Many of us have heard of it, some of us may have tried it. Acupuncture is the practice of placing needles through the skin in specific locations of the body for the purpose of healing and relief of symptoms. Acupuncture can be used to heal chronic pain in the back, to osteoporosis, but does it actually work? Acupuncture was developed over 2,000 years ago. This was when we had less knowledge on our bodies and less scientific technology and tools. Some may view acupuncture as a legitimate way of healing pain or certain diseases, and say may view it as a theatrical placebo.

One theory is that acupuncture may stimulate the production of endorphins and other similar similar compounds that affect how the brain perceives pain. One study that could be conducted into finding this out, could be a a double-blind placebo experiment. The experimenter wouldn’t know who got acupuncture and who didn’t and could look at how their brains and endorphins reacted to see if they play a role in how acupuncture heals. The participants wouldn’t know if they were getting proper acupuncture or not, which would avoid a participant bias towards reporting any false claims about how they feel after acupuncture. The placebo would be something that was similar to acupuncture, but doesn’t follow the proper acupuncture procedures, and the other component being tested would be actual acupuncture. This study could test this theory to see if endorphins contribute to why acupuncture is believed to help pain and diseases.

In a study conducted analyzing the effectiveness for acupuncture 29 randomized control trials involving 17,922 patients, researchers used acupuncture and a placebo form of acupuncture. In this study, patients who received acupuncture claimed that it helped get rid of their chronic pains over those who did not receive acupuncture. The conclusions to this study were that acupuncture is an effective form of treatment for chronic pain.

Although this may have been a very well conducted study, I find that there are still some unanswered questions and possible confounding variables. Some possible confounding variables could be a person’s willingness to allow acupuncture to work, the severity of a person’s pain, and their state of mind regarding their own personal results after acupuncture. Someone may feel a placebo effect and think that acupuncture actually worked, when they didn’t even receive it and someone may think that acupuncture didn’t work even when they did receive proper acupuncture. There are many variables that contribute to the validity of this study. Some unanswered questions relating to this study are: What was the severity of the pain for patients? Was this study single-blind, double-blind, or neither? Although this study is a good start, there is definitely more to look into regarding acupuncture and its effectiveness.

Approximately 3 million American adults use acupuncture treatment each year.  Acupuncture has a loyal customers, but is their loyalty due to legitimate results or a placebo effect.