Chinese medicine for RLS

[Guest guest]

Can herbs and acupuncture be effective for RLS? Yes, absolutely. But not always.

It depends partly on the patient and partly on the practitioner. Convincing

evidence of this can be obtained from www.bluepoppy.com/ They sell Research

Report No. 105 for $3.95, which details treatments given and results obtained by

various doctors in China. Many patients respond with success, some are helped

and some are not helped at all. The statistics are given. You can order the

report by calling 1-. This report is not useful as a self-help

guide. One could give it to a doctor of oriental medicine and see how he

responds. My daughter did this a few days ago. The doctor, who was trained in

China, said " Yes, I know about RLS " . He scheduled a series of 3 or 4 acupuncture

treatments for $44 each. The results are not yet in, but that does not matter.

If he succeeds, that does not mean acupuncture will solve your problem. If he

fails that is evidence of what we already know, which is that it is not always

helpful. A few years ago my daughter went to an acupuncturist who asked her to

describe her symptoms in detail so he could improvise. The treatments were not

helpful.

A note on placebo-controlled trials. Placebo-controlled trials are not available

for treatment of RLSs using herbs and acupuncture. Results studies can be

valuable when placebo-controlled trials are not available, as in the case of

surgery. The Chinese have been using results studies for 3000 years and have

obtained much valuable information from them. In this country, the failure of

doctors to use results studies has done much harm to patients. An example. For

years urologists did surgery on the prostate without paying attention to results

studies. The result was that many men received unnecessary and sometimes harmful

surgery.