Are you an Acupuncture Skeptic?
By Drew Nesbitt BA, TCMP, Ac., ROHP • Filed under Pain Management • February 10, 2010
Read about the scientist, Dr. Bruce Pomeranz, who discovered the role of endorphins in acupuncture and how it proves that acupuncture can decrease your pain.
I recently discovered a 1966 interview in Alternative Therapies in Health and Medicine. The article features Dr. Bruce Pomeranz, a Harvard trained, award winning scientist, who talks about the role of endorphins in pain management.
If you have ever doubted that acupuncture has a real effect on pain management, you should see what Dr. Pomeranz has to say. Here, he suggests that acupuncture, not a placebo, releases endorphins, therby stopping pain:
So my hypothesis was that if endorphins were involved and if I injected tiny amounts of naloxone, it should block the acupuncture effects we were seeing on these cells. Sure enough, it did. So that’s how 16 lines of evidence, 20 years of research, 66 papers from my lab, and 8 books on acupuncture got started. – Dr. Bruce Pomeranz
Skeptics of acupuncture often try to “desmystify” the success of acupuncture treatments by attributing a placebo effect. Dr. Pemeranz’s research is the first of many studies that explore the placebo effect.
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