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A comment on The $100B per year back pain industry is mostly a hoax. Parent comment

Re:The $100B per year back pain industry is mostly a hoax by Hasknewbie on Wednesday July 05, 2017 @12:36AM (#14700003)
Seriously. I always roll my eyes when somebody claims that acupuncture "does work," because the placebo effect worked for them on multiple occasions. Typically, it comes from people who don't want to admit they were cured by a placebo, otherwise it would work all the time, for everyone.

There, fixed it for you.

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Re:The $100B per year back pain industry is mostly a hoax by DanBC on Wednesday July 05, 2017 @03:19AM (#14700467)
Here's a link showing that placebo is better than placebo for some types of long term pain.

https://discover.dc.nihr.ac.uk/portal/article/4000672/acupun...

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Re:The $100B per year back pain industry is mostly a hoax by Hasknewbie on Wednesday July 05, 2017 @08:18AM (#14701767)
Not all meta-studies agree on this. But the real point in my opinion is this: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19250001

Acupuncture is a sham because sham acupuncture appears to do just as well. What matters is if you get stung by a real needle. All the acupuncture-specific things, like meridians, points, qi, are just tosh, which means pseudo-acupuncture can be performed by any nurse, and does not require a costly 'expert'. So "real acupuncture" is just, in fact, an unnecessary ornament that can be discarded.

Having been raised by your average new-age / alternative medicine parents, and having believed and used these things until my mid-twenties, I'm not surprised that needles do have an effect. I am also not surprised it does not come from acupuncture proper.

If you say 'having vague pain points stung by needles is better than placebo', then I would agree with you, but that's quite different than saying that acupuncture works.

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Re:The $100B per year back pain industry is mostly a hoax by DanBC on Wednesday July 05, 2017 @10:15AM (#14702541)
This more recent meta analysis shows that acupuncture has a statistically significant difference from sham acupuncture.

You don't have to read the study, this point is made on the page I linked to.

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