Writer at cracked.com tries several methods of woo. All of them fail.

[Archae]

Yes, including acupuncture.

http://www.cracked.com/blog/what-4-mystical-healing-techniques-actually-feel-like/

[AlbertCat]

1. So snarky..... loved it.

"Sure, modern medicine has things like medicine....."

[Warpy]

2. It still can't do much for a nasty cold

although it can treat the superinfection afterward pretty effectively as long as it's not a resistant bug.

[frogmarch]

3. My sister is

an acupuncturist and wanted to cure my sciatica with her needles. I refused her offer, so she offered to give me massage therapy. Again I said no thanks. So she waved her hands over me in hocus-pocus style as I lay on the couch watching TV and murmured what I guess was an incantation. That creeped me out and I said, stop it. Then she suggested I try Earthing. I said, are you kidding me? and that's when she determined we are astrologically incompatible and gave up and called up her pet psychic to see if her horse was happier now that she gave him a new name. godawmighty.

[Warpy]

4. Dry needling (aka acupuncture) has been proven to have some benefit in pain reduction

The problem for the average, well trained acupuncturist is that the Chinese meridian system seems to be bogus, that dry needling anywhere will have the same effect.

I notice the guy at Cracked said he felt better about feeling so rotten after it was over. It's not entirely without benefit. It just doesn't cure anything.

[frogmarch]

5. My sister believes in

meridians, chi,yin and yang and in looking at the color of people’s tongues. Even though I know that some studies seem to show that acupuncture seems to work in certain cases to alleviate pain, I am not about to risk getting hepatitis C or a staph infection from having needles stuck into my skin.

[Warpy]

6. Tongue color is also important in our medical system

and can tell you a lot about various disease processes, so that part isn't quackery. The needles are sterile and one use only, so there is no risk for Hep B, Hep C, HIV, or other blood borne pathogens. The risk from MRSA is minimal since the needles don't penetrate that far and licensed people clean the area with alcohol wipes first.

The part that seems to be quackery is the complicated meridian system. Even the Chinese have vastly simplified it in recent years, trying to discover the most effective points. fMRI and PET scans have confirmed its effects on the pain centers in the brain but those results have been duplicated by non acupuncturists doing random dry needling.

[frogmarch]

7. Yes, tongue color is important

in real medicine too, but my sister examines what she calls the “elemental zones” of the tongue. Tip – fire element zone (heart & small intestine) Sides – wood element zone ( liver, I think) Just behind the tip – metal zone (respiratory illness) Center – earth element zone (stomach, pancreas, spleen). Geesh.

Apparently acupuncture doesn’t pose a high risk, but it’s there. I just Googled for some info to see if the needles are really harmless and found this:

http://www.csicop.org/specialarticles/show/do_you_believe_in_magic

Disease

It has also been found that far from curing disease, acupuncture has been a transmission agent for hepatitis C, Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus and acupuncture mycobacteriosis.[17] In one prospective study of 190,924 acupuncture patients, the rate of "serious adverse events (death, organ trauma or hospital admission)" was found to be 0.024%.[18] In another prospective study of 229,230 patients, the rate of "adverse events requiring specific treatment" was found to be 2.2%.[18]

Dr. Offit writes, "The final argument against acupuncture is the hardest to refute. Acupuncture needles are not without risk. … At least eighty-six people have died from acupuncture."[19][20] Unfortunately, almost no reporting mechanism exists for acupuncture, and so the true harms are hard to estimate.

~~

Dr. Paul Offit is chief of the infectious diseases division at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.

[Warpy]

8. 2 in 10,000? That's pretty damned safe

As for disease transmission, it doesn't occur from sterile, single use needles. It did occur in the 70s when acupuncture first appeared here and multi use needles were used by Chinese acupuncturists. Those aren't used any more by anyone. The only place I've ever seen them is in a display case at a museum.

Sterile means there are no pathogens on them, period.

[frogmarch]

9. Yes, pretty safe. Guess I'll

fly to HI and tell my sister to please stick some needles in me because my sciatica is killing me. Nah.

[progressoid]

10. "I was told I had a buildup of dampness in my body"

I guess I'd rather dampness than dryness?