Medical spokesman of all types and in all places are in agreement that it is a good idea to quit smoking. There is not much debate taking place on this subject. The why is a pretty much settled question now, but the how is still going strong. The methods used for quitting range from the time honored cold turkey method to several alternative medicine choices. Two of the more popular ones are Hypnosis and Laser Acupuncture.
The two are often lumped together by debunkers. They feel that both of the treatments involve nothing more than playing a trick on the mind. It is easy to do a little exploring and find published clinical studies that claim that experiments were done on two groups of subjects. Both groups were told that laser acupuncture to quit smoking was a proven and successful treatment method. Then one group was given stimulation of the actual points thought to promote calming and reduce anxiety. These points would normally be used in the quit smoking process.
The second group of subjects received similar laser acupuncture treatments, but the points selected had no relation to the actual points. The claim is that the rate of success measured by how many of the test group managed to quit smoking was identical for both groups. The implication was that the laser acupuncture treatments merely fooled the subjects and made them ?think? they were being helped. This is called the placebo effect.
Another problem that has emerged in the use of laser acupuncture to quit smoking is the profit potential in it. A large sum of money is spent annually on products and services that advertise their ability to help in the struggle to end nicotine addiction. There are going people seeking to capture a share of this windfall by the use of laser acupuncture clinics. The process is safe and non-evasive. The smoker might not be so concerned with the underlying reason why he is being helped.
The true practitioner of Traditional Chinese Medicine might be able to make use of laser stimulation in his overall plan of treatment. It is a basic tenet of TCM that it is the whole person that is being treated and not just the symptom. This might be a good way to judge a laser acupuncture to quit smoking clinic. If the laser treatment is just given with no examination, no questions, no use of other tools, it most likely is not going to have the success rate you can find under the care of a true practitioner.
