And, if so, how?<\/p>\n
The efficacy of acupuncture was one of many topics which we discussed with our Chinese friends as we spent three weeks travelling around China together [for an account of the holiday, click here<\/a>].\u00a0 Unsurprisingly our Chinese companions are convinced that acupuncture works; my wife is sympathetic to it; I am sceptical about it.<\/p>\n This week, a study has been published assessing the use of acupuncture to relieve childbirth pain. This was a good focus for such a study because most pain is low-level and comes and goes, so that it is difficult to assess the effectiveness of different interventions, but childbirth can involve exceptional pain and is localised in time.<\/p>\n The study found no evidence that acupuncture is any more effective than a placebo. This does not surprise me because I believe that acupuncture works exactly like a placebo.\u00a0 Indeed the every visible and intrusive nature of the insertion of needles makes is a convincing placebo for many users, but other studies have shown that inserting needles in the ‘wrong’ places is just as effective.<\/p>\n You can read more about the childbirth study here<\/a> and you can find a much fuller discussion of acupuncture here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" And, if so, how? The efficacy of acupuncture was one of many topics which we discussed with our Chinese friends as we spent three weeks travelling around China together [for an account of the holiday, click here].\u00a0 Unsurprisingly our Chinese companions are convinced that acupuncture works; my wife is sympathetic to it; I am sceptical […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2320","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-science-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2320","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2320"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2320\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2334,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2320\/revisions\/2334"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2320"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2320"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2320"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}