"Jun Mao, chief of integrative medicine at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Centre in New York City, says that acupuncture trials such as Hershman’s are better blinded than studies of approaches such as palliative care, cognitive behavioural therapy or exercise, in which participants inevitably know what treatment they are receiving. Sceptics “accept trial results from those fields readily, but they make a special case against acupuncture”, he says. “It’s not fair to use that single argument to shut down the whole field.”
Gallagher says that many studies suggest that acupuncture triggers neurophysiological changes that are relevant to pain, in conditions from carpal tunnel syndrome to fibromyalgia5. Integrating acupuncture into mainstream medical care, rather than outsourcing it to independent, and perhaps unregulated, acupuncturists, minimizes the risk of lending authority to unscientific practitioners, he says. “That’s why we need to bring it in.”
Posting partially because a real-time, serious doctor once strongly suggested that I consider acupuncture treatment. Brigham and Women's Hospital has an acupuncturist.
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