Actually bottom line - for some people it works - is it a placebo effect? Is it real? Truthfully I don't care - we're all individual organsims, all wired differently - what is "normal" for almost everyone else may not be normal for me, or joe blow two houses down. If we never experiment in trying different things - we become stagnant - medical science doesn't advance and for that matter either does anything else. Looking into other treatments to solve problems is pivotal to finding a cure, for pretty much everything. If I've tried all the standard treatments for something and nothing has worked then I'm going to try non standard treatments - its that simple. If I find something that works then I will stick with it. Just because you don't respond to it doesn't mean that I as an individual won't - (this is never more apparent than in our medical system of today. You can take two people with the exact same cancer, same location, same staging, same everything and one will die and one won't despite having the exact same treatment - its all very ambiguous. ) I do believe in doing whatever you can, to return to optimal health. Take the best that medical science has to offer, and once that is done do more - educate yourself - try different things - Not to the detriment of your health of course. And always discuss it with your dr, so as to know whether they consider it counterproductive to your health - with an explanation.
I gave acupuncture a go because I personally though why the hell not? Isnt going to Hurt and my insurance covered it. And It worked for me. People often make the mistake of thinking - its crap as it didn't work for me, (doctors are notorious for doing this and are often surprised when something works for one person out of 1000 but the truth is it did work for that one person but they discount it as a fluke - what if it wasn't? what if that person was just wired differently from the majority?) but to me throwing all the taxpayers money into ONLY trying to develop new drugs is very linear thinking)
Anyway it gave it a shot, it helped and I personally am pleased. If standing on their head singing queen works for someone else I say more power to them.