Chinese traditional acupuncture useful

kgar

With regards to efficacy of acupuncture in reducing pain in the knee for arthritis sufferers, do I understand correctly that they have to continue the treatment indefinitely beyond the study period to enjoy the reduced pain benefit?

If the treatment continues for a long time, will the pain receptors become used to it, and stop responding in the same way; has there been a long term trial to show this? In Western medicine, a limitation of painkillers in some patients with chronic pain is that the body adapts in its pain threshold after some time and it becomes necessary to increase the dosage of painkillers to achieve the same amount of pain relief.

Can I extrapolate the results to assume the similar outcome for arthritis involving other joints? Or would different acupoints and meridians be subject to different responses?

kgar

Maybe since TCM is based not on a biochemical model of the body but on an energetic model, as Hugo said in [url=http://www.ontcm.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=4]his post[/url], the pain threshold adaptation is bypassed. After all, pain is the result of a series of biochemical reactions.

(Then again, those biochemical reactions can be the result of, and produce, chemical energy themselves. So who knows.)

If this is true, I can see how herbal medicine might be more prone to be adapted to for painkilling since it's more Yin (therefore more matter-related) than acupuncture which is more Yang (more energy-related). Which reminds me of the idea of herbal microdosages I mentioned in [url=http://www.ontcm.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=35]this post[/url]. Low dosages of a herbal treatment might avoid or delay the body's adaptation to the herbal medication.

Or maybe all of this doesn't matter too much, since good chinese medical treatment will try to get to the root of the problem, pain being only a symptom of an illness.

Interesting subject, a long-term trial would be nice indeed.