I am pretty confused about this subject. I've had acupuncture for a headache once by some famous guy in Taiwan, and being a staunch rationalist figured that the

I am pretty confused about this subject. I've had acupuncture for a headache once by some famous guy in Taiwan, and being a staunch rationalist figured that the slight benefit I got out of it was a combination of placebo and being distracted by the experience of having about 45 needles stuck in me fairly painlessly for about 30 minutes. (It doesn't hurt, but afterward there is some soreness. Very surreal.) Now I shadow a MDPhd neurologist who got his MD in Taiwan. Apparently the traditional and the Western stuff is integrated in the curriculum. (His specialty and PhD are from the US, I believe UMich for the doctorate) He does both acupuncture, clinical, and bio research.. Witnessing it, sometimes it really helps and other times it doesn't. Do I know if it's purely placebo? No. His working theory is that acupuncture is related to triggering autonomic response by stimulating nerve clusters, "self-healing", which indicates an upper bound on effectiveness. And sure enough, he'll tell patients that there are some things acupuncture just doesn't work for. (I can't remember; it tends to be purely physical problems like irreversible nerve damage - neuropathy) But he's also told me that he visited some famous spirit healer on vacation in Brazil (just for fun), and about open surgeries with acupuncture and no anesthetics in China. And this is just acupuncture, which doesn't encompass anything near all of traditional Chinese medicine! He also is knowledgeable in 3 or 4 different systems of acupuncture, which are similar but not isomorphic.