I rather enjoy these discussions myself, they are what have furthered my understanding of this disease and the treatments of. Due to the nature of our system I don't believe there will ever be a large enough study done on this to come to any hard scientific evidence for or against acupuncture. That being said it all comes down to personal choice and beliefs.

Charm stance has always been "why waste money on something not proven to work" and to debunk the various scams that plague cancer patients, and I respect that. I haven't always agreed with his stance, and our discussions have been epic in proportion, which I've enjoyed. Chinese medicine is something I have experience in due to my many years of studying Kung-Fu and loving the culture. There are some aspects of the practices that I agree with, and use several chinese herbs as an adjunct to my nutrition and supplement regiment. There are no large studies double blind studies on these, however I've found them to work for me.

That being said, there are many things about Chinese Medicine I disagree with and would never use it to treat anything life threatening in place of western medicine.

My thoughts for what they are worth.

Eric

Ditto.. You kinda said what I did... and yes I'm not a jump on the band wagon kinda girl when it comes to Chinese medicine. I'm super careful about what I do to my body be it acupuncture or suppliments and I read up on it before making a decision. Even when considering lymphatic massage - as my concern was promoting the spread of any possible microscopic cancer. I found that there were several studies and none has shown an increase in recurrences when lymphatic massage was used post treatment. My concern with the don't waste your money on it attitude is that it discourages the one person it may have worked for. We're not talking millions of dollars here - common sense should play a role (if a few tries doesn't work then it ain't for you.) - and unless all other options of mainstream treatment have been exhausted then i would never suggest anyone choose naturopathic treatments over standard medical care, but with approval from a dr. Somethings may support return to health that are not mainstream for some people. So in my books thats a dcision they should make - whether to try or not. So you can say - i tried it - it didnt work for me - but sho the heck knows - it may work for someone else. take care...

I've reread these posts and others threads on accupunture for dry mouth and have concluded that no amount of explication or exposition of why these studies show at best a placebo effect is going to change the true believers. With such therapies now being offered at quackademic hospital for marketing purposes, I'm going to try and just say my opinion is its a placebo, but as long as you are getting real treatment, it's your decision. No more screeds on acupuncture/dry mouth.
I will start asking the administrators to move threads like this into the ADJUNCTIVE FORUM here on OCF. The official description of threads for this forums is:
Here the discussiuon of therapies outside the realm of curative, conventional medicine are discussed. Note: these are not ALTERNATVE therapies. No linking to other sites from this forum please
I think even the truest believer in Complimentary Alternative Medicine (CAM) can concede that is the proper forum
As far as woo woo goes, I will concede that acupuncture is the best of the bunch.
I hope every dry mouth sufferer who gets acupuncture finds relief.
Charm

That's a great idea Charm. Fits the bill nicely!!
Well done! ;o)
Kathy