Just stumbled into this conversation...
I practiced acupuncture and Oriental medicine for several years, and am now a 2nd year med student.
To the OP, as a physician, I don't think it will be the best use of your time to administer acupuncture to your patients.
But on the other hand, that doesn't mean that you should not learn about it. It is a fascinating practice, and if you have an interest in it, then you should check it out. I would start by reading a few books. I recommend "The Tao of Acupuncture" by D E Kendall. If you like what you read, you can pursue further training.
I agree with both sides of the argument about the research... most of it has not been good quality. Many positive and negative outcomes have come from poorly designed studies. There is one excellent study that comes to mind though... Berman at U Maryland did a great study on acupuncture and osteoarthritis of the knee. Very good design and execution. Outcome was positive. Doesn't mean acupuncture is the only treatment for OA of the knee, but it was found to be a useful adjunct, and there are many patients who could benefit from it.
As far as what is science and what is not... I think you hard-core naysayers need to think outside the box a little.
Are there nutjobs in the alternative medicine community? Yup. And newsflash, we've got 'em in medicine too. Does that mean all MD's/DO's are crazy quacks? No. It just means there are a few whack-jobs among us. The alt med community may have more than it's fair share, but that does not inherently mean that we should disregard the medicine.
To me, acupuncture always made sense from a scientific perspective. It's fundamentally a neurovascular medicine. All the needles go into tissues next to blood vessels and nerves, and cause microtrauma. Various biochemical cascades kick in from there, blood flow changes, nerve traffic modulates, endorphins are released, etc, etc.
I'm not going to spell it all out, nor would I claim that I know any of it definitively, but I look at it scientifically, and it makes sense to me. I can describe possible mechanisms of action that fit the anatomy, physiology, and biochemistry we hold dear in medicine.
I'm reading Robbins (Pathology) tonight and am always struck by how much they tell you straight out they don't know. They postulate. They use their scientific knowledge to postulate mechanisms. Some of them will be right and some will be wrong. But they're using the tools!
Unfortunately, most of this is not taught in acupuncture schools, and it is the rare student who asks questions and tries to come up with reasonable answers. So most of what you'll hear from that community may sound pretty far out. By and large, they don't have the language and scientific understanding to have the conversation. So they have a different conversation, which may interest some and elicit disdain from others.
But these guys posting on here clearly seem to me to be the type of acupuncturists who are ready to take Oriental medicine to the next level... ready to engage with physicians and have the conversation in the language of medicine.
I think anyone who is so adamantly opposed to acupuncture must have very little experience with it. Or more likely, none. They heard someone talk about "qi" and that was enough. Sounds too much like voodoo or hocus pocus. You gotta forget about the words and the people saying them. Think about how the body works and what influence acupuncture needles might have and how.
I can tell you, I saw a lot of patients back when I was practicing acupuncture. Some of them I helped and some I didn't. Kinda like medicine in general. It's not a panacea, as some would claim. But I can think of tons of patients who benefited immensely from it.
Here's an example. I saw a patient for hip pain once. He had been prescribed vioxx (before it got withdrawn from the market due to heart attack risk) but someone pointed him to acupuncture and he wanted to try that first. This was a chronic, mild-moderate pain that had eluded all conventional medical treatment for 6+ months. Four acupuncture treatments later, it was gone and it never came back. Better than taking that vioxx? I think so.
I know... that's just an anecdote and it doesn't *prove* anything. I could tell you a hundred of these stories and I know it wouldn't prove anything. But people who practice Oriental medicine have these experiences regularly. I'd like to see more quality studies looking into what acupuncture is good for and what it's not good for.
I'm naturally a skeptic, and so even though I have had these experiences myself, I say "prove it" too. I understand the skepticism. I think it's healthy. We need it. But we need to have an open mind as well. Study the history of medicine and you will find that many truly great ideas were first met with laughter and skepticism by the medical establishment, before it was determined they should be adopted universally and now we just take them for granted. Look up Ignaz Semmelweis if you need an example.
And to the brave acupuncturists engaging in this conversation here... keep up the good work. There is much to be done in the profession to raise the bar and the level of discourse. There are many, many physicians who are very interested in acupuncture. They are typically in the field of family medicine, but there are others as well. Reach out to the right people, be sure to learn the language of medicine and be able to explain acupuncture in a way that makes sense to your listener, whoever they are. You can count on physicians being skeptical. And you should be skeptical too. Hold your schools and your teachers accountable to high standards and common sense. And read D E Kendall's book "The Tao of Acupuncture", for a different perspective, if nothing else.