Is there any legitimacy to accupuncture?

[Angrboda]

The belief in acupuncture's effectiveness is based on experience and scientific experiments. Millions of people have experienced the beneficial effects of acupuncture and thousands of scientific studies have concluded that acupuncture is effective for such things as the relief of pain, increasing fertility, treating rheumatoid arthritis, and relieving nausea after chemotherapy. Skeptics challenge these studies, but with so much evidence piled up in favor of the effectiveness of acupuncture, one wonders why there are still many people who are skeptical of the practice. If the evidence from millions of personal testimonies and from thousands of scientific studies doesn't convince the skeptics, what will?

It may seem obvious to acupuncturists and to millions of their patients that the skeptics are mad, daft, or just being obstinate. To them, it is obvious that acupuncture works and anyone who denies this must have some sort of mental defect. Is it possible that millions of people could be wrong? Well, yes, it is possible for millions of people to be wrong, but I must state up front that those skeptics who say that acupuncture doesn't work, or that it is not an effective medical treatment for some ailments, are wrong. The evidence from both personal testimony and from scientific studies clearly shows that acupuncture works and is an effective medical treatment for many ailments. The evidence from the scientific studies also shows clearly that sham acupuncture is just as effective as true acupuncture. What is not so clear to some people, but is easily ferreted out from the evidence, is that acupuncture most likely works by classical conditioning and other factors that are often lumped together and referred to as "the placebo effect." Furthermore, in some cases sham acupuncture works better than other placebos. This does not mean that acupuncture is "all in the head," however.

A common misunderstanding regarding placebos is that a placebo must be an inert substance that tricks the patient into thinking he's been given an active substance. This misunderstanding leads to the belief that the placebo effect is "all in the head." That is no more true than that people's physiological responses to what they think is alcohol or a drug are purely psychological. People can be conditioned to have physiological responses to placebos. Furthermore, Martina Amanzio et al. (2001) demonstrated that "at least part of the physiological basis for the placebo effect is opioid in nature" (Bausell 2007: 160). That is, we can be conditioned to release such chemical substances as endorphins, catecholamines, cortisol, and adrenaline. One reason, therefore, that people report pain relief from both acupuncture and sham acupuncture may be that both stimulate the opioid system. So can a lot of other things of course, like running a marathon, having an orgasm, eating habanero chiles, or getting a saline injection that you think is morphine.

Skeptic's Dictionary || Acupuncture