Category: Acupuncture

Aroma Acupoint Therapy

"Aroma acupoint therapy" demonstrates how the combination of several nonsensical ideas involving essential oils and acupuncture produces, unsurprisingly, yet another nonsensical CAM treatment.

/ November 5, 2020

Acupuncture and cupping for adult idiopathic scoliosis at the VA

A veteran's adult idiopathic scoliosis was treated at a VA health clinic with acupuncture and cupping in an attempt to correct his spinal curvature, an impossibility without surgery. The ideology of so-called integrative medicine is firmly entrenched at the VA, to the detriment of veterans and taxpayers.

/ October 8, 2020

Taopatch Offers Everything… Except Science

Taopatch promises all kinds of vague benefits, but the mechanism of action is implausible and what they call scientific proof is no such thing.

/ September 1, 2020
Acupuncture needles

UK Recommendations Wrong on Acupuncture

NICE draft recommendations on acupuncture don't even make sense from an EBM perspective, and utterly fail to consider SBM principles.

/ August 5, 2020

Chinese government recommends bear bile for COVID-19

The Chinese Government is relentlessly promoting TCM for COVID-19, including a remedy containing bear bile, which is cruelly extracted from the gall bladders of living wild or "farmed" bears.

/ May 7, 2020
Acupuncture needles

Acupuncture for Migraine Unconvincing

The evidence for the effectiveness of acupuncture in migraines remains unconvincing, and a new study changes nothing.

/ April 1, 2020

Legislative Alchemy 2019: Acupuncturists score Medicare coverage and scope of practice expansion 

Through the magic of legislative alchemy, acupuncture has already scored some big wins in 2020, including Medicare coverage.

/ February 13, 2020
Acupuncture

More evidence that acupuncture doesn’t work for chronic pain

Acupuncture is a theatrical placebo whose real history has been retconned beyond recognition. A new systematic review of systematic reviews of acupuncture for chronic pain highlights that conclusion and catalogues the many weaknesses in the design of acupuncture clinical trials.

/ January 6, 2020

NCCIH surveys physicians on their recommendation of “complementary health approaches,” with depressing results

The NCCIH recently published a study examining the percentage of US physicians who had recommended "complementary health approaches" to their patients in the last year. The percentages are far higher than they should be.

/ December 16, 2019
Acupuncture for xerostomia

Spinning a negative acupuncture study: Same as it ever was

Investigators at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center reported the results of a trial of acupuncture for xerostomia (dry mouth) secondary to radiation therapy for head and neck cancers. It was a negative trial, but investigators still tried to spin it as positive, but with a twist. There was a large difference between results found at M.D. Anderson and the second site in China....

/ December 9, 2019