Has anybody try acupuncture to loose weight?
It sounds ridiculous and IMHO it's likely quite ridiculous.
The wonder of it is how many journal articles there are for this....so far most of them are from English language TCM (Traditional Chinese Medicine) journals. Which could mean something or nothing. Similar to how just about anyone can write a book about anything there are some pretty fast-and-loose journals out there. So in terms of peer review and standard of evidence for publishing: The journal of Parapsychology isn't on par with JAMMA or the stricter Physical Review journals.
I'm still sorting through some of them to find anything with good info but if you check out:
Here a trial was done between SDS (talking to people), Qigong and TAT (Accupressure). TAT was the best of the lot but the effect was freaking small. 1-3Kg more weight loss over 24 weeks!!
Some neuro stuff attributing the alleged effect to appetite supression.
One study's abstract claimed that electro acupuncture was slightly better than caloric restriction. Can't get the full text of that one right now.
One systematic review stated:
The evidence related to acupuncture, acupressure, dietary supplements, homeopathy and hypnotherapy. Except for hypnotherapy, Ephedra sinica and other ephedrine-containing dietary supplements the weight of the evidence is not convincing enough to suggest effectiveness.
Bunch of journal articles in Chinese...despite being able to read it better than my wife - who is Chinese - I'm nowhere near able to read an out-of-field technical article.
While my wife was in med school I got to meet a colleague of hers who was doing EBM (Evidence Based Medicine) on Acupuncture. Some interesting results - certain ailments like 'tennis elbow' were treated better than by 'traditional' treatments (steroids)...and others...like reducing pain in childbirth....not so much! :D
It may seem kind of out there to some that Acupuncture can actually treat diseases...then again after reading TCM literature and the myriad of aliments which are claimed to be treatable this way....you almost think they are bound to get SOMETHING right.
By-the-by please don't confuse the idea that acupuncture is a reasonable treatment for certain very specific diseases as an endorsement of acupuncture/Qi/'energy theory' or any other TCM nonsense as a viable model for medicine. From my brief sampling it seems that as a treatment acupuncture is more ineffective than not (across diseases). So even though it can treat a disease it's still a lousy way to think about your body.
again i will state that since my weight loss staples(acupuncture) i have less of an appetite and i eat less at a setting. 2 girls that work with me and we all feel the same. i would recommend them anytime.
wow! sarkeizen you really took to this and went out the way to show how u felt on acupuncture.
Really? I gave an overview of a sample of the medical data - I fully admit that this is imperfect as there is a lot of it. I did prioritize journals that are well recognized over those which are not - for the reasons given. I also did not read the Chinese journals as I doubt I could represent the article accurately. The only thing that was purely my own opinion was talking about Acupuncture as a validation of the theory behind it. I just wanted it clear that one doesn't imply the other. In other words acupuncture might help you lose weight but that doesn't mean there are Qi channels running through your body.
I am neither recommending nor not recommending the use of this but it's important to have objective data on somethings efficacy in order to make an informed opinion.
Cheers!
I believe that believing (in isolation) doesn't really have any intrinsic effect on the physical world...
Now either:
a) I am right and that's the way things are.
b) I am wrong....but because 'believing makes it so' it is now true...and the universe, law of attraction, monkeys, whatever makes my belief the correct one.
The era of 'believing makes it so' is now over. Enjoy the rest of your life.
Several ladies @ my former work got the ear staples. Some claimed to notice a difference, some did not, and some just got horrible infections where the staples were. I personally can't speak to the effectiveness of acupuncture for weight loss, but I have had many friends use it for pain management and they swear by it.
All the medical journals are sourced out of Western medicing practices. Medicine doesn't have to be Western (i.e., doesn't HAVE to buy Dr. Smith a new Mercedes) in order to work. And on the flip-side of that same coin, sometimes even when medicine IS Western, documented in the journals, and VERY expensive ... it still DOESN'T work.
nursemeow: Then you really don't know too much about the medical community's view on holistic practice.
I really can't say that I would speak for the medical community. However anybody should be skeptical of anyone's ability to do so. I do know this: at a number of medical colleges EBM is the watchword and with good reason. Peoples systems are complex and because of this good science is hard to do...and certainly not something you can do off the cuff. One only has to look at things like some of the research correlating disease with gender and genes to see this in relief. There are plenty of examples of western treatments which were based on a systemic hypothesis (just like acupuncture is) done for at least a decade and when actually analyzed using really large sample groups - it was realized that it was dead wrong.
'Believing makes it so' is, as a prescription the antithesis of the scientific method It ultimately means that it doesn't matter what treatment is used. You might as well practice homeopathy...
stellajo:All the medical journals are sourced out of Western medicing practices.
No they are sourced out of the scientific method. You name one system that is demonstrably superior to that and you'll have an argument. Until then...
stellajo:Medicine doesn't have to be Western (i.e., doesn't HAVE to buy Dr. Smith a new Mercedes) in order to work.
That's what logicians call a 'strawman'. Nobody said that medicine has to be western to work. I did clearly state my reasons for omitting asian journals. I'll give them again:
i) Journals written in Chinese - Although I have a modest grasp of written Chinese I don't think I can accurately represent this. Because the article is in another language the search engines don't index the abstract. So there is no way to know if this is a useful article or not.
ii) Asian Journals written in English - as in any set of Journals there are ones with high standards of evidence and ones with low. I don't know where to place the 'JTCM' is it like JAMMA? or is it like the Journal of Parapsychology? I'll also say that the majority of those appeared to be case studies which in any ranking would be the lowest grade of evidence.
stellajo:And on the flip-side of that same coin, sometimes even when medicine IS Western, documented in the journals, and VERY expensive ... it still DOESN'T work.
Which is highly irrelevant. The question isn't 'Can people make a mistake?' but 'How likely is it that research X is mistaken?'
Now if you can point to me an area of medicine where there were a dozen well-controlled studies with strong conclusions that turned out to be incorrect. Then I'd like to see it.
Really? Isn't that another word for "placebo effect"? ;-)
Still waiting for the reductionist scientific method to explain how the placebo effect works ...
The era of 'believing makes it so' is now over.
Really? Isn't that another word for "placebo effect"? ;-)
Not exactly. 'believing makes it so' is a universal statement. The placebo effect is limited to specific phenomina where it can be demonstrated. There is a measurable placebo effect with some drugs, zero with others and when it is measurable, as far as I have read anyway it's always small.
Still waiting for the reductionist scientific method to explain how the placebo effect works
Oooh snap! You appear to be implying that it's somehow beyond the ability to explain on the basis that nobody has explained it to you. Poor logic for a lawyer ( but I freely admit my ignorance of how law is practiced - perhaps it's more about rhetoric than reason.)
As I said when you see the placebo effect in a journal article it is small - so why exactly would someone research something where the effect is negligible. I'm willing to bet if there is a body of medical evidence showing a large effect of placebo - then you'll find along with it - at least an attempt to explain the neurophysiology.
Perhaps the problem is that you're just "waiting".
Why is my "waiting" a problem? I find it amusing how people who believe in reductionism insist that science will give us all of the answers if we just have the patience to collect all of the data. I don't mind waiting because there are a whole lot of answers I don't expect science to deliver in my lifetime.
As for why someone would research any medical question, let alone placebo effect, I am reasonably confident that it depends on who is willing to pay for the research, and how much they are willing to pay for it. Frankly, I'm surprised nobody has looked into it yet ... imagine, if a company actually did figure out the neurophysiological processes (assuming that is what is responsible, of course), they could bypass that whole expensive and tedious process of developing drugs and getting them past the FDA.
English prime does not hide the fact that this is a poorly drawn inference, elevated to an assumption of truth. Bad scientist! Stick with truth claims that can be verified!
:-P
Why is my "waiting" a problem?
Depends on what you mean. Why is it a logical problem? If you are implying that because science hasn't explained it to you it is not explainable. Then that's obviously Argumentum ad ignorantiam.
Why is it a problem in a more general sense because you rather appear to be sitting on your ass waiting for someone to dissuade you. As 'rich' as others have implied medical researchers to be. I'm pretty sure they don't have the money to come ring your doorbell when they come up with the neurophysiology of a particular placebo effect.
It's also a problem if you want to be rationally persuaded. Which means you're going to have to be able to understand the evidence should it be brought to you. I likely have significantly more math education than you do. How would you expect to be convinced?
I find it amusing how people who believe in reductionism insist that science will give us all of the answers if we just have the patience to collect all of the data.
That might be amusing but I doubt it applies to many. Even physicists know that there are limits to the data we can collect. It certainly is miles away from anything I said.
As for why someone would research any medical question, let alone placebo effect, I am reasonably confident that it depends on who is willing to pay for the research, and how much they are willing to pay for it.
...and you'll likely find that as the thing in question becomes demonstratably small the lower the probability that people are willing to put very much money into it.
Again my argument holds.
Frankly, I'm surprised nobody has looked into it yet
You're arguing from ignorance here.
... imagine, if a company actually did figure out the neurophysiological processes (assuming that is what is responsible, of course), they could bypass that whole expensive and tedious process of developing drugs and getting them past the FDA.
So many logical flaws in that...
No, since there is no reason to believe (and some evidence to the contrary) that a particular placebo would have less possibilities of detrimental side-effects. Depending on what falls under your definition of 'placebo' there is some research that demonstrates how stress affects the Thermic Effect of Feeding there is data on how this plays out in AN patients....but you'd know that if you read medical journals.
Likewise your conclusion requires the effect to be demonstrably large (a point you seem to avoid - rhetoric at work?)
English prime does not hide the fact that this is a poorly drawn inference, elevated to an assumption of truth.
Uh no, rhetoric girl....I said 'it appears'. So you're not even remotely correct. Perhaps that only works on juries.
Incidentally this is probably better off in email...way off topic. :D.
I'm thinking of getting acupuncture for weight loss. How is it going?
Figure out what type of eater you are and you might just find the answer to permanent weight loss.
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