Saturday, September 5, 2009

Swedish acupuncture research a sham?

Is most of acupuncture research done in Sweden a sham itself?

As I wrote in a previous post, I regard research done with sham acupuncture is to be regarded with sceptisicm since we should not regard these methods as useless.

Research done in Sweden is as far as I know done by physiotherapists and other personell withing the monoploized Swedish health care system. Acupuncturist with longer educadion has little access to research. The problem with this is that the ones doing the research do it after a quick course of two weeks to get to know how to put acupuncture needles into someone after a schedule given at the course.

Doing medical research requires knowledge about chemistry and how cells and receptors work. Should acupuncture studies not be perform the same way? Using practisioners with years of education and experience of acupuncture. Persons that have knowledge how to interpret the symptoms that each patient present and know how to adjust the treatment accordingly.

We know that adjusted acupuncture description during the course of treatment give better result than following a scheme given for a specific condition. All individuals is different and also the symptoms, acupuncture treatments should be given with considderation of what is seen in every individual case. Of course this makes it more difficult to research but should the method have to adapt to a way to research or should the research adapt to the method? If we have a map and should go out in the nature and the nature have changed, should we then regard that the nature can not be prooven to be true since it does not fit the map?

In my opinion, the research should be done by real acupuncturists in a way that is similar to how acupuncture is used in a real setting. Not in a setting that is adjusted in a way to make statistics easy to use.

1 comment:

  1. I could not agree more! I feel that acupuncturists and the acupuncture industry itself could benefit greatly from having concrete studies with verified data and conclusions backing its legitimacy. Until then, there will always be sceptics and connotations that go along with seeking treatment.

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