Welcome to Interesting If True, the podcast that really sticks it to you.

I'm your host this week, Aaron, and with me are:

I'm Shea, and this week I learned that in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Dumbledore calls Voldemort by his birth name, Tom. This foreshadows the fact that J.K. Rowling does not respect people’s chosen identities.

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Simpler Times Lager from Brother-in-law

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NADA: Part 1

The Point of Quackery.

This is a kick-off for what will be a multi-show run. It won't be sequential so next week we'll probably be back to our regularly scheduled silliness. This is episode 53, or, the first episode of Year Two. So, I'm going to get all serious and junk. Yep, more serious than Frank Miller.

Long-time listeners to our podcasts may recall that my lovely wife, Ashley, suffers from chronic pain. As such, we're the recipients of no small amount of unwanted medical advice from friends and strangers alike, all of whom seem to think their particular brand of magic is the one to fix her up.

Those same listeners may be aware that I am made up of, approximately, 60% pure, unadulterated, anxiety. Fortunately, there is no shortage of treatments for anxiety, especially for a cis/het, white man. Still, from time to time there are checkups with doctors and check-ins with therapists that can lean... woo.

But let's get to the point—the needly point. In the Venn diagram of our afflictions, the center is full of unscrupulous purveyors of pseudo-medical nonsense. It's part of why I started podcasting and why many of my topics are medically oriented, albeit more often than not ye-oldie medicine. But occasionally…

Chronic pain and mental health issues have a few things in common that make them fertile ground for nonsense: self-reported conditions and outcomes, lack of clear research, and societal taboo to name just a few. So, it's not uncommon for well-meaning medical professionals and amateurs alike to recommend unproven and unrealistic treatments like homeopathy, chiropractic, or in the case of this series, acupuncture.

Today I want to talk about acupuncture in general. Give an overview and introduction of sorts and from there I'll do episodes on the various associated or evolutions of acupuncture.

So, what is acupuncture?

For the short answer, I'll quote Science Based Medicine

acupuncture is a pre-scientific superstition

The end.

No?

Ok.

Acupuncture is, ever so briefly, an ancient or traditional form of "medicine" from ye-oldie China, or Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) that uses tiny, hair-thin needs to treat illnesses by blocking, redirecting, or "cleaning" chi pathways in the body.

You know, magic.

Still, among traditional Chinese medicines acupuncture does hold a special place in that it's actually ancient and not just another of Mao's placative measures—though it was used that way, to which we owe much of its modern popularity.

It was first described in the Shi-chi text from around 90 B.C.E. This is notable because in 1970 texts from 168 B.C.E. in the Ma-wang-tui graves paint a pretty solid picture of Chinese medicine in the third century B.C.E. They don't mention acupuncture at all,