FYI
A quick update into my bizarre and colourful life:
- One outing, two glasses of wine, three broken bones later.
- Crutches are fun – people feel they have a reason to talk to you.
- Slowing down and hopping from point A to B has forced me to rest, read and regain my sanity.
- I have decided to work no more than 12 hours a day.
- I have promised myself 7 hours sleep a night.
- I had to re-read my plan for the year to get back on track…
- In times of chaos you gain real clarity as to who your true friends are.
- It’s official I have developed a compulsive book-buying syndrome.
- Acupuncture really does work.
- Entrepreneurship and business run in my veins - it’s part of my personality.
- Losing weight is really damn hard. I hate cortisone.
Ok folks, update done. Can’t blog my life away…have to go embrace and live life now.
05/07/2008 at 1:56 am
Are you referring to “real acupuncture”, or the thing that physio’s do where they stick you with some needles in order to stimulate something or other in the recovery process?
An interesting study showed that “fake acupuncture” worked as well as “real acupuncture” (where they worry about sticking the needles in the “right place”). I read a bit about that here: http://www.badscience.net/?p=540
Crutches… a pain. I must admit it makes you appreciate how useful having free hands are. (I’ve been on them, um, three times now? Stupid ankle ligaments not responding well to bad missteps while trail running.)
07/07/2008 at 12:26 pm
Hugo - If your definition of “real” acupuncture is sticking the needles in the right place, then yes, I went for real acupuncture.
12/07/2008 at 12:52 am
Ah no, you go to a physio for treatment of an ankle wound (for example), and one of the things they sometimes do is stick some needles in your ankle. It aint acupuncture, it’s just sticking some needles in your ankle…
However, some people might incorrectly call that acupuncture, which is what my first question was about. No offence, I did find it most likely that you are referring to “real acupuncture”, but not knowing each other means I don’t know how you use words, and there was still a small possibility of “supposedly incorrect” use.
In the second paragraph, by “fake acupuncture” I meant, well, “fake acupuncture” — something that the patients / control group could believe was real acupuncture.
To wrap up then, I’m glad you found some positive benefits in whatever treatment you went for, but you will have to excuse my skepticism: a scientific mindset insists on double-blind empirical experiments to rule out confirmation bias and subjectivity.
Meh, I’m too verbose.