{"id":13830,"date":"2014-05-15T16:06:38","date_gmt":"2014-05-15T22:06:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.miridiatech.com\/news\/?p=13830"},"modified":"2018-05-25T04:08:09","modified_gmt":"2018-05-25T10:08:09","slug":"belief-and-healing-part-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.miridiatech.com\/news\/2014\/05\/belief-and-healing-part-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Belief and Healing: Part 2"},"content":{"rendered":"

In my last blog, I touched on the topic of the Placebo Effect in acupuncture (click here if you missed it)<\/strong><\/a><\/span>.<\/strong> To briefly review, one of the most powerful influences on patient healing is the patient’s belief about the treatment received. If the patient believes s\/he is getting effective treatment, healing is much more likely.\u00a0Controlled studies of the placebo effect have shown it to improve chest pain, warts, asthma, arthritis, cancer,\u00a0and many other medical conditions.<\/p>\n

I also posed the question whether acupuncture is merely an elaborate placebo treatment, which, as you might imagine, elicited a number of responses.<\/span> Thanks to everyone\u00a0who commented.<\/h5>\n

\"needling\"I’ll tell you what I think: Yes, there’s a placebo dimension to acupuncture.<\/strong> There undoubtedly must be, just as there’s a placebo dimension to every other treatment, medication, procedure or interaction with a healthcare provider.<\/em> Each of these does something to influence patient belief, which in turn influences healing. Just as the presence of a doctor in a white coat has been shown to increase blood pressure, the presence of a caring acupuncturist may bring feelings of well being. This is no surprise to anyone.<\/p>\n

Of course, there are real problems designing good studies of “sham” acupuncture, because it’s hard to “fake” inserting a needle into the skin. The sham studies I’ve seen basically take two forms.<\/p>\n

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  1. Studies that use real acupuncture, but in non-acupuncture point areas. This approach is problematic because any needle insertion is going to communicate with the body’s fascial network and affect the main meridians through collateral branches. There is no place in the body where you can insert a needle and not affect the body’s electrical system. Sham locations are not the same as sham acupuncture.<\/li>\n
  2. Studies that use “fake” acupuncture with elaborate, non-piercing fake needles, designed to deceive the patient into believing the needle has actually pierced the skin. In this case, there is a piercing sensation as the sharpened point presses on the skin without penetrating. The problem with this approach is that you are still stimulating the point with acupressure and nociceptive input. Should we be surprised if such stimulation produces the same results as needle penetration? No.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
    Not surprisingly, recent studies employing sham acupuncture have wrongly asserted that it is just as effective as real acupuncture. Let’s take a look at a couple of cases:<\/strong><\/h5>\n

    A 2009 study by Daniel C. Cherkin, PhD., treated 638 adults with chronic low back pain, using one of the following approaches:<\/p>\n