Is There Real Hope, or Is It Quackery, Using Acupuncture to Quit Smoking

Anyone who considers the potential in using acupuncture to quit smoking, will be interested in knowing about the Cochrane Collaboration. Everyone somehow knows what acupuncture is; there is something fascinating about sticking a hundred needles into the face and arms. Perhaps it is this morbid fascination that brings people with health problems to acupuncturists' doors, the fascinating art from the Far East. In the matter of smoking or other addiction, acupuncture is called upon for the purpose of helping with the withdrawal effects that the body goes through when a chemical that it is dependent upon is removed from the system. The Cochrane collaboration is a professional volunteer group headquartered in Oxford, England, whose aim it is to properly test medical concepts in a scientific way, minimizing any chances of bias, or statistical fault.

Using acupuncture to quit smoking has been a fascinating idea for years. The practice has certainly been shown to help with the complex problem of pain; it is tempting to consider its use in the pain in withdrawal symptoms. Acupuncture mainly works by the study of specific points in the body that are believed to be energy channels, running along the skin to the various internal organs. It is believed that needles inserted in specific points along these perceived energy channels can re-channel, repair, and strengthen the way these work, to good effect. The National Acupuncture Detoxification Association (NADA) has a specific treatment system that it claims has been convincingly proved by studies at Yale.

What is it like using acupuncture to quit smoking then? Basically, a candidate accepts treatment in a group setting, 40 minutes at a time. Everyone sits in a group, and acupuncture is used. Points are located in the ear that have nerve endings that are supposed to help the body detoxify naturally, and the points are stimulated with very small needles. If this all sounds a little too convenient, the scientific group mentioned before, the Cochrane Collaboration, thinks so too. What they basically believe is that acupuncture does not have anything to offer in smoking relief; they believe that no real tests have been thought of to properly test acupuncture. Tests so far has shown that people seem to react just as well (or just as poorly) wherever you puncture them with needles. Certainly, some short-term benefits are observed; but the very purpose of a large-scale test is to take out the effects of the lucky temporary accident in scientific studies. In a large enough group, over a long enough period, acupuncture apparently is only marginally better than staying put and doing nothing.

There goes another belief system; but this only means that it doesn't reliably work for everyone. There are indeed people, isolated cases, for whom this system, as indeed any other system, works well. If things like this just did not work at all, no one would even talk about them. The bottom line is, if you believe in it, and wish to check it out, using acupuncture to quit smoking would not hurt.