has anyone tried it with any success?

I have always been puzzled as to how it could be effective. However, if it helps people with pain they should do it, even if it is placebo effect.

Didn’t work for me, but my bride and a couple of my friends swear it works for them.

Yes.
It helped me get through months of pain before surgery. I consider myself a complete skeptic, but it definitely worked. 2 sessions per week worked very well for me. The place I went had 3 people and there were definite differences in technique and results.

For 15 years it was the only thing other than steroids that relieved my eczema. Hours after a treatment, the rash would clear from my body. I wouldn't have thought that sticking needles in me would help a skin disorder, but there it was.

My 99 year old MIL has been going to one over 30 years for her back pain. She swears by it. This is a woman that loathes taking meds. (Doesn’t need that crappin shit).
She also hates to spend money so I’m confident she is getting relief from her treatment.

I had it done for back spasms a few years ago. My doc recommended it. He did the acupuncture and prescribe some muscle relaxers. After about 30 min of needles sticking in my back (very odd feeling), I was pain free.

I tried everything prior to surgery, for intense bilateral carpal tunnel syndrome.

It took my pain level down from all day every day +10+ to about +3. Tx decreased accordingly after a few weeks & was effective control my pain on a 1x week basis. I was able to work up to that point.

After a couple months the carrier announced they wouldn't pay for it anymore (about $35 per tx). So they paid for 12 weeks off work lost time plus 2 surgeries. Guess they saved a bundle.

In my case a type of electro-needle was used. I would go in for tx in moderate to severe pain and leave in about 20 minutes without any complaint. That would last for most of a week, plus allow me to sleep in a bed instead of sitting up all night.

Wow. Now y'all have me wondering, could this help with the nerve damage caused by my Guillain Barré?

I have had quite a bit of accupuncture. It works well in many cases. The meridian points are not based on anatomical structures, so you have to open your mind a bit to accept it.

As a chiropractor, I see lots and lots of alternative treatments. The more you know, the more you realize how little we as humans know about the human body. My guess is that the total of all of healthcare knows about 1% of what really goes on inside the body.

I'm an acupuncturist and I get the skepticism. As a profession we don't tend to do a very good job of explaining things in a scientific way.

Acupuncture is scientific, just not in the way most expect. It's more like an application of bio-physics with the biochemical response at the tail end of a much larger chain of events.

Because of the existing medical/biological research paradigm, folks go looking for biochemical mediators and then get very confused when different needles in different points cause a different cascade of events. The end result is: things look completely schizophrenic.

As it pertains to pain relief, the idea that acupuncture is placebo has been pretty well debunked by most current studies. Turns out that 'sham needling' with actual needle insertion amounts to treatment. When that data is statistically manipulated to 'subtract' the control group's placebo effect from the treatment group you end up subtracting treatment from treatment which leaves you with effectively zero. Head to head studies (acupuncture vs pain med) have always shown acupuncture to be at least as effective as the med, usually more effective. This alone should have been enough to settle the placebo question, but cognitive bias is always in play and some folks simply cannot let it go.

My wife has it done every two weeks for migraines, and she claims it helps quite a bit in dealing with them. Not my kinda thing, but if it helps ease other's pain in some way, I'm all for it.

I have a moderate case of tendonitis in my right elbow and thought this might be an option

think I'm going to give it a shot

You need to find a good acupuncturist. The one I see is Mongolian and was trained in China. PA has very rigorous licensing, and he is licensed in the state. He's good. My tae kwon do buddies have gone to him for all sorts of injuries, with excellent results. I too have had excellent results over the years-- meaning more than a decade. I don't have any doubts that it works-- depending on the acupuncturist.

Anyway, you have little to lose in trying it. Worst case it's a bunch of tiny sticks with needles that you hardly feel. Best case, your tendonitis will be cured.

I have exactly one acupuncture story:

A few years ago I hurt my back, to the point where I was in serious pain and miserable. I was scheduled to fly to Seattle — 7 hours on the plane — the following day, for a business meeting that I could NOT miss. I was crippled, I could barely stand.

It was Friday at 3:30... no doctors available. As a last resort, my wife called her acupuncture guy who said “Sounds like your husband is in a lot of pain.... c’mon down.”

I practically crawled into the guys office. Filled out the strangest medical questionnaire ever (odd questions about all sort of things... did my feet often get cold, do my palms sweat, what kind of food did I eat, how often did I have sex). I met with the acupuncture guy. He was very nice, he reviewed my medical questionnaire, talked with me a bit... then did his needle thing.

I walked out, not 100% cured, but with 99% of my pain gone. And it stayed gone on the plane, and through my meetings.

I am NEVER questioning whether acupuncture works again. I was, and remain, amazed.

OTOH... I haven’t been back, either.

Did not work for me but my treatment was not for pain. Waste of money.

If you're looking for an acupuncturist, here are a few things to keep in mind:

"Real" acupuncturists are board certified. You want either an NCCAOM credential or someone certified by the American Board of Medical Acupuncture. Both organizations support a practitioner look up (www.nccaom.org/find-a-practitioner-directory/ OR www.dabma.org/physicians.asp).

Acupuncturists in most states are also state licensed. There are still a couple states that do not license, so you're reliant on either the NCCAOM or DABMA cert in those places (North Dakota and Oklahoma come to mind).

Acupuncture is NOT the same as 'dry needling'. If you've had dry needling by some other practitioner and it didn't work, or didn't work well, don't automatically rule acupuncture out.

Most of the schools of oriental medicine in the US are pretty good. It's a long course of study that includes western science as well as elements of western medicine. That being said, someone who has taken the time to do a clinical rotation in China usually has a different mind-set which can be an advantage in certain situations.

Edit: should have added this as well - acupuncture has a dose dependent effect. Occasionally things go extraordinarily well and one treatment pretty much clears up the issue. In my experience, this happens less than 5% of the time. Most of the time you're looking at between 7 and 10 treatments before we start transitioning to maintenance.

The reason for this is simple. The human body has amazing mechanisms of compensation. Any given system has to break down by quite a bit - I've seen numbers in the 70-75% range - before a person will start to experience a 'symptom'. It takes us a bit of time to unwind that clock, to the extent that it can be unwound. Consider a heart attack or liver disease. By the time markers of those conditions show in the blood or on an EKG, a patient is already experiencing almost catastrophic damage.

When I was in High School and taking Tae Kwon Do, I hyperextended my foot on a overaggressive (and mis-aimed) kick.

The master pulled me aside, or rather I hobbled since I could barely walk and asked if I would like him to do acupuncture. I said yes, and so he grabbed his med kit, pulled out some Johnson & Johnson acupuncture needles and worked magic. In 5 minutes I was back out on the floor and the pain was gone.

No idea how it worked, but it did.

Anytime i get a knot in my back or a pulled muscle, a quick acupuncture appointment solves the problem and I don't have to suffer through the unneeded pain.

I have sciatica on my right side. I have thought about trying it but end up being too skeptical. I have read stories where people needed to go 2-3 times a week. But it seems acupuncture is not covered my medical insurance. Searching on line is also showing different prices for a session anywhere between $30-150 each. No way would I pay $150 a week.