Leeches are much cheaper, and equally effective.
Check your local bait shop.
No, it did not. Correlation does not equal causation. If the quack (lying, cheating, scammer) were claiming that the technique worked via the placebo effect, it *might *be said to work.
If you fix something by accident, it cannot be said that you know what you are doing, and it most definitely *cannot *be said that your technique is effective. Your technique is worthless. If you claim otherwise, and feather your nest at the expense of people who are desperate for relief from pain, you are the lowest of the low. IMO.
Sometimes these things can work, and when conventional medicine has failed, but cost should not be a way of determining the effectiveness. As pointed out above prayer is much cheaper, and IIRC has been clinically proven to work (at least to some degree on a initial study).
They are usually heavy metals and/or pesticides/herbicides if you push them to answer.
Yes, they will. The OP’s wife should see a neurologist about her migraines, if they’re really bad or are not easing up with the treatment she’s currently receiving. I tried a couple alternative treatments before saying “The hell with it” and seeing a neurologist and going on a daily drug therapy that’s done wonders for what were nearly crippling migraines.
Placebos often work.
Unfortunately, in this case it costs a fortune.
If I could grind up some bat bones and frog blood and put it into a potion that she believed in, it would have the same effect.
Hell, I’ll do it for $99.95.
THIS IS NOT TCM CUPPING.
Sorry for shouting. I know the anti-alternative medicine stance of this board, and so I generally won’t get drawn into arguments like this, but can anyone link me to a neutral or pro-TCM site that describes the cupping procedure as involving cuts and drawn fluid?
I know dozens of acupuncturists, have worked with them closely, and supervised an acupuncture apprenticeship program (before apprenticeship became illegal in Illinois). I have observed and assisted in cupping at least 2 dozen times, under different practitioners who studied at different schools. NONE of them ever cut, and it’s totally antithetical to the spirit and teachings of TCM. TCM is about working on a very subtle level to help the body reregulate itself, not concerning oneself with gross physical manipulations of bodily fluids.
Here are some explanations from people who actually do cupping, with pictures. Not one of them cuts anything, and the only thing left behind is a bruise:
http://www.sydneytcm.com/cupping.html
http://www.danhsu.com/cupping/
http://www.mssussex.com/Therapies/cupping.htm
I’m not asking that anyone accept TCM as a valid form of medicine, but this level of misinformation is making me want to get out my tinfoil hat. Why are you so willing to spread ignorance about this procedure? Whether it works as not is irrelevant, you’re bashing something that doesn’t happen!
Why do you seek medical attention? If you answer “to cure a disease or correct a bodily malfunction,” no, placebos don’t work.
I you answer “I don’t care if anything gets fixed, I just want to feel like it did or hope that it will fix itself or perhaps my mind has amazing curative powers that we haven’t yet quantified or reliably detected and I don’t mind paying someone to test out unproven, nonsense theories on me while I suffer even though I could do the same thing myself for free,” then placebos work. Maybe.
You pays your money, you takes your choice. The only one who ABSOLUTELY benefits is the recipient of the money, not the recipient of the treatment.
Actually no. IIRC the study actually showed that it had no effect. Hence my equating this particular superstition to the OP’s wife’s cupping.
Would she be saying that if the treatments were free? :dubious:
Years ago, a friend suffered from horrible back pain. He kept going to a chiropracter, who treated him & took his money but did him no good at all. Next, he decided to try acupuncture.
The acupuncturist examined him & immediately sent him to a “regular” doctor. My friend had pancreatic cancer. Early detection would probably not have helped his survival, but at least he was finally able to get the drugs that made his last days almost bearable. In this case, the acupuncturist was ethhical & knew what he was doing. He knew what he could treat–& what he could not.
M D Anderson Cancer Center is a huge & respected bastion of Western medicine. But the Department of Complementary/Integrative Medicine Education explores other options. Some treatments from various traditions help relieve symptoms of cancer–& symptoms arising from standard treatment. It is possible to take a scientific approach to all sorts of medicine, to see exactly what works & what doesn’t.
Of course, there are always quacks.
Yes, they will - actually, I have such a prescription, and it works wonderfully for me. My impression from the OP is that it wasn’t working for her, and she lost faith that they would eventually prescribe something that would actually help.
Is this the study you are thinking of?
‘New York’s Columbia University and the Journal of Reproductive Medicine (JRM), through three “researchers,” had accepted that the study results were positive, proving that so-called intercessory prayer (IP) had resulted in a pregnancy rate of 50% for those who received it, compared with only 26% for those who did not.’
It’s been refuted:
‘A heavy discussion has being going on for weeks now about a study that appeared to validate the power-of-prayer notion that has been under question for so many decades. I’ve declined to address the current exposure of the farce until it was definitively settled; that time has arrived.
Dr. Bruce Flamm, a clinical professor of gynecology and obstetrics at the University of California, beginning in 2001, published critiques of the study, which purportedly demonstrated that prayer could help infertile women to conceive. In The Scientific Review of Alternative Medicine, and in the current issue of Skeptic magazine, Flamm exposed the farce…’
http://www.randi.org/jr/070904that.html
And have any of these samples been analysed? :rolleyes:
Actually I said this was a similar crime.
Both ‘procedures’ involve:
- using a lot of mumbo jumbo about drawing toxins out of the body
- paying a lot of money to do so
- calling it ‘alternative medicine’ instead of ‘untested paranormal witchcraft’
As for the anti-alternative medicine stance - no, we just like a double-blind scientific test of all such claims.
Since no form of cupping has ever passed such a test, scientists don’t beleive in it.
And how does this procedure ‘help the body reregulate itself’?
Does the use of the phrase ‘working on a very subtle level’ mean you can’t detect the procedure working any better than placebo?
Are the schools you mention licensed? Can they produce any evidence cupping works?
I didn’t say that what you call TCM involves cutting.
I do think it interesting that you aren’t bothered whether it works or not.
Yes, that’s it exactly. My wife’s bruises usually line up vertically along the spine.
She was going to a neurologist but couldn’t take the side effects from the parade of drugs they were trying on her. That’s when she said “The hell with it” and started going to the Oriental medicine.
My wife says the practitioner doesn’t cut the skin, per se, but has sort of a small hammer-like tool with a point on the end that gently pricks the skin. Since this happens on her back and forehead, she doesn’t really see what’s going on at the sites, so I’m not really sure if the skin is actually punctured, or it’s somehow just a preperatory procedure to cause fluid to come closer to the surface.
But she’s perfecty willing to be cut and bruised. :dubious:
Side effects often subside with time. If not, that’s the reason doctors try different drugs. If she doesn’t like one, they can try another. If the doctor isn’t helping to do this, get another doctor. Why is it that people are so much more willing to give these “alternative” quacks the benefit of the doubt than they are real doctors?
I trust her to tell me how she really feels, but I can’t be sure to what extent how she really feels is or isn’t influenced by the cost.
glee, I am not debating this topic. We can’t even agree on the basic vocabulary, and it’s not important to me what you believe. I could tell you all day that patient X’s migraines are caused by congested liver qi, and you’d simply keep repeating what’s congested? What’s liver? What’s qi? Why does it give migraines? To which I have no recourse but to suggest you attend a three or more year training in Traditional Chinese Medicine.
My point was that “cupping” describes a specific treatment, and what you and Randi describe is *not *cupping. I can’t even find another source which speaks of “Filipino cupping” or something similar, except the OP himself, who doesn’t know what it’s called or where it was taught and is describing a different technique besides. You weaken your own stance by arguing against strawmen of your own devising, just as a rabid Bush hater weakens himself by claiming that Bush himself is a baby raping psychopath. If you don’t have a basic grasp of what something IS, why should I believe you that you know it doesn’t work?
Now we’re getting somewhere. What you describe is a dermal hammer, called a Seven Star Needle. It’s has teeny tiny .20mm diameter needles that are 2mm long - traditionally, 7 of them, hence the name. It does not usually draw very much blood at all. It’s used, in TCM, to draw excess Heat to the surface so it can be expelled. What’s “Heat”, you ask? The tendency for redness, irritation and sharp stabbing pains. For some forms of Heat, called Excess Heat, the treatment is to purposefully irritate a body area so that tendency is reduced. Western Medicine calls this a “counter irritant”, and uses it in things like capsasin creams to reduce arthritis pain. There are other times when Heat is not actually in excess, but appears to be because Cold (the tendency to slowness, dull aches, blue tones if it’s present in excess) is too little - in those cases, draining Heat won’t help, it will hurt, you have to add Cold - like when you put an ice pack on a throbbing ankle.
But, again, drawing blood and lymph purposefully in quantities enough to measure is highly unorthodox. Seeing a drop or two of blood released by an acupuncture needle is indication enough of what’s going on. If she’s removing more than a few drops, she’s doing something odd.