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?

Is Echinacea a homeopathic medicine? I know people who swear by this to keep colds away.

Not usually: the stuff sold as Echinacea usually at least purports to have some Echinacea in it. As so often with these sorts of things, there are low quality studies that claim to show an effect, but as the studies are carried out with better controls, and/or more studies are added to a meta-analysis, the effect disappears.

It's like Vitamin C as a cold cure/preventative. There's no good evidence it works as anything other than a placebo, but, it probably won't do you any harm and it's cheap.

And there's good reason to think placebo effects are worthwhile anyway. Remember all the crap (or, indeed, carp) about fish oil helping children with school work of a few years ago, which has now gone awfully quiet? Almost certainly a mixture of placebo and Hawthorne effect, but some children undoubtedly got better exam results because of that, even if convincing them that jelly beans were magic medicine would have bee just as effective.

And on the topic of jelly beans, this.

Oh the irony! Considering you have tried every conventional ointment going and still have eczema, I'd say that conventional medicine was a crock of crap following your logic!

You are not being unreasonable to say whatever you want. Ignorant people have as much right to their opinion as everyone else! Don't knock what you haven't tried though!

I don't think it is harmful. The thing about the placebo effect is that it can work as well as active drugs in some situations. It can also work when people KNOW that they are being given a placebo. But these days sugar pills are not prescribable, hence some healthcare professionals may recommend homeopathy.

rescue remedy is a herbal medicine made from various flowers. not homeopathy.

Actually it is 40% brandy which is then then "diluted" with a further 27% brandy which I think accounts for a lot

Herbal remedies that contain the actual herb in question are not homeopathy. That doesn't mean that they are effective or safe - you would need to look at the research on each remedy. Some are great and some a waste of money.

But OP is NBU. Homeopathy is indeed total crap.

ILetHim Rescue Remedy is 27% brandy, which probably accounts for the pick-me-up effect.

Juggling

Regression to mean is that if you took a group of results at an extreme end of the distribution and then look at the results later they will have tended to shift towards the average. This is because there is a degree of randomness, and the randomness will tend to even the results out.

A simple example might be if you took the top performing sports team halfway through the season. If you then compared this to the results in the second half it is likely that they will be worse. This is because the results depend on the team but also luck, and it is unlikely that they will carry on being as lucky for the second half of the season as well as the first.

It's a very important concept in analysing statistics, particularly whether something has been effective or not (i.e. homeopathic remedies).

X-post with Beast

sicutlilium hic...

beast Brandy does calm me down. Tastes better than Rescue Remedy, too.

Maybe they should start selling Rescue Remedy in bigger bottles? Say, about 70cl?

It (rescue remedy) got me through exams at uni.

Probably in the same way gin gets me through the week.

I might invest in a dropper.

It's a kind of hobby or displacement activity that some people enjoy, as others follow soaps or football, or collect ceramic figurines. I just shrug, like when people say "oooo, typical virgo". I can see the attraction - the 6 year old me would have loved all the little bottles and collecting and mumbo jumbo and taking your own well being very very seriously and always seeing yourself as a bit of a special flower and a semi-invalid (because even if to all intents and purposes you are basically well, there is always something homeopathy can help with). I envied the girls with inhalers and things like that at school - to a homeopath everyone can be a bit ill and special in that way.

right now someone sitting next to me at work keeps trying to tell me things I can do to stop needing glasses. I have a -6.5 prescription and she struggles on without wearing her -0.75 prescription glasses, except occasionally (one of the key things you can do apparently to not need glasses is not wear them). I just think it is a project for her. She is basically healthy, looks fit and well, eats food that suits her well and takes a million vitamins, and now all that is left to "fix" is her very slight short sight. If she was busy she would just wear the bloody glasses and get on with her life. but she has no children and a light temp job so, well you know, everyone has to have something to focus on.

Love the dara o'brien quote.

Wonder why this GP is doing homeopathy on the side?

Wonder how long he spends listening and talking to his homeopathy patients compared to NHS patients? I think there is a lot to be said for a friendly ear (even if paid).

I've never tried crack. Feel well placed to 'knock' it though.

I'll believe in homeopathy when homeopaths spend their money on homeopathic brandy.

everyone has to have something to focus on.

Or not, in her case.

Bach's Rescue Remedy might not be strictly homeopathic, but it relies on a lot of woo nevertheless. Flower vibrations, sun rays, molecular amounts of active ingredient (if any), water memory and so on.

But I think the Rescue remedy is somehow more honest - used in emergencies and harnassing our imaginations to good effect ?

• and anyway I like flowers

When I was a nurse and got hit by a patient another nurse sat with me and gave me some lovely rescue remedy. It was vaguely floral I remember, and thinking back I can see it probably had a brandy base
Just the thing

In fact I might buy some for the DC and me??

Tim minchin has a good one called 'take my wife' that sums it up nicely. YouTube it...

Curryeater, great post!

I think woo has a huge appeal to our narcissistic tendencies. That's why some people call woo "navel gazing."

YABU to call it a crock of crap...

It is NU to point out that it doesn't perform better than placebo.

It 100% utterly unreasonable to try and either propose or debunk a method by which a treatment that doesn't work better than placebo works.

Evil, Crabby and several others have beaten me to linking to Tim Minchin's remarkably logical thoughts on homeopathy

What we need is a control group of believers prepared to treat their children with homeopathic nosodes* for polio, diphtheria, whooping cough, measles, mumps, rubella, so that we can compare the health outcomes with those who prefer to rely on evidence-based vaccines.
*some of these really exist:www.homeoforce.co.uk/index.asp?function=SEARCH

friday16