![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
The meaning of "Energy"
Last night a friend of mine retweeted this:
When I went off to university ten years ago, one of the questions I wanted to answer was "what is this thing called energy?" I still don't have a good answer to that, unfortunately; if asked now I'd mumble something about Noether's Theorem and Hamiltonians of closed systems, so I am at least confused on a higher level. But let's accept rhysmorgan's definition "the ability to do work" for the moment (and pretend not to notice that we haven't defined "ability" or "work"). There's still a problem with criticising marzillk's use of the word "energy": the physicist's definition isn't the only possible definition of the term. The OED gives seven definitions, of which only the final two are related to the thing that physicists talk about. Furthermore, the word "energy" has only been in use in the physicist's sense since 1807 (and the following year, someone proposed using it for what we now call "momentum"!) So if the practitioners of traditional Chinese medicine (or anyone else) want to re-use the term "energy" (or, for that matter, "meridian") to refer to something else, I have no problem with that in principle.
What I do have a problem with is the extraordinary ignorance of biology betrayed by marzillk's use of this stuff (and if she thinks that it's irrelevant that she works in educational publishing... well, I'm afraid I disagree). I've encountered a lot of skilled martial artists who claim to find qi (or something very similar) an essential component of the way they think about their art, so I'm not willing to totally write it off (perhaps it could be made to work as a high-level abstraction over some low-level biomechanical details), but really, tapping a point over your spleen to cure a cold? How on Earth does that fit with the (extremely well-attested) germ theory of disease?
But you know what, I could be wrong. Maybe tapping your spleen somehow makes it produce more monocytes or something (would that even help with a viral infection? IANAB). But that's the great thing about science: we don't have to rely on arguments from theory. Instead, we just do the experiment; if the experiment contradicts the theory, then the experiment wins. In this respect, marzillk was being more scientific than rhysmorgan, with her "I don't understand it, but I've tried it and it seems to work", approach. XKCD nailed this one: '"Ideas are tested by experiment." That is the core of science. Everything else is bookkeeping.'
To be sure, it's a pretty dodgy experiment. Only one subject, no control, no blinding, results measured by subjective feelings of wellness. One could imagine a much better experiment, in which a large number of subjects were randomly assigned to two groups: one group would receive meridian-tapping therapy from a trained master of the art, and the other would have random points on their body tapped by actors who could spin a convincing line of bullshit about the mystic significance of what they were doing. Then you measure how long it takes everyone to get better from their colds, and see if there's any statistically significant difference in the recovery times of the two groups.
I had a brief look, but couldn't find anyone who'd done that experiment. A fascinating and well-known 2007 study did what I described for acupuncture and lower back pain, though, and found that the actors had a greater success rate than the acupuncturists!
Contrariwise, this study evaluated "Meridian three-combined therapy" (thread embedding, bloodletting, and tapping/pressing) for the treatment of psoriasis, and found a small but significant improvement in effectiveness compared to conventional treatments. However, I'm assigning that limited weight in this context, because (a) it didn't just measure tapping, (b) it was for a different condition, (c) it was painfully (hoho) obvious to the patients which group they were in, and (d) it was performed in a Chinese cultural context, and we know (from experiments!) that cultural context is very important for the placebo effect.
So, anyone with greater scholarship skills able to find anything more relevant?
Update: rhysmorgan responds "I guess my beef with her referring to it as energy was that her form of energy doesn't actually exist." I take his point, but "existence" is kinda problematic in this context. Physicists' energy is an abstraction, a consequence of the time-invariance of physical laws. You can't measure it directly, nor capture it in a pure form. In what sense does it exist? But the theory of physical energy makes useful predictions: we can do calculations with energy and arrive at correct, numerical predictions of what will happen when we perform experiments. This is the important thing. To take a more abstract example: when you learn about the conventional underpinnings of calculus, you discover that there's no object in the system called "dx" or "dy", and that statements involving them are shorthand for more complex statements about the behaviour of limits. But the theory as a whole allows you to manipulate these non-existent objects and arrive at correct results. Analogously, the important question about meridian-tapping is not "does it refer only to directly observable things?" but "does it give correct predictions?"
.@marzillk What energy!? Some completely unobservable thing? Energy is simply the ability to do work. Nothing more, nothing less.It turned out that this was in response to the following:
-- rhysmorgan
@AlabasterC My sister recommends homeopathic aconite and tapping various energy points. It is helping a bit.When questioned further marzillk usefully clarified:
@rhysmorgan Spleen meridian boosts immune system. It's under ribs on the left hand side - find the sore point, then tap while slow breathingNow, there's so much wrong with that that I don't know where to start. But I do know where not to start: by criticising her terminology. I fired off:
@rhysmorgan I know it sounds mental but I can genuinely feel it doing something.
@rhysmorgan right now, @marzillk's making observations and you're bitching about terminology. Pop quiz: which is more scientific?I want to expand on that a bit.
When I went off to university ten years ago, one of the questions I wanted to answer was "what is this thing called energy?" I still don't have a good answer to that, unfortunately; if asked now I'd mumble something about Noether's Theorem and Hamiltonians of closed systems, so I am at least confused on a higher level. But let's accept rhysmorgan's definition "the ability to do work" for the moment (and pretend not to notice that we haven't defined "ability" or "work"). There's still a problem with criticising marzillk's use of the word "energy": the physicist's definition isn't the only possible definition of the term. The OED gives seven definitions, of which only the final two are related to the thing that physicists talk about. Furthermore, the word "energy" has only been in use in the physicist's sense since 1807 (and the following year, someone proposed using it for what we now call "momentum"!) So if the practitioners of traditional Chinese medicine (or anyone else) want to re-use the term "energy" (or, for that matter, "meridian") to refer to something else, I have no problem with that in principle.
What I do have a problem with is the extraordinary ignorance of biology betrayed by marzillk's use of this stuff (and if she thinks that it's irrelevant that she works in educational publishing... well, I'm afraid I disagree). I've encountered a lot of skilled martial artists who claim to find qi (or something very similar) an essential component of the way they think about their art, so I'm not willing to totally write it off (perhaps it could be made to work as a high-level abstraction over some low-level biomechanical details), but really, tapping a point over your spleen to cure a cold? How on Earth does that fit with the (extremely well-attested) germ theory of disease?
But you know what, I could be wrong. Maybe tapping your spleen somehow makes it produce more monocytes or something (would that even help with a viral infection? IANAB). But that's the great thing about science: we don't have to rely on arguments from theory. Instead, we just do the experiment; if the experiment contradicts the theory, then the experiment wins. In this respect, marzillk was being more scientific than rhysmorgan, with her "I don't understand it, but I've tried it and it seems to work", approach. XKCD nailed this one: '"Ideas are tested by experiment." That is the core of science. Everything else is bookkeeping.'
To be sure, it's a pretty dodgy experiment. Only one subject, no control, no blinding, results measured by subjective feelings of wellness. One could imagine a much better experiment, in which a large number of subjects were randomly assigned to two groups: one group would receive meridian-tapping therapy from a trained master of the art, and the other would have random points on their body tapped by actors who could spin a convincing line of bullshit about the mystic significance of what they were doing. Then you measure how long it takes everyone to get better from their colds, and see if there's any statistically significant difference in the recovery times of the two groups.
I had a brief look, but couldn't find anyone who'd done that experiment. A fascinating and well-known 2007 study did what I described for acupuncture and lower back pain, though, and found that the actors had a greater success rate than the acupuncturists!
Contrariwise, this study evaluated "Meridian three-combined therapy" (thread embedding, bloodletting, and tapping/pressing) for the treatment of psoriasis, and found a small but significant improvement in effectiveness compared to conventional treatments. However, I'm assigning that limited weight in this context, because (a) it didn't just measure tapping, (b) it was for a different condition, (c) it was painfully (hoho) obvious to the patients which group they were in, and (d) it was performed in a Chinese cultural context, and we know (from experiments!) that cultural context is very important for the placebo effect.
So, anyone with greater scholarship skills able to find anything more relevant?
Update: rhysmorgan responds "I guess my beef with her referring to it as energy was that her form of energy doesn't actually exist." I take his point, but "existence" is kinda problematic in this context. Physicists' energy is an abstraction, a consequence of the time-invariance of physical laws. You can't measure it directly, nor capture it in a pure form. In what sense does it exist? But the theory of physical energy makes useful predictions: we can do calculations with energy and arrive at correct, numerical predictions of what will happen when we perform experiments. This is the important thing. To take a more abstract example: when you learn about the conventional underpinnings of calculus, you discover that there's no object in the system called "dx" or "dy", and that statements involving them are shorthand for more complex statements about the behaviour of limits. But the theory as a whole allows you to manipulate these non-existent objects and arrive at correct results. Analogously, the important question about meridian-tapping is not "does it refer only to directly observable things?" but "does it give correct predictions?"
no subject
1) Role of acupressure in symptom management in patients with end-stage renal disease: a systematic review (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20636160). "CONCLUSION: No definitive conclusion is available. Future trials should adhere to standards of trial methodology and explicitly report relevant information for evaluation of efficacy and safety of acupressure in patients with ESRD." My translation: the studies were either done badly or reported badly, or both. No information either way
2) Do Japanese style acupuncture and moxibustion reduce symptoms of the common cold? (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18955215) Not the same technique, but the same illness... "In conclusion, the safety of Japanese acupuncture or moxibustion was sufficiently demonstrated; however, a series of clinical trials could not offer convincing evidence to recommend the use of Japanese style acupuncture or moxibustion for preventing the common cold. Further studies are required as the present trials had several limitations." My translation: no evidence of effect.
3) Meta-analysis of acustimulation effects on nausea and vomiting in pregnant women. (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16979105) "CONCLUSIONS: This meta-analysis demonstrates that acupressure and ETS had greater impact than the acupuncture methods in the treatment of NVP. However, the number of acupuncture trials was limited for pregnant women, perhaps because it is impossible to self-administer the acupuncture and thus inconvenient for women experiencing NVP as chronic symptoms." My translation: acupressure may work for nausea in pregnant women. (A placebo effect was also noted, but was a lesser effect than acupressure)
4) Metaanalyses of acustimulations: effects on nausea and vomiting in postoperative adult patients. (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16781643) "CONCLUSIONS: This metaanalysis demonstrated that AS is just as effective as medications in reducing NVS and that acupressure is just as effective as acupuncture or electrical stimulation in reducing NVS for postoperative adult populations." My translation: not just pregnant women...
Overall, I'd say there is a lack of information generally. Most of the literature is published in journals I've never heard of, but they are in pubmed, which doesn't accept *everything*, so maybe they're ok. Or maybe not. Certainly a lot of the papers I turned up started on the assumption that it works, and then reported correlates. However, one thing that did consistently turn up is that they are *safe*. If you're going to use a treatment with no evidence for it, I'd much rather you use one that is at least known to be safe ;)
no subject
no subject
I'd be fascinated to see if the physiological mechanism for this could be elucidated. I haven't had time to read the papers, so no promises about their methodological accuracy...
no subject
I still don't think I'd pay for acupressure/puncture unless I was a) unable to use conventional (ideally evidence-based) medicine, and b) was really suffering. And then I'd put anything down to placebo effect. But that's my prejudice I guess.
no subject
Likewise :-)
no subject
In that context, that acupuncture relieves pain is banal. The needles and mystical explanations are just theatre.
no subject
no subject
no subject
It's a good question. Purely hypothesising, I could imagine that the immediate benefit received during the sessions reinforces the idea that the acupuncture is 'working'. And it's well known that pain responds strongly to expectation and placebo. So we might imagine that acupuncture, presented as a long-term solution, has only short-term objective effects (through gate control) but this carries over into a subjective long-term response (through placebo).
no subject
acupuncture doesn't use gate control
(Anonymous) 2010-10-27 09:06 pm (UTC)(link)Standard acupuncture* has a measurable effect on the human body. If you put someone in an MRI machine and needle them, their brain lights up in a way it doesn't under acupressure or nothing. Manipulated needles cause a measurably greater effect than not.
Acupuncture is not very well understood. That doesn't stop it working very well for chronic pain relief. Every physiotherapist I've seen (which is a lot) does acupuncture. There's got to be a reason for that above the placebo effect - which is, admittedly, very powerful.
The meridians/energy stuff is the theatre. The needling is not.
Problem is it's very hard to study acupuncture using standard methods. How do you placebo sticking a needle in someone?
--mmmmat.
* by this I mean some form of needling therapy. meridians and chi are not involved.
Re: acupuncture doesn't use gate control
That was definitely what I took away from the 2007 study. And I'm fascinated by Susz's links to the nausea stuff. I don't suppose you have links to the MRI studies you're thinking of?
Re: acupuncture doesn't use gate control
(Anonymous) 2010-10-28 07:18 pm (UTC)(link)no subject
Although I'm prepared to be convinced that there are areas with more of the right sensory receptors, resulting in a better response in that area.
if you have acupuncture by a physiotherapist
(Anonymous) 2010-10-28 07:33 pm (UTC)(link)I have an upper-back-related issue, and I usually get needles either side of my thoracic vertebrae. Which makes perfect sense to me, and provides excellent pain relief. The one time I had chinese acupuncture, I got needles in places which - mostly - corresponded with the same nerves, just lower down (so, places like the inner elbow, upper shoulder, etc.) That also worked very well.
It is perhaps vaguely relevant that a chinese meridian chart for acupuncture looks more than a little like a nerve map. Which again, makes sense - if you spend 3000 years poking needles in people and taking note of where they work best...
My chinese acupuncturist spent seven years studying for his acupuncture degree.
All this talk (and typing) is making me jones for some needling... :)
-mmmat