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Q: Have any TCM treatments been proven by "western science" to be effective?
Since moving here, I hear a lot conflicting opinions about Traditional Chinese Medicine. Chinese friends (and western hippies) claim that it's super effective in prevention and helping "Qi" and stuff like that. Western friends claim it's all a bunch of nonsense about ingesting ground-up animal genitalia...both sides seem pretty sure of themselves.
What I want to know is have there been any TCM treatments that have actually been shown/proven by reputable western researchers and scientists to be effective?
11 years 22 weeks ago in Health & Safety - China
Yes, acupuncuture which has been added to the American Medical Association's list of approved practise areas.
Read as follows:
The World Health Organization (WHO) has compiled a list of disorders for which acupuncture may have an effect: adverse reactions to chemotherapy and radiation, induction of labor, sciatica, dysmenorrhea, depression, hypertension, rheumatoid arthritis, and low back pain.[168] According to a 2007 review article, "the emerging clinical evidence seems to imply that acupuncture is effective for some but not all conditions".[169] A 2011 Cochrane review documented that acupuncture is effective in the treatment of migraines, neck disorders, tension headaches, and some types of osteoarthritis, while results were inconclusive for efficacy in treating shoulder pain, lateral elbow pain, and low back pain, and negative for rheumatoid arthritis.[170] There is evidence "that acupuncture provides a short-term clinically relevant effect when compared with a waiting list control or when acupuncture is added to another intervention" in the treatment of chronic low back pain.[171]
Several review articles discussing the effectiveness of acupuncture have concluded that its effects may be due to placebo.[172][173][174][175]
There is general agreement that acupuncture is safe when administered by well-trained practitioners using sterile needles.[176][177][178] Major adverse events are exceedingly rare and are usually associated with poorly trained unlicensed acupuncturists.[179]
Scandinavian:
Good post, will not dispute that, but it is worth keeping in mind that in TCM, acupuncture is used for a lot of other things
Moxa is used in hospitals in the west to turn breech babies. Use of moxa is part of the treatments called acupuncture (it's not just needles)
