Then your evidence is worse than worthless, it’s misleading. He didn’t track it? A case so likely (ha!) to overturn medical knowledge? Doesn’t this seem just a weeee bit suspicious to you? Do you really take stock in such unsupported stories? Did you know that the word “gullible” isn’t in the dictionary?
I’m not sure what you’re saying. This isn’t a story I heard or a FOAF account. This is a man whose foot I saw and touched myself numerous times over a six month period as I was an assistant in his treatment. It’s a story YOU heard, of course, through me, so you’re absolutely right to be skeptical, especially as I’m not about to break confidentiality by posting his name and phone number on an internet message board as “evidence”. I have no need to be suspicious, however, as I experienced it first hand. I don’t know if his doctor published because I haven’t seen the man in four years and didn’t keep in touch with him - he was a client, not a friend.
This is IMHO, I wouldn’t have mentioned it in GQ, where I’d expect to be asked for a cite, since I know I can’t legally provide one. I mentioned it as one of the more amazing successes I’ve seen, in the same sentence I admitted many failures. Truly, this is one of those times when my post is my cite. I trust myself. You just need to decide if you trust me. If not, oh well. No skin off my nose - I feel secure with my reputation here.
Has something struck a nerve with you? This medical encyclopedia seems to say that seeking out alternative medicine while under a real doctor’s care for diabetic foot infections isn’t a big deal at all. Are you saying that the Gale Encyclopedia of Medicine is run by dupes? Or just making stuff up? Not being familiar with diabetic foot diseases, are they considered to usually be incurable short of amputation, or does recovery sometimes occur, either through drug treatment or other therapies?
For the record, I have had acupuncture treatments for severe allergies when I was much younger. I do not now nor have I ever believed in chi. I generally think “energy centers” and so on is just nonsense. However, I did achieve a high degree of relief from my allergies during acupuncture treatment, however, the relief was usually temporary – days to maybe a couple weeks of relief, at most. I’ve since gone on to take allergy shots which have been of greater success… and cheaper, too.
I have no idea why acupuncture seemed to work. Yes, it could be a placebo, but I really can’t say for sure. But the idea that people may feel better after acupuncture doesn’t strike me as an audacious claim, but any claim that a specific course of acupuncture (i.e., the doctor healed the patient because the needle was placed on his wrists instead of his lower back) of course deserves thorough scrutiny. (I’m reminded of James Randi telling a fortune-telling friend of his to give exactly opposite readings to clients, and the clients walked away just as satisfied.)
My father has gone to an acupuncturist 9for relief of shoulder pain). It seems to provide quite a bit of relief; and he prefers it to taking anti-inflammatory drugs. So i would say, tryt it, but only under a doctor’s supervision. I can see some advantages-if you can get pain relief 9without the side effects of drugs0, then thats a demonstarble benefit. The only thing that bothers me; it’s been in the West for 60+ years-and i’ve yet to see any definitive studies of its effectiveness.
There have been plenty of studies but most of them were not well controlled and the results were mixed. Generally the better the study the less positive the results. Search the Bandolier web site for “acupuncture” and you will see what I mean (Bandolier as an Oxford based journal for Evidence Based Healthcare).
On the other hand this does not mean that acupuncture will not help any individual patient (see the various testimonies reported in this thread) nor is it necessarily any less effective than something like physiotherapy. Conducting systematic, controlled, randomised trials on complementary and alternative medicines is notoriously difficult - in part because they are used on long term, non-specific conditions. Whatever the results of the trials and for whatever reason, some people clearly feel better (whether with symptoms relieved or just a greater sense of wellbeing) after the therapy.
Does he also think that massages don’t help?
Pain is registered by the brain. So’s sight. But you still can’t see without eyes.
My bolding.
Continuing from my previous post about high quality trials and their mixed results, I think this is a key problem with most complementary and alternative therapies. There are clearly successes and there are equally failures but because the practitioners are wedded to a model of anatomy and physiology that is entirely without evidence they cannot progress and develop improved techniques. The theories are useless for making predictions and - unfortunately - many of the therapists like it that way. The mindset is not helped by doctors/scientists who refuse to look at results and assert that - because the theory does not make sense - the therapy cannot be effective.
I think from the brighter people on both sides there is now some movement. Doctors and scientists are getting less enamoured of the successes of conventional medicine and recognising that it is failing to satisfy large groups of people (if everybody was satisfied with conventional medicine there would not be the explosive growth in alternatives!) and are willing to talk to the complementary therapists while some complementary and alternative therapists are looking for acceptance even if it means allowing challenges to the long held theories.
I agree. Any case like this- on a par with Jesus bringing the dead back to life- should have gone into a medical journal and also been heavily reported in the news.
WhyNot- sorry, I don’t beleive your story.
I tried it 1-2 times a week for about 10 weeks (coupled with really nasty Chinese herbal teas) to treat chronic fatigue syndrome, and it didn’t help at all. My parents made me do it - at that point, they were so desperate they even marched me kicking and screaming off to a homeopath. With time, I’ve gotten mostly better, although I’m still not quite as energetic as I was before I got sick.
On the other hand, my father finds it pretty helpful for a pinched nerve in his neck that acts up every so often. So YMMV.
A totally honest question here: What makes you say that curing a diabetic’s foot disease is like bringing the dead back to life? I really know nothing of these diseases.
I’m no expert, of course, but I can’t imagine that if a real doctor were supervising the case, the patient may have been doing acupuncture in addition to other therapies, like maybe antibiotics or other medicines. I’m just not sure if this is the medical miracle that the opposing sides are making it out to be.
“Necrotic”= dead*. The tissue of the foot was dead and was brought back to life.
- I am somewhat oversimplifting for the laydudes.
Not being a doctor, I don’t know for sure if tissue that is without a doubt necrotic can be made whole again. A qualified professional will have to answer that. But if this is not commonly held to be possible, such a case would be groundbreaking, especially if acupuncture can be shown to the the reason or even a significantly contributing factor.
So until I see such strong evidence, WhyNot’s story carries about as much weight as the one my grandfather told of playing poker with Bigfoot in the Sugar Swamp and winning big. In short, I don’t believe you.
Here are some cites about Necrotic tissue on the foot caused by diabetes:
(PDF- this article recommends early amputation in many cases)
(PDF) This article shows what happens when acupunture is used to treat this condition:* it caused necrotizing fasciitis.*
http://www.future-drugs.com/doi/abs/10.1586/14787210.3.2.279?cookieSet=1&journalCode=eri
Necrotizing fasciitis is a rapidly progressive, life-threatening infection and a true infectious disease emergency. Despite much clinical experience, the management of this disease remains suboptimal, with mortality rates remaining approximately 30%. Necrotizing fasciitis rarely presents with obvious signs and symptoms and delays in diagnosis enhance mortality. Therefore, successful patient care depends on the physician’s acumen and index of suspicion. Prompt surgical debridement, intravenous antibiotics, fluid and electrolyte management, and analgesia are mainstays of therapy. Adjunctive clindamycin, hyperbaric oxygen therapy and intravenous immunoglobulin are frequently employed in the treatment of necrotizing fasciitis, but their efficacy has not been rigorously established. Improved understanding of the pathogenesis of necrotizing fasciitis has revealed new targets for rationally designed therapies to improve morbidity and mortality."
http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/resolve?id=doi:10.1086/504945&erFrom=-6469595944951099891Guest
Acupuncture use is increasing in the United States. Despite multiple studies, the efficacy and safety of acupuncture are poorly defined. We report a previously healthy patient who developed a thigh abscess, bacteremia, and diabetic ketoacidosis after acupuncture treatment. We review the literature on infectious complications of acupuncture."
http://www.aafp.org/afp/20030715/323.html
Trauma, postoperative infections, occult diverticulitis, strangulated femoral hernia with subcutaneous extravasation of infected contents, cancer, and even acupuncture have been cited as precipitating events in necrotizing soft tissue infections.’
So let me make this very *very *clear- acupuncture causes Necrotizing fasciitis (often leading to death or ampuation)- it is not a cure for Necrotizing fasciitis.
Just because you think somebody is presenting misinformation is no excuse to do the same thing. Acupuncture does not cause necrotizing fasciitis. I realize you probably just made an error, because I think what you mean is that the use of needles sometimes leads to infection.
The last article you cited states:
Following your example, I could say this means that operations, hernias, and cancer also cause necrotizing fasciitis. Of course, I would be wrong.
I agree with the statement about the case in Singapore:
Doy. Yes, one should establish and follow guidelines on cleanliness and sterility before practicing acupuncture. One should establish and follow guidelines on cleanliness and sterility before using needles in a clinical setting period. That’s the conclusion I draw from the info you have cited.
Every acupuncturist in my state, and every one sitting for the NCCAOM test I mentioned upthread, has to take and pass the same Clean Needle certification class and test that nurses and chiropractors using needles needs to pass. I don’t know if that specific class is required by doctors or if they receive the same training in their schooling and don’t need the extra certificate.
This thread is really disappointing me. WhyNot is a longstanding and well-respected member of this community and I’m appalled that a few of you are basically calling her a liar. She is only reporting her personal experience, and has said that sometimes acupuncture does not seem to work. In her, and my, experience, sometimes it does have dramatic positive effects, though. It clearly is not well-understood, but I think that there is enough anecdotal evidence to suggest that sometimes acupuncture is very helpful, even if it isn’t always. Can we open our minds just a crack, people? Consider that maybe western medicine doesn’t know absolutely everything?
I’m sure you aren’t going to believe this either, but my dad (the chiropractor/acupuncturist–double evil!) has a patient who’s family has been coming to him for many years. Their son was in a car accident when he was 18. It was really bad, and the doctors wanted to take him off life support and let him die. The parents called my dad, who did whatever he does on him, including acupuncture, and now, several years later, the guy has a wife and kid. He has some brain damage and a limp, but he isn’t dead like the western doctors said he would be. They remain close friends of my family.
I was in my teens and not on good terms with my dad when all of this happened (he’s not a saint and mostly drives me crazy, but he’s a very good chiropractor), so I don’t know the details of the treatment, but it did happen. And no, it isn’t in medical journals because that isn’t what my dad does. He’s not a scientist or a writer or a researcher. He does what he can to help people, and he refers people that he can’t help to surgeons. But sometimes these alternative medicines work when western medicine doesn’t. Again, I’m sure this will be dismissed by those of you who belive that unless it involves a large sample size and a control group it didn’t happen, but there it is anyway.
Sometimes I need the little smackdown to get the noggin working. For whatever reason, I had blocked out the description of the foot being necrotic, and, in my mind, we were talking about a foot in bad condition due to diabetes. Acupuncture being useful in the latter case didn’t seem like any kind of outrageous claim (so far as I know), but clearly a dead foot is much harder to explain.
I agree that WhyNot doesn’t strike me as someone who makes up fanciful claims. I can only think that that she, like me, may have confused “foot in really bad shape” with necrotic. Reading those cites about the life-threatening nature of necrotizing fasciitis, I have trouble believing that the patient simply hobbled around for months with rotting flesh while getting acupuncture treatments.
It seems more likely that the condition of the foot was not that grave, rather than the alternative that WhyNot simply made that story out of whole cloth.
He was in a wheelchair when we started. Walking by the end.
Look, this thread isn’t about me, and not about this case. There’s not much more I can tell you without violating his rights. (Um…he had a fondness for polo shirts and khakis.)
But I think it does illustrate a huge part of the reason why acupuncture and other alternative modalities aren’t more widely accepted and don’t have large studies backing them up - most acupuncturists aren’t interested in being writers or researchers. Those that are tend to be (not exclusively, but tend to be) Western docs who are looking at acupuncture in a mechanical sense, divorcing it from it’s traditional diagnostic framework.
“We” say: I’ve personally had some really interesting results and “they” say: We don’t believe you unless you’ve been published and “We” say: sorry, I have clients to treat, no time to write and that’s where it ends. Lines are drawn and neither side will budge or accept the other’s methods of proof. There is no significant Academia in the acupuncture world as there is in the medical world. People don’t go to acupuncture school to become researchers. The go to become acupuncturists.
This is slowly changing now that hospitals are bringing in acupuncturists, and they can afford to pay them to not see patients but to do research. But it’s a brand new model. Just as there were few published large scale double blind placebo controlled studies of most of the US pharmacopoeia in 1888, there are few of them on acupuncture today. Give it 100 years and we’ll see where we’re at. Yes, it’s an old system in China, but it’s a brand new baby system in the US, relatively speaking.
Thanks for the info, WhyNot. FWIW, I think that my chances of developing necrotizing fasciitis or any other infection from the use of acupuncture needles is zero. Why? Because my practitioner maintains a clean environment, she is well trained, the needles she uses are sterile, and I am able to bathe and clean myself whenever I like. I have a feeling things were not exactly the same for that poor woman in Singapore.
Also FWIW, I don’t think you’re making anything up. That probably doesn’t mean much coming from somebody you don’t know who’s not even a member yet, but it’s true.
I’ll add it to my spreadsheet. 