Medication and acupuncture help in this situation. Acupuncture will help them sleep with fresh wake up in the next morning.

Dear Vijay Shankar,

I hope these articles will be useful for your purpose. 

In my opinion, a multidisciplinary team should be considered  for the protocol (e.g. one psychotherapist and one physician with expertise in Acupuncture and Chinese Medicine).

A systematic review of the evidence for complementary and alternative medicine in infertility.

Clark NA, Will M, Moravek MB, Fisseha S.

Int J Gynaecol Obstet. 2013 Sep;122(3):202-6. doi: 10.1016/j.ijgo.2013.03.032. Epub 2013 Jun 21. Review.

The physiological basis of complementary and alternative medicines for polycystic ovary syndrome.

Raja-Khan N, Stener-Victorin E, Wu X, Legro RS.

Am J Physiol Endocrinol Metab. 2011 Jul;301(1):E1-E10. doi: 10.1152/ajpendo.00667.2010. Epub 2011 Apr 12. Review. Erratum in: Am J Physiol Endocrinol Metab. 2012 Dec 15;303(12):E1506

I agree completely with Dorit. Double blinding is the real possibility.

Yes LLLT is very useful. But you can modify your treatment using cryotherapy(continuous iceing) for 15-20 mins after LLLT .

I read a paper that used untrained acupuncturists as the control arm. It sought to compare strategic vs random placement of the needles.

The efficacy of acupuncture has been confirmed by the gold standard of clinical science - Cochrane Reviews. Both the basic and clinical research of acupuncture have met the gold standard of science as explained in http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2644274/

Another source, written in the Cochrane style of meta-analyses, is:

This is such an interesting and important question. I believe that it is a combination of both – lack of appropriate technology/method and interest (or more precisely financial interest). On the other hand, there is more research out there than you probably realize due to a lack of common language. This research can sometimes fall under non-local healing, prayer effects, shamanism, energy healing, healing touch, qi gong, Traditional Chinese Medicine, Reiki, etc. These studies may or may not specifically address measured frequencies but they certainly do address the existence, use and effects of the human bio-field. There are also studies that attempt to understand the bio-field through triangulation using physiological bio-markers.

As for prominent researchers, I would definitely recommend checking out Beverly Rubik. There is a profile on her and discussion of research in this area here: http://www.faim.org/energymedicine/measurement-human-biofield.html

Here are links to a couple articles as well:

You might do a search for dissertations on the subject as this would, ideally, provide some current research and a thorough literature review.

Thank you for your replies, I have already read the papers you suggested and the references they cited (except one which is a chinese book), hoped there were others..

A classical RCT design seeks to determine the cause and effect of one variable only, and traditionally has been applied to drug efficacy studies. This design doesn't suit CAM so well, as there are many known elements to CAM which can influence a health outcome such as the therapeutic relationship, the setting, the patient expectations, on top of the actual complementary therapy being practiced. Furthermore when you assess the effectiveness of a CAM approach to health, you are acknowleding that all aspects of the person are important and affect how they feel. How a person feels is measured often with Health Related Quality of LIfe Questionnaires, however these questionnaires do not always contain all the items that are deemed important to a patient. Thus you can incorporate tools that allow a patient to nominate items that concern them (see MYMOP and MYCaW). When you analyse these types of data you can see that there are many elements that patients consider important in relation to their health. A whole system approach to health research seeks to incorporate the evaluation of the whole person, on the understanding that total quality of life is contributed to by all aspects such as physical, social, functional, emotional, psychological and spiritual health. This means you have more variables to consider when carrying out statistical analysis in comparison to a straightforward analysis that you would carry out in an RCT. For the CAM field specifically thisWSR approach can acknowledge the broader effects of holistic healthcare in a way that RCT designs do not. It can also identify variables that should be incorporated into comparative effectiveness research design

Thank you very much, Malina and Livio, your contribution is much appreciated.

A pin prick is situated within a terminal arborization of the primary sensory neuron and its localization is felt therefore within its own cutaneous sensory field. By manipulating the needle (rotation, translation in depth) the patient feels this sensory field expanding. This could be due to an Adenosine inflammatory type of secondary hyperalgesia. Similar to the inflammatory model of a capsaicine injection.

-> However might glia cells present an alternative, or complementary view?

Satellite glia cells were described in the DRG, presumed to be mere structural supportive elements, nurtering the neurons. However, very remarkebly, "sandwich synapses" are described between two neurons and their sandwiched satellite cell in between. A daisy chain clustering is described, suggesting a network within the DRG (*).

(*) Transglial transmission at the dorsal root ganglion sandwich synapse: glial cell to postsynaptic neuron communication. Rozanski GM, Li Q, Stanley EF.Eur J Neurosci. 2013 Apr;37(8):1221-8. doi: 10.1111/ejn.12132. Epub 2013 Jan 25.

Therefore, (sustained) manipulation of the needle could also set in motion a recruiting effect that exceeds the properties of the primary cutaneous sensory filed. This recruitment via satellite cells could make the needle felt within an expanding evoked sensory field. This could explain the "needling sensation" after manipulation, very different from the initial perforation prick sensation.

Would you agree with this complementary view?

Cardiovascular responses are included right away. Other laboratories did confirm. Thee is evidence for the long loop via arcuate nucleus.

-> Midbrain vlPAG inhibits rVLM cardiovascular sympathoexcitatory responses during electroacupuncture. Tjen-A-Looi SC, Li P, Longhurst JC. Am J Physiol Heart Circ Physiol. 2006 Jun;290(6):H2543-53. Epub 2006 Jan 20.

-> J Appl Physiol (1985). 2009 Feb;106(2):620-30. doi: 10.1152/japplphysiol.91277.2008. Epub 2008 Dec 12.Long-loop pathways in cardiovascular electroacupuncture responses. Li P1, Tjen-A-Looi SC, Guo ZL, Fu LW, Longhurst JC.

Here is an example that acupuncture research not only explained many puzzles in acupuncture but also explained puzzles in conventional biomedical research - e.g. research results on organizer in developmental biology. Furthermore, this line of acupuncture research has already correctly predicted clinical observations of acupuncture and results of conventional biomedical research: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2644274/

10 years ago I performed a surgery for undescended testis in a child, 3 years old, with risk of malignant hyperthermia and accompanying allergic status. The parents practices alternative methods of cure, so they asked to us the surgery to be performed with acupuncture analgesia. This was done by one of our leading specialist in medical acupuncture. Despite my concerns the child manages well the surgery. In another similar case the anesthesia was done under hypnosis.

"Omnia tempus habent"

Prof.Zafar, I read that the leptine metabolism is similar as insulin, and the body at moment thar we do not know, lose the sensibility for this hormone, I think that acupuncture stimuli enhance the sensibility to insulin it will happend with leptine.

Esoteric acupuncture may be interesting but should we not first get this technique linked to neurology and physiology?

How exciting and congratulations. Let me know your progress!

Fibromialgia:

In MTC is considered to be a BI PEI, Cold Wind Dampness, consequently the treatment must be desasrrollado principally with Moxas and not with needles only, even the use only of needles can aggravate the picture before a crisis. This is devido to that the regulatory primary beginning is the beginning termogenico, where the needles are necessary in the pictures of predominance heat and the moxa in the pictures of cold predominance. It is fundamental in the fibromialgia a purification of the organs that correspond to the area wood, that is to say to DAN and GAN (Liver)

We can find all of this defficiencies thar wil change the choice of points. To the study will try use general points who will improve Middle warmer functions