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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Why do mums put those large beaded necklaces...

330 replies

TheFancyPants · 16/02/2021 17:31

..around their babies necks? Surely its not safe? Why are they fashionable?

OP posts:
MNerGoneRogueAgain · 16/02/2021 19:29

Isn’t amber quite expensive? How much are these things?

merrymouse · 16/02/2021 19:29

www.gwh.nhs.uk/about-us/news-archive-2019/keep-off-teething-necklaces/

Why take the risk?

oakleaffy · 16/02/2021 19:31

Re Placebo effect.. my little brother used to get really car sick.

I game him a Swizzers sweet wrapped in tinfoil saying it was a travel sickness pill .
He unwrapped it and I said “it might make you sleepy “

Hey presto
No vomiting.

Power of suggestion.

user1654236589623652 · 16/02/2021 19:39

I am fairly confident that if the human body was capable of simply no longer absorbing any given drug once it has had enough that death by drug overdose would not be a thing. But it is.

Or are we also saying that we lose these abilities as we age? Perhaps around the same time we develop speech and can unequivocally communicate that we are still in pain?

GrumpyHoonMain · 16/02/2021 19:39

I guess it depends on when a baby starts teething. I come from a family where teeth don’t erupt until after 1 and teething tends to start after weaning. So for kids like that amber necklaces and bones and even the tiny gold beaded bracelets my family used were ok as it was just gums. Mum had no idea what to do with me when I started to teethe at 2 weeks old and then bit through my amber teether at 6 weeks old and apparently I was just left to cry a lot.

DS was like me - teething started at 2 weeks and he would break anything even remotely delicate with his emerging teeth so I didn’t dare use anything to help him except ibuprofen.

Tillymintsmama · 16/02/2021 19:40

homeopathic teething powders were about as wooo wooo as I got. (and they actually worked!!)

CrumpetTastic · 16/02/2021 19:41

I’ve never understood stuff like this. If your kid is in pain, give them paracetamol.

FoxyTheFox · 16/02/2021 19:41

@Fluffycloudland77 we have a living history museum near us with staff role-playing the various characters. When we were last there and walked into the chemists shop, DD started grizzling. The shopkeeper sidled up to me and asked "can I interest you in some gripe water, madam? I find laudanum works exceptionally well for this age group" Grin

Nanny0gg · 16/02/2021 19:42

@DappledThings

worked like magic for the first one Yes, the placebo effect can seem like magic. It is an amazing thing.
I think they're dreadful and dangerous but it cant be the placebo effect, because the baby doesn't know what they're for!
Eckhart · 16/02/2021 19:42

@FoxyTheFox

have you something else that you're basing your opinion on?

Science.

Science is evidence of what we know so far. It said the world was flat, once. Proof is often disproven due to our discovery of new knowledge, and our realisation that our old knowledge wasn't right.

Science is not fact, and not having proof of something often means we haven't funded studies of it, rather than that it's not provable.

Doctors used to recommend smoking, going so far as to recommend particular brands above others, within living memory.

Again, I'm not arguing in favour of these things - I have no idea about them, and no interest in them. It does interest me how people make their decisions, though. I mean, what science are you basing your comment on, Foxy (for example)? Without googling it now, do you actually even know what you're referring to? Who did the studies you're referring to in this 'science' you're familiar with? When were they done, and how were they funded?

G5000 · 16/02/2021 19:43

@Tillymintsmama

homeopathic teething powders were about as wooo wooo as I got. (and they actually worked!!)
yes. Placebo effect and regression to the mean.
SinkGirl · 16/02/2021 19:43

I always wonder how anyone sells them legally. I’m currently designing some crochet toys and have to jump through a million hoops to prove they are safe for children. No way would these be able to be legally sold for children, no way can they sellers be insured either. Wonder if they earn enough to cover legal costs when a child chokes.

FoxyTheFox · 16/02/2021 19:44

I mean, what science are you basing your comment on, Foxy (for example)?

The fact that it is scientifically impossible for amber teething necklaces to a, produce a homeopathic teething remedy and b, for that remedy to be absorbed through the skin of an infant. That's in addition to the other scientific facts mentioned across the thread. They do not work. There is not the slightest shred of credible evidence that they work.

Florrieboo · 16/02/2021 19:45

As an adult I use one for migraine pain and whether it is imagined or not my migraine pain has decreased a huge amount since I started wearing it. I haven't changed anything else in my life to cause the change.

G5000 · 16/02/2021 19:45

it cant be the placebo effect, because the baby doesn't know what they're for!

placebo works on babies and animals as well. Again, regression to the mean and the fact that the caregiver believes in in. There have been some very interesting studies.

bluebluezoo · 16/02/2021 19:45

There was a fashion for castor bean necklaces for a while too.

Until babies/children chewed them and got Ricin poisoning.....

Henio · 16/02/2021 19:46

I would never put that around my babies neck 😯

merrymouse · 16/02/2021 19:49

Science is not fact, and not having proof of something often means we haven't funded studies of it, rather than that it's not provable.

We have some pretty good working theories though, e.g. the link between small objects and choking...

ErrolTheDragon · 16/02/2021 19:50

It said the world was flat, once
Um, no, "science" never said that. HmmBut never mind.

If there is any basis to these items, sold as a sort of medical device, then the manufacturers should test them. Unfortunately it's one of those unregulated grey areas.

My objection isn't that they don't work. I'd guess they'd work as well as anything else that can be chewed on or fiddled with. My objection is that these items have caused deaths, and there are safer alternatives.

FoxyTheFox · 16/02/2021 19:51

Peer reviewed study here which concludes no evidence was found that amber teething necklaces work.

bmccomplementmedtherapies.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12906-019-2574-9#:~:text=Conclusions,acid%20has%20anti-inflammatory%20properties.

I couldn't find a peer reviewed study giving any evidence that they do work...

KatharinaRosalie · 16/02/2021 19:51

“Science knows it doesn't know everything; otherwise, it'd stop. But just because science doesn't know everything doesn't mean you can fill in the gaps with whatever fairy tale most appeals to you.” Dara O'Briain

TheFancyPants · 16/02/2021 19:52

@Eckhart

A question for those saying they don't work, how do you know? If they didn't work on your kids, that doesn't mean they don't work on anybody's, does it? Or have you something else that you're basing your opinion on?

I don't have an opinion either way, but I'm curious as to how people sound so sure.

Because they are just beads andsomeone at some point has suggested they work for teething
OP posts:
Eckhart · 16/02/2021 19:53

@FoxyTheFox

I mean, what science are you basing your comment on, Foxy (for example)?

The fact that it is scientifically impossible for amber teething necklaces to a, produce a homeopathic teething remedy and b, for that remedy to be absorbed through the skin of an infant. That's in addition to the other scientific facts mentioned across the thread. They do not work. There is not the slightest shred of credible evidence that they work.

Is there scientific evidence that they don't? I don't see scientific facts across the thread, and as I said, science (as any scientist will tell you) is not fact, it's a work in progress.

When you say The fact that it is scientifically impossible for amber teething necklaces to a, produce a homeopathic teething remedy and b, for that remedy to be absorbed through the skin of an infant, where are you getting those 'facts' from? How do you know it?

If there is no evidence that they work, it could mean the studies haven't been done. It's not proof that they don't work. It's proof that we don't know, unless we have evidence that they don't.

Eckhart · 16/02/2021 19:54

Because they are just beads andsomeone at some point has suggested they work for teething

Lots of people talking about science here. Lots of people stating their opinions as fact.

birdglasspen · 16/02/2021 19:58

Always thought that babies "teething" are more likely to be needing more sleep or are unsettled about something else. There have been studies done to show that teething if it does cause pain is mild and lasts only for a day or two.

"Let’s start with the oft-cited claim that teething causes excruciating pain because a tooth is “stabbing” through the gum. “That’s one of those myths,” explains Clay Jones, a pediatric and newborn hospitalist at Newton-Wellesley Hospital in Newton, Massachusetts, who wrote about teething for the popular blog Science-Based Medicine. “What happens is that the gums remodel—they move out of the way as the tooth emerges.” After all, Jones says, gums don’t bleed when kids teethe. A 2003 study documented a statistically significant increase in one inflammatory marker during infant teething, but the rest of the markers the study tested, called cytokines, didn’t change much. “A baby might be in pain or having some degree of discomfort, but I think that a significant amount of pain is not likely or plausible,” Jones says.

Indeed, if teething caused tremendous pain, one would expect kids to have consistent symptoms—but they don’t. In one of the most carefully conducted studies on teething that’s ever been done, researchers in Brazil sent dentists into the homes of 47 babies every day for eight months. They took the babies’ temperatures, checked their gums, and interviewed the parents about their infants’ behaviors. The study found that teething was associated with sleep disturbances, drooling, rashes, runny noses, diarrhea, appetite loss, irritability, and slight rises in temperature (not clinical fevers). But the interesting thing is that these symptoms consistently occurred only on the day that a child’s tooth erupted and one day after. No symptoms regularly occurred in the days before the tooth appeared."

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