Does anyone know anything about acupuncture?

i have a gold hoop earring in my left ear- someone told me that the reason i have lower back pain was because that's a pressure point and gold aggrevates it. is that true? and if so, if i switched to a silver earring, would that make a difference?

a couple of things: i am neither overweight nor in poor physical shape, i have back pains due to a childhood accident. my chiropractor is the one who told me this, but she's a little "new agey" so i wanted some other input, but please don't bother answering if you're going to be rude, i am just trying to get some other experiences on this. thanks to everyone else!!

There are certain pressure points that they use for acupuncture and i had it done for back pain and that was not one of the areas that they applied the needles, so i think something else is going on with your back. Good Luck.

It is unlikley that it is the case. I cannot see any rational for auricular acupuncture. But I should also say no to listen to Skep Doc below. Lower back pain has a myriad of etiologies and to be presumptous enough to diagnose you off the cuff without data is unwise. There are a lot of reasons why you could have low back pain. And also please be very careful of new age chiropractors that claim injuries are do to childhood trauma. I hope for your sake she is really manipulating your spine and not fooling around with new age stuff. You may need a DC that does musculoskelatal medicine who will manipulate you correctly, use physical therapy and possible excersizes.

I seriously doubt the earing is causing the problem you're describing. It's possible, but highly highly highly unlikely.
Most of the time lower back pain occurs because something in your system is out of alignment, and fixing the lower back pain requires repairing that alingment (either through seeing a body work person such as a chiropractor, or better an osteopath, or learning a decent tai chi/chi gung form which teaches you to fix the allingments on your own).
There are thousands of things which can cause lower back pain (including an accupuncture meridian line being disturbed), but nearly every time it's just because something
is structurally out of place and not able to transfer the force which passes through it.

Also try ignore what skep doc said, there were a lot of blatant falsehoods in his statements (beyond the standard attacks people learn in med school).

Acupuncture fails clinical trials continuously and is based on magical delusional thinking.

For it to work there would have to be invisible energy channels in your body called "Qi" or "chakras".

Unsurprisingly, quackupuncturists have never been able to prove that these things exist.

Don't waste your life on this crap.

Raven Eyes: there is nothing derogatory about SkepDoc's comments. They are entirely factual. If you are offended by facts, that just demonstrates the weakness of your position.

Conventional medicine has about a 40% success rate, acupuncture about 80 %. I've been astounded by the improvements to my health through acupuncture. Dr. Sceptic is very frightened of things he doesn't understand. I would check out acupuncture.

The emotional correlation to back pain according to Louise Hay and others is feeling unsupported, so it might be worth your while mulling that over.

No that is not true

Auricular acupuncture is even sillier than regular acupuncture. In regular acupuncture, which goes back over 4,000 years, it is believed that "life energy" known as qi (pronounced 'chee') flows through 'meridians' in the body and can be accessed through 'chakras'. There is not a shred of evidence that any of this exists. Qi actually means air. In ancient China, dissection of humans was forbidden, so nothing was known about anatomy, however beheadings were very common. They saw the empty veins and arteries sticking out the neck of the victim and surmised that these were the portals that carried a life force.

Auricular acupuncture is a "body map" system, similar to iridology and reflexology. They say that each body organ or system has a corresponding point on the ear, that can be manipulated to affect functioning in that organ. It is even more nonsensical than traditional acupuncture.

Your earring, gold or silver, has nothing whatsoever to do with your low back pain. 80% of humans suffer from LBP at some point in their lives. It is a side effect of evolving to walk upright, with backs that originally evolved to walk on all fours. It is also related to being overweight and in poor physical condition generally, especially the 'core' abdomenal muscles.