To ask whether or not people here believe in homeopathy?

[DaisyLovesMetronidazole]

I don't at all.

However, I'm not out for a bunfight!

Just curious, as was surprised by the response of a certain group to this question today.

Bagged Chamomilla - depends how it is prepared. Can be either herbal or homeopathic.

Bagged It would be very difficult to do the trial as very often the same symptoms in different people need different remedies, and similarly one remedy can be used for a wide variety of symptoms, depending on the overall pic

convenient huh?

Coalition I'm not so sure. I've never had reiki, but I trust DP's judgement. He's an avid Ben Goldacre fan, has no time at all for woo, and is not easily suggestible. No-one told him he might feel something relax in his stomach, and no-one told him he might cry.

Last time he went for a reiki he lay there thinking 'Meh, this isn't working, perhaps I was just a bit stressed and imagining it before'. But then he told me he felt the same unwinding feeling as before. He's generally pretty reluctant to believe in anything remotely hippyish, so if he says it works despite his thinking it shouldn't, I'm inclined to believe him.

You get homeopathic chamomilla baggedandtagged. The difference is that the homeopathic remedy contains no chamomilla.

Flowerpotmummy, if you read up the thread there's some info on regression to the mean and compensation bias that might help explain this.

herbwoman: might be worth looking up the nocebo effect which may explain this.

Bagged - it's homeopathic chamomilla in teething powders.

Flowerpot - teething powders are sugar (or artificial sweeteners) which distracts babies and makes them feel better momentarily. Plus you expect it to work

nocake: actually, if someone tells you that taking too much of a homeopathic remedy (or taking the wrong remedy) will do you harm then it may well do. Cf nocebo effect.

Tell you what HerbWoman, pick one and I will go to the shops tomorrow and buy a stack of it and drink it down.

I am willing to bet quite a large amount of money that nothing happens.

Surely my anecdata that is does nothing will be just as valid as that of the people claiming it works.

The placebo effect works on babies flower because you assume that what you are doing will work, so any improvement which would have happened anyway is attributed to the water/sugar, also babies take their cues from their mother, if you say in a soothing voice that this will help and you rub their gums and you give them a cuddle etc that is going to have some effect and because you have given them the stuff you are going to attribute the effect of that to the water/sugar.

I see none of our 'believers' have been able to answer the question as to why the water can remember teeny amounts of say chamomile but not all of the gazillion other chemicals it has previously been exposed to.

Someone explain to me exactly how it works, in proper terms laid out as cause and effect.

Some Reiki practitioners offer healing over the phone

Bagged Very

Off to look up nocebo.

I bet they do, at 30p a minute I am sure.

No I think it is rubbish. But the placebo effect might genuinely help some.

Morloth I didn't say it would - have never tried it myself. Apparently there has been research into proving belladonna but it didn't do anything!

BOF Have to say I'm a bit about reiki by phone.

I've had plenty of strange experiences in my life. One of them even contravened, right in front of my eyes, a basic law of physics. But I cannot bear fuckwits who think that science and 'conventional medicine' is somehow evil, that anything woo is ipso facto good, and that being credulous is the same as being 'open minded'.

I used to know a Reiki healer online and he was nice (though not very bright). He offered to visit people and do the treatment for no charge other than his fare money, but he said if you don't want to tell a stranger online your address just email me and I'll do it over the internet.

We were all too kind to laugh cos he meant so well, but it was sad too that someone had taken advantage of him and filled him with this nonsense.

Isn't belladonna just a type of poisonous potato? What do you mean proving it?

'Proving' in homeopathic terms is supposed to be a way of finding out what a remedy can be used for. So a homeopath could take repeated doses of a homeopathic preparation of something (eg belladonna) and the idea is that the symptoms which result in a healthy person are those that belladonna would help in a sick person. That's the gist of it anyway. Homeopathic remedies are made from all kinds of poisonous substances.

"I cannot bear fuckwits who think that science and 'conventional medicine' is somehow evil, that anything woo is ipso facto good, and that being credulous is the same as being 'open minded'."

That's not that many people. One could just as well say you cannot bear fuckwits who think that alternative treatements are somehow evil, that anything conventional or pharmaceutical is ipso facto good, and that being credulous is the same thing as being sensible and rational.

I don't think it works. Some alternative medicine has been shown to work but not homeopathy.

Gossenerrybushes - It is some people though.

"It's over-simplistic to say that homeopathy = placebo effect, in fact it's wrong."

This is what I think. It's the only thing there's evidence for, that it works by placebo. But I think that placebo is very valuable: and I think it's real -- more than symptom relief.

Sure, and there are certainly some on this thread who think what I said too, the opposite. On the continent there are doctors who will treat you homeopathically. Quite a lot. Most have an IQ of over 65 and are not vulnerable to bollocks and woo. Plainly they think it's valuable.

We have been given stones by someone who practised reiki - she thought the stones would cure DH of renal failure and DS of his condition. Funnily enough nothing happened.

I have come across some homeopathic remedies which aim to improve a persons overall health but I wouldn't personally use it when ill. Call me idiotic but I'd go for medical science everytime. In the cases of DH and DS, they wouldn't be here without the intervention of conventional medicine so it works for us.

Once I found out what homoeopathy was - then no I did not believe.

Before this I assumed it was a from of herbalism - most of the people I knew using homoeopaths seemed to get a mix of herbalism - things like ST Johns Wart for depression - homoeopathic concoctions and counselling - ie someone listening to them.

Actual homoeopathy - no.

I have since learned how wonderful and mysterious the placebo effect can be and that it can have a dark side - where a lot of witch doctors probably got their power.

I dislike the NHS's public money being wasted on treatments with no scientific prof especially when treatments that do have proven benefits have to be rationed or with held by NICE because they are not cost effective. I also dislike people who when you do have serious ill people in the family push this kind of rubbish 'cures' at you and them.

I think going to see a homeopath might have a very beneficial result - although I don't believe in homeopathy.

DH suffers from ezcema, and after a long series of not getting anywhere, went to see a conventionally trained doctor who also did homeopathy in his spare time. That consulation was the only one where the doctor spent time talking to him about how generally shit and painful it was, talked about ways to manage the problem, explained the reasoning behind some of the tips he'd been given in the past, and so on. All stuff that had never happened in previous appointments. DH chucked away the pills he'd been given, but came back just looking happier and more in control of things. I think that just having a doctor agree that it was a painful and unpleasant disease had made a big difference to him, actually.