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.

Afraid it can't take personal anecdotes seriously -- until then you're talking a "crock of shit" according to Torridon.

Nailitorelse, I agree that this theory stands for herbal medicine, but if you read up the thread you'll see that homeopathic remedies are so dilute that they are actually just water (or sugar).

Homeopathy doesn't have any plant material in it Nailitorelse

Daisy I agree with you, but many scientists don't and haven't for over 100 years .. Its a classic debate, if you google 'if a tree falls in a forest' you can read about it, it's very interesting.

(Apologies, tried to link but my server is being odd tonight)

Point being just because something hasn't been scientifically proven doesn't mean it isn't so/doesn't work..It's up to each of us to make our own decisions about what we use/don't use medically.

But homeopathy has been disproven rather than not proven

Gooseberry - what exactly is your point? Yes, homeopathy has a placebo effect. So does usint vrand name painkillers, so does most stuff we do to make ourselves feel better. Whwr conclusion are we meant to draw?

Just to the people claiming "natural good, unnatural bad" in medicine: This is very often not the case at all - for example, aspirin originally came from a tree.

However, the artificially synthesised version is far safer.

Oh, and to answer your question, it's impossible to prove something is or isn't coincidence based on a sample size of one.

nailit homeopathic and herbal mixed up again on this thread.

homeopathic 'remedies' contain no active ingredient and can not possibly work except by placebo effect.

Herbal products contain actual extracts of plants or whatever.

gooseberry you are being directed to Bad Science cos it can answer all the questions you have just asked in great detail.

Oh - my points are these. Save you reading back, like.

Homeopathy is valuable because of its complex and little understood placebo effect. It appears to be the most effective delivery system of placebo in the UK.

Homeopathy users do not deserve to be abused, sneered at, described as stupid, ridiculous, having an IQ of 65, dumb, ignorant, ripped off nor its practitioners as evil conmen and women.

It is unbalanced to be hysterical and abusive about homeopathy and to ignore the problems cause by over use or prescribed us of conventional drugs, deaths and morbidity, plus the problems caused by medical error and conventional health care.

For example, someone said that closing the NhomeoHosp would save 6 million for cancer care. A quick google just told me that conventional error cost the NHS two billion in 2005. White coat syndrome allows people to ignore that, it seems.

Really jaggy? I doubt that. What points do you mean?

Coalition -- but you, with your grand omniscient overview, can decide it's coincidence. And that's that.

I am also a natural therapist and reserve the right to my opinion that homeopathy is a "rip off".

I think a lot of natural therapists tend to dismiss the ones they don't "do".

Not really. I work on evidence and am not in the habit of dismissing things willy nilly :)

Gooseberry - Homeopathy doesn't have a complex and little understood placebo effect, it has a placebo effect full stop. The placebo effect is well understood, it's application not so much. This is something that deserves more research, it's basically brain 'hacking' - this is one area that it's difficult to get research done on, as it can't be exploited commercially. So we need research councils to take more of an interest.

I very much doubt it's the most effective deliverer of placebo - that is much more likely to be conventional medicine where the real effects will reinforce the perceived ones - and just in volume terms there is a lot more of it.

Closing the NhomeoHosp would save 6 million for cancer care. Conventional error cost the NHS two billion in 2005. These two facts are entirely unrelated.

People get better. Before there was any "medicine" that actually worked scientifically - like antibiotics and anti virals and stuff, people got ill and got better. They didn;t get better as often as they do now, obviously, but they did get better.

So asome people taking homeopathic cures will get better. Most won't, but we never hear about them - you're not likely to say "I gave this person lots of money for some pills and they made no difference at all"

If you have anything actually serious wrong with you, a ethical homeopath will shunt you off to the GP so fast your feet won't touch the ground. The homeopath is then free to listen, to empathize and to make the person feel much better. The sugar pill is just an added bonus, it's the time and the listening that cures.

www.badscience.net/2008/03/all-bow-before-the-might-of-the-placebo-effect-it-is-the-coolest-strangest-thing-in-medicine/#more-620

here y'go gooseberry

for a start.

but just read the book, it is genuinely very interesting and informative, honest.

I really didn't know abut the special tapping vials of water the leather thing to make it all special and homeopathicy.

water on the leather.

about not abut, argh.

I do recommend Tim Minchin on the subject:

"... by definition, I begin, alternative medicine, I continue, has either not been proved to work, or has been proved not to work. Do you know what they call alternative medicine that has been proved to work? ....Medicine...."

"I becoming aware that I'm staring, I'm like a rabbit suddenly trapped in the blinding headlights of vacuous crap".

"Take physics and bin it! Water has memory! And while its memory of a long lost drop of onion juice seems infinite, it somehow forgets all the poo it's has in it."

phew, thought I'd killed it there.

Coalition - what a good post.

My personal experience of homeopathy is through ds2. His recurrent and serious asthma attacks were bamboozling everyone, gp included. A friend recommended a 'very experienced and well regarded' homeopath. I was very very sceptical but when you're desperate you'll consider anything.

After having warned her about my serious animal allergies we rolled up to a house rolling in cats, she then told me, after a comprehensive medical history, that I should ignore steroid-based medicines and instead use varying strengths of homeopathic tinctures. I have no doubt that had I followed her advice my son would have hospitalised and seriously ill.

I agree completely with the fact that herbal medicine, in useful concentrations, have a place in conventional treatment. The other is fundamentally dangerous.