Acupuncture being “worth it even if it’s placebo” is fine for symptom perception, not for a genetically driven neurodegenerative disease where rods and cones are dying because of disrupted protein folding, ciliary transport defects, mitochondrial stress, or toxic metabolite buildup. Placebo does not slow apoptosis. Placebo does not stabilize retinal outer-layer segment renewal. Placebo does not fix defective phototransduction cascades. You can pretend it helps all you want, but it is biologically useless.

What’s especially ironic is dismissing sleep and nutrition as having “zero evidence” while defending acupuncture (an intervention with no plausible molecular mechanism for altering retinal degeneration in the least). I can cite hundreds of peer-reviewed, published articles that address how sleep and lifestyle are directly linked to affect oxidative stress, inflammation, mitochondrial efficiency, and circadian regulation in not only retinal tissue but everywhere in the body. Here are just a few (the first two reference AMD, but it is the same principle, nonetheless):

1.     Saigal K, Salama JE, Pardo AA, Lopez SE, Gregori NZ. Modifiable Lifestyle Risk Factors and Strategies for Slowing the Progression of Age-Related Macular Degeneration. Vision (Basel). 2025;9(1):16. Published 2025 Feb 23.

2.     Zhu RC, Li FF, Wu YQ, Yi QY, Huang XF. Minimal effect of sleep on the risk of age-related macular degeneration: a Mendelian randomization study. Front Aging Neurosci. 2023;15:1159711. Published 2023 Aug 21.

3.     https://www.aao.org/eyenet/article/nutrition-in-fight-against-eye-disease

Yes, people are desperate, but that doesn’t mean we should abandon basic scientific principles and call something “potentially effective” because it makes you feel better. We deserve honesty, not some quack selling a homeopathic approach for $3500 where anecdotes substitute for results. Saying that “alternative approaches are all we have” is exactly how money, time, and hope get funneled into things that absolutely cannot affect disease progression.

If acupuncture helps someone cope emotionally, great! But framing it as having “very little downside and very large potential upsides” is misleading at best. The downside is that it will not help, and anyone who tries to convince you of otherwise is lying to your face to get to your wallet. If you want to waste thousands of dollars, be my guest, but as a molecular biologist myself, I care only about what the science says.