Anyone tried homeopathy for allergies?

[VelvetCushions]

I'm thinking of seeing a homeopath for 'treatment' of multiple food allergies for my toddler. I know they may not be able to 'cure'his allergies but I've heard that they can make the reactions milder at least.

Has anyone tried this? [hoping that someone comes along to say 'yes' it worked miracles ]

I am not going to say it worked miracles but I have used homoeopathic remedies for hayfever and found them to be very effective, if more shortlived in effect than the conventional drugs. I have also used them for hangovers, equally successfully.

hope it works out for you if you try it.

IT worked great for DS's eczema, has improved asthma a little bit. He is still seeing the homeopath but I'm not sure how much help it is.

There is no scientific evidence that homeopathy works. It is therefore most probably just a placebo effect (which can be up to 50% of the effect of an actual drug - the mind is a powerful thing!). TBH I'd steer clear, especially as with allergies you are dealing with something potentially life-threatening. A referal to a good paediatric allergist is worth its weight in gold (don't accept a referal to a standard paediatrian who are not specialists in allergies).

Sorry, I wish I could be more positive, but it does worry me that some of these alternative practitioners charge an arm and a leg for witch-doctory aimed at vulnerable groups .

Yes, but a long time ago. I had horrible eczema as a child (plus asthma, hayfever and various known environmental/ food allergies) and my parents took me to see a homeopath to try and cure it.

Having tried all the desensitization treatments which were then available within conventional medicine at the time, my parents took me to a homeopath when I was 10. He did the usual interviews, then prescribed some tablets (no idea what), gave me some vitamin e oil for the eczema patches and put me on an exclusion diet from which my dairy allergy was picked up (my other food allergies caused asthma/vomiting, the dairy one just the eczema which is why the link was not made. Most GPs are still reluctant to link food allergies and eczema ).

Anyway, about 6 weeks after cutting all dairy out of my diet the eczema was gone. I guess the tablets may well have helped too, I carried on taking them for a while as I recall. About 3 years later I started eating dairy again no problems.

So one vote for homeopathy here. The scientist in me can't explain it, but if conventional medicine has no more to offer than steroid cream and wet wrapping then it is certainly worth a try imo.

When Ds was 4 months old we went to see my family in Australia. Ds had terrible eczema on his face a a stranger came up to us and suggested we take him to see a particular homeopath... and we did. He diagnosed his food allergies and changed my diet (I was breastfeeding ) and gave us homeopathis remedies. Ds improved dramatically. All the redness went from his face which was a blessing as we were getting very unkind remarks from complete strangers. Tried a well recommended homeopath back in UK but no improvement at all and he was pretty hopeless. So one good one bad.

I wholeheartedly agree with AcademicMum.
My parents spent a fortune on homeopathic treatment for my eczema to no avail. There is no evidence it works. I think it is a cruel waste of money - sorry.

Btw, my skin condition cleared up itself when I reached puberty.

Homeopathy doesn't work.

But hey, if you want to spend a fortune on little tablets of sugar, go ahead.

wb, I know what you mean about the eczema. DS1 had terrible eczema until we found out he had an egg allergy (he had a reaction to scrambled egg at about a year old). Once we removed all egg from his diet, his eczema cleared up quickly without the use of creams etc. DS2 also had terrible eczema and when I said to the HV I thought it was allergy related she just dismissed it and insisted on us trying a million and one creams. At 6 months we found he was allergic to dairy and since I cut dairy out of my diet (he's still partly BF) - his eczema has completely cleared up!

I suspect that removing the dairy from your diet had a bigger effect than the tablets, but then I'm just an old cynic (sp?)!

wb your eczema cleared up because you cut dairy out of your diet, not because you took a few sugar pills.

Note also that the $1 million prize on offer by James Randi for proof that homeopathy works is still unclaimed, even though some extremely well-respected scientists have been working on it. www.bbc.co.uk/science/horizon/2002/homeopathy.shtml

lots of the tablets that are used, have lactose in them.

mix ups can happen, and thats important if you have a child with severe milk allergies.

met a parent who did use one, for other allergy problems, but also child had severe milk allergy.
tablets got mixed, drops put on wrong ones.

so be careful.

overmydeadbody - you are probably right. But the fact still remains that after 10 years of being given endless potions and lotions and injections and generally being pissed around and over all that time scratching myself to pieces every b*dy day it was a homeopath that was open-minded enough to explore the possibility that there may have been a link between my skin and what I ate. For which I will be eternally grateful to him- eating some expensive sugar pills was a very small price to pay.

Of course you shouldn't have to go to a homeopath for this but the fact remains that many, many GPs are still loath to look for a cause of eczema, irrespective of how bad it is. The emphasis is far to often on treating the symptoms.

Dear VelvetCushions,

toying around with the potentially dangerous food allergies of your toddler like this is a crazy idea!
The only way to stop reactions from occuring is to be hawk-eyed and ensure that DC does not consume any of the foods he/she is alleric to.
Your hope for a miracle cure is the wrong attitude to have. You must be realistic and really make sure the offending foods are not consumed. This can be very hard work, in particular when DC is eating away from you (playschool/at a relatives etc.) but it is your responsibility to educate those people about the allergies. If you aren't sure exactly which foods DC is allergic to, go see an allergy specialist and demand they do the pinprick tests for everything.

Homeopathy 'medicine' contains no actual ingriedients, besides water and sugar, so of course have no physical effect.
From the other comments on here where they have had positive things to say about homeopathy, the homeopath advised dietry changes, which, obviously, worked. The actual so called 'medicine' did nothing.

No scientific evidence exists for the effectiveness of homeopathy -the clinical evidence all points to the opposite. And the British Homeopathy Association (BHA) are guilty of false representation to the Science and Technology select committee -see here:

www.guardian.co.uk/science/blog/2010/feb/04/homeopathic-association-evidence-commons-committee

A mass overdose of homeopathic medicines was carried out in London recently with no reports of any casualties -mainly because there are no active ingredients in any of the pills. A recent report detailed that Boiron (a homoepathic manufacturer) spent ?108M on marketing compared to ?6.5M on research (16:1 -normal pharma companies have a typical ratio of 2:1).

Google the evidence -lots to look at -none of which is supportive apart from information from inside the industry.
Snake oil salesmen by any other name.

Old thread from last May.

Praying, rain dances? Sorry to be flippant, but I'm so fed up with the 'I've got an allergy because some homeopath's allergy monitor beeped when they passed their arm over a reader ... .

Find an allergy specialist, try to get a referral to a paediatric immunologist. travel for it - probably still cheaper than sugar pills ...

I'm so glad there are plenty of homeopathy sceptics here!
I usually get shouted down when I suggest homeopathy is a totally unproven and its is a potentially life-threatening route, to exclude current scientifically proven medecine!