A bizarre therapy involving thin golden threads embedded in people’s bodies during acupuncture treatment has garnered significant attention after media exposure revealed X-ray images of South Korean patients showing hundreds of these thread strands.
One patient, a 65-year-old woman diagnosed with osteoarthritis of the knee – a degenerative joint condition that causes pain and stiffness – shared her experience with the news portal Yahoo.
She initially tried conventional medical treatments, including painkillers, nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, and steroid injections directly into her knees. Unfortunately, these medications did not alleviate her condition and instead led to serious stomach issues.
In search of an alternative solution to ease her joint pain, she opted for a type of “golden thread acupuncture.” As her knee pain intensified, she increased the frequency of these treatments to multiple times a week.
A subsequent X-ray examination at a hospital revealed that, in addition to thickened and hardened tissue near her left knee and abnormal growths around the joint, doctors identified hundreds of tiny gold threads in the area. They discovered that these short, sterile golden threads were intentionally left in the tissue during acupuncture to provide ongoing stimulation.
Another case involved a 58-year-old South Korean woman who sought relief from rheumatoid arthritis pain in her wrists through golden-thread acupuncture. Her condition deteriorated, with doctors believing she had not taken antirheumatic medications promptly, instead relying on the gold-thread alternative.
Unlike traditional Chinese acupuncture, which involves inserting needles into subcutaneous tissues along predefined meridians and removing them afterwards, golden thread acupuncture – common in northeastern Asia – involves practitioners embedding fine needles permanently in the tissues. These retained needles typically range from 3 to 15mm in length and 1mm in diameter, and they may appear straight, curved, or semicircular, according to an article in the Canadian Medical Association Journal.