Acupuncture for Chronic Fatigue Syndrome: An Overview of Systematic Reviews, 2020, Yin et al

FWIW, which in my opinion is very little.

Paywall, https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11655-020-3195-3

 

I'm curious. Given that ME/CFS can cause widespread problems anywhere throughout the body, in muscles, nerves, bones, organs, which part of the body do the needles get stuck into when using acupuncture?

I've had acupuncture myself, about 20 years ago. In my case it was for a severe shoulder problem - I found the physical movements required in just getting dressed were too painful to tolerate and I had to get help to do it.

The acupuncture I had was carried out by a physiotherapist as a last resort because nothing else was working. The needles were stuck in and near the areas of greatest pain, so at least there was some relationship between the needles and the problem it was trying to fix.

I'm actually quite embarrassed about admitting that I had acupuncture and it helped, because it has such a bad reputation in western medicine. I certainly had no expectation that it would help - I thought it was going to be a complete waste of time and money. (I was seeing the physiotherapist privately.)

But there is no way that my experience of acupuncture for sore shoulders could be compared to using it in ME/CFS, where it doesn't even seem to have any semblance of logic behind it as a treatment.

 

The quality of systematic reviews is low, therefore more systematic reviews are needed?

That's some logic right there. Not the good kind, but it's definitely some logic. It would be weird even on a movie review: "This movie is terrible, 1/10, but we definitely recommend it". I, uh, what?

I'm genuinely puzzled how Cochrane has the reputation it has or even what purpose it serves given that garbage in garbage out almost seems like a feature. This is borderline satire of how conspiracy theorists imagine this is what scientists do, basically making stuff up to justify more useless work.

 

found this gofund me for a severe ME patient

https://www.gofundme.com/f/hannahs-fight-against-severe-me

scalp acupunture is now also called neuroacupuncture.
https://www.neuroacupunctureinstitute.org/treatment/faqs-about-scalp-neuroacupuncture.html