homeopathy... aibu to say i think of it's a crock of crap?

[ILetHimKeep20Quid]

Was at my brothers for dinner yesterday. My baby has a touch of eczema. As a chronic sufferer myself I roll my eyes whenever people start on the 'oh have you tried this' thing but smile and nod. I have used steroid creams in the past, of various strengths, to deal with outbreaks. I'm well versed in the treatment.

So, the wee touch my ds has isn't concerning me and I'm moisturizing him regularly.

Cue my sil practically gushing over her homeopath (not just a normal one. He's a gp but does this on the side it seems).

I smiled and nodded. Not wanting to get into the whole thing. But she would not give up. So I asked 'what is homeopathy?'

Apparently, get this, water has a memory. What the actual fuck? How can water have a memory?

*that we cannot conclusively prove....

Acupuncture 'works' for some pain conditions in that people report less pain and we all know that pain is subjective anyway. My rheumatoid arthritis pain was significantly lower after a day at a posh spa. It was because I was totally relaxed - physically and mentally - and was able to shut off. I saw an acupuncturist, he had a comfy couch, candles etc - very relaxing to lie down for an hour a week but still, my disease raged away.

Thanks only

I used Chinese medicine for anti-malarials in Africa, because the WHO told me they had good preventative effects and less side effects than Western anti-malarials. After all, alternative medicine that works is called medicine.

Not sure when you went, but Artemisinin is a fairly recent powerful drug against malaria and it is extracted from a plant initially grown in China.

Plants are major sources of medicines, so herbal remedies are fine.
In fact, don't think something won't have side effects just because it's a herbal remedy and it's natural and so on.

I don't believe for a second that acupuncture can cure anything (depression for example), but at the same time I've had it a few times and it feels fucking awesome at the time! I felt extremely relaxed and had what was I guess a rush of endorphins. I had no preconceived expectations of what it was supposed to feel like. I thought the placebo effect would affect how I perceived my pain (ie it should be reduced after treatment) but it wasn't really affected. However I wouldn't think the placebo effect accounted for my experience of how it felt during the stabby pinning treatment.

I have reliably been informed that lots of people experience an endorphin rush at the gym. Never happened to me. Apparently I have to get myself jabbed with clean, sterile and certainly contrasting no drugs needles for that!

But homeopathy...OP YANBU!

My friend had acupuncture just before fertility treatment. She's a science nerd and a total sceptic but thought there was no harm in spending an hour thinking lovely good thoughts about a possibly pregnancy and found the whole thing very relaxing. She is now pregnant, but that doesn't mean the acupuncture really did anything.

Lweji I was there twenty years ago. I think I was trying to say exactly what you are saying... I was not saying that plant based medicine has no side effects. I was saying that this medicine had fewer reported side effects than the available Western medicine at the time.

I was using that example to show that people like me, who believe in experimentation and evidence, will accept that evidence when it is about herbal, alternative, Chinese medicine. I just want evidence.

I have no doubt that a session at the acupuncturists leaves you feeling wonderfully relaxed and can relieve pain. It just has nothing to do with correcting the flow of qi by stimulating acupuncture points.

No, MrsTerry, you didn't. :)

The second part wasn't aimed at you, sorry. It was a general comment and I should have been more clear.

"She is now pregnant, but that doesn't mean the acupuncture really did anything."

That's the problem. If she had spent a lovely relaxed hour in a rocking chair with a bowl of tomato soup and Mozart on the CD player nobody would even suggest for a single second that the rocking chair, the soup and the Mozart had a positive effect of the fertility treatment.

Exactly curlew and it did cost an obscene amount of money.

YADNBU. But sometimes it's just so hard to convince people of this.

If water has memory that might explain why I feel so shit.

Acupuncture has been demonstrated in some RCTs to provide effective analgesia.
But acupuncture is not homeopathy of course.

Medical researchers believe that acupuncture's efficacy might be attributed to the widely appreciated "gate theory" of pain causes/ relief.

Rubbing it better uses the gate theory too, doesn't it? Cheaper than acupuncture.

Don't know what gate theory is.

If you bang your knee rubbing supposedly helps because it floods your brain with sensory input from your 'touch' sensory nerves, of which there are many, drowning out input from pain sensory nerves, of which there are fewer. I think.

Is that gate theory?

Pretty much waffly
Acupuncture has been shown to have a longer lasting effect though than rubbing or holding. It seems to be an area of "alternative" therapies that might be worthy of further investigation/ investment.
That cannot be said of "therapies" such as homeopathy, herbalism or cranial-osteopathy for example. All of that has been shown to be hogwash.

No one got that TIM Minchin link?
I can't do links on this thing.

Is it

I'm happy for there to be further study into this sort of stuff.

I don't think they are devoid of value. Having someone give you time and care rarely afforded by a GP appointment can be useful to people but bollocks to all the pseudo science.

Cranial osteopathy? It's bloody wonderful. I've had years of chronic sinusitis improved 90 per cent after three sessions. And don't tell me it's the placebo effect as I've tried every other remedy going, alternative or and mainstream, and actually saw the osteopath initially for my child who said he couldn't help her but could help me.

"I'm happy for there to be further study into this sort of stuff."

Why?

It is very suspicious interesting that years ago I was in psychology lectures where we discussed the ethics of doctors prescribing sugar pills because the placebo effect is so strong (and other interesting effects, the Hawthorne effect was mentioned). Everyone always concluded that the NHS couldn't prescribe placebos as it would be unethical. Interesting that homeopathy is sometimes available. It is almost like doctors wanted a way of prescribing placebos, without saying that.

When I was two weeks overdue my MW said, "some people try homeopathy". I said, "I'll try it when there is a double blind, peer reviewed study that supports its use". She shook her head and said, "you'll never see one of those". I'm sure she suggests it because it's a way of keeping anxious, stressed people busy until nature takes its course.

MrsTerry: When my DF was working in a psychiatric hospital in the 60's, a lot of the patients were given a pink liquid as their daily meds. The patient were very happy to tell anyone that "Placebo", as it was actually trademarked as (this is in Scandinavia), was a very good and effective medicine. In those days they had little else for many conditions..

I sometimes wonder about SSRIs. Their efficacy is not really been proven that thoroughly, yet they are relatively easy and cheap to prescribe in order to fob people with a range of conditions off..