To cancel the appointment because homeopathy is a load of crap?

[HowdoIgetbacktothe80s]

I’ve had chronic health issues for years. These issues are getting worse and completely ruining my quality of life.
Despite lots of tests, consultant and GP appointments via the NHS, I am definitely getting worse not better.
I know and appreciate the NHS is on its knees but I am fed up waiting up to a year for consultation appointments, having them cancelled at last minute (one was even cancelled whilst I was in the hospital waiting room ffs!) and when I eventually get seen it is often a rushed 10 minute appointment. I am getting nowhere fast and pretty desperate right now despite investing so much in the hope of feeling well and trying many things myself. I don’t want to keep taking up NHS space when someone worse off than me needs the services, I would love to find someone out there who can help me heal.
I am contemplating turning to ‘alternative’ healthcare. I asked on my local town’s FB group for recommendations and several recommended a local homeopath.
I have had a 30 minute free call with her. She was so very lovely and for the first time I felt listened to and validated.
She explained how she had experience of my health issues herself and how homeopathy could indeed help me. She said that because my issues were long standing it would take some months to start to feel better.
So I have booked to go and see her in a month.
The consultation is £100 with the homeopathic tinctures being an additional £25 which she said would last about a month and I would probably need to see her for several months. Each follow up appointment will be £80 (probably every other month or so). She wasn’t pushy at all and it was left up to me to make any decisions.
I have told my dh and friends and they think it’s a utter waste of my money and homeopathy is nothing more than a placebo. They truly believe I will not get better via this route but am now having a wobble about it as it is a lot of money for me if it doesn’t help.
Of course if you look on the NHS website it will tell you much the same. But the NHS hasn’t been able to help me and I am now at a loss, stuck in limbo land and getting desperate.

What is everyone’s opinion or experience on homeopathy?
Should I pursue this route or cancel now?
I dare say that am going to get flamed on here. I know I am probably grasping at straws but I just want to feel better.

YABU - homeopathy is useless, you may as well throw the money down the drain don’t be so gullible!
YANBU - I believe in homeopathy, it works

How about trying acupuncture instead? It works in mysterious ways...

OP sounds like we have similar issues.
I'm curious if the neuropathy medication helped your digestion issues at all even if it made you feel drugged or did you not take it long?

I take something similar to the one I mentioned in the previous post and I feel happier and less stressed overall and the gastro issues are a little less but I also have a rather bland diet and mostly avoid those trigger foods, drinks, etc. I guess it is a compromise with deciding to eat the thing that makes me feel like shit or not too!

Do you have a partner? Do you feel listened to and validated by them?
You mentioning feeling better after talking the homeopath.

Yes, the hysterectomy is a big operation but I so wished I would have done it and not suffered for well over 10 very long years!

Hope you get some peace op. The only other thing I can think to suggest is reflexology if acupuncture isn't effective

emptythelitterbox
I'm curious if the neuropathy medication helped your digestion issues at all even if it made you feel drugged or did you not take it long?
The Nortriptyline did settle my digestive system some what but as I drive for a job I couldn’t carry on feeling so spaced out. I took it for 8 months. Can I ask which one you take? I’m willing to try anything (if I haven’t already tried it).
I have one of the most bland and boring diets going but still have all these awful gut issues. Most of my friends say they couldn’t eat the way I do but I have no choice, sadly.
My dh is lovely but doesn’t understand at all. He is the stoic type who pushes himself through anything and thinks I should do too but he’s lucky as he is in great health, mentally and physically. It’s hard for him to understand fully but I understand, it’s hard living with someone with chronic issues.

Thanks autienotnaughty I would like to try both so will peruse that route rather than the homeopathy.

Is this supposed to be some sort of repudiation of my comment that acupuncture can help with a range of issues? If it is, it shows nothing except that you'll believe anything on the internet, even written by a bunch of American doctors hellbent on criticizing scientific literature with their own opinions, not backed up by any evidence except their own personal interpretation.
If you would like to send an actual research paper I would be happy to read it. I'm a medical writer and look at data and scientific evidence for interventions all the time. There IS evidence showing acupuncture MAY help a number of health problems, mostly dealing with pain and some neurological conditions like migraine:

The NHS: www.nhs.uk/conditions/acupuncture/

You clearly don't know what NICE is, but they only make recommendations based on medical evidence, and they look through a huge range of scientific literature. Acupuncture is recommended by NICE as a treatment option for: chronic (long-term) pain, chronic tension-type headaches and migraines. The NHS notes that other types of complex pain may be treated with acupuncture.

Here are some references from PubMed, a repositiory of 35 million citations for biomedical literature from MEDLINE, life science journals, and online books:

Acupuncture for pain: pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31305037/
"Acupuncture may provide modest benefits in the treatment of chronic low back pain, tension headache and chronic headache, migraine headache prophylaxis, and myofascial pain."

Acupuncture for anxiety: pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22070429/
"There is evidence that acupuncture is comparable with CBT, which is a common intervention in the treatment of this condition, but in a setting and environment in which most patients seem to find less stressful, and are well known to access voluntarily in preference to regular medical avenues."

Acupuncture for migraine: pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32269669/
"Based on high quality of evidence, we concluded that acupuncture may be an effective and safe therapy for migraine."

I'm not going to go on. I was treated for joint pain and migraines with acupuncture. That is not scientific evidence, but my personal experience. I was a huge skeptic too, but it worked for me.

I didn't claim that acupuncture is a cure-all or can help any condition. I don't believe homeopathy works based on what I've read. My father has Parkinson's and has survived 20+ years, with limited deterioration using Chinese medicine (cmjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13020-022-00625-4)

So maybe instead of sending ONE link as definitive proof that your opinion is correct, you could consider that some people are helped by these interventions and really, medical doctors and scientists do not have all the answers.

@pollykitty
Acupuncture is mystical nonsense. There's no such thing as 'qi'. Until recently there had been no double blinded tests due to difficulty of using placebo needles. There is also a history of very poor standards of evidence, p-hacking and cherry picking of data, especially in Chinese studies. A recent meta study concluded that there's no agreement amongst so called practitioners about where to stick the the needles and tests with placebo needles stuck in at random had no effect greater than placebo. All the evidence from all of 'alternative medicine' just proves that the placebo effect is real, amongst patients and observers. I'm not sure you should be defending your own scientific credentials if you're simultaneously saying we should reject the findings of the evidence based medicine sector.

@pollykitty Hobbi has come on this thread just to create a stir and have a pop at posters on this thread. It’s obvious because Hobbi actually hasn’t made one suggestion to the OP to help her. I’d just ignore.

There are few suggestions to be made if OP has genuine medical concerns: keep trying with her doctor or try a private consultation. That's simple. What can't possibly help, beyond temporarily feeling listened to, are magic water, belief in secret Chinese energy lines, astrology or foot rubs. Recommending any of this fraudulent woo is merely encouraging OP to part with money she might unfortunately need for actual private medicine.

My child tried homeopathy for a small skin ailment as a friend gave their time for free and offered to treat him. He did not know why he took the pill but after 4 pills there was a very obvious great result. I do believe it can work but I also think it is way overpriced.

“The sign of intelligence is that you are constantly wondering. Idiots are always dead sure about every damn thing they are doing in their life.”
― Jaggi Vasudev

No need to be so condescending. I know how science works - I live with a scientist. He is interested in this kind of thing and says that some things can't be measured because you can't measure the input from the patient in respect of how what's going on in their head (their subconscious beliefs about their illness, for example) affects them. You have to go by the results: if someone says it works for them, then it works for them.

@OMG12 yep, of course 🙄

@Pocketfullofdogtreats so we can just give up on RCTs and just go on how people feel? Ok. Suspect it’ll make science a fuck of a lot less reliable but what do I know 🤷‍♀️.

“Yep, of course” what???

Wow its incredibly eye waterly expensive 😳,

Mind me asking what part of Uk 🇬🇧 are you abouloots then?,

By Looks of it London or obviously the posher parts of UK for sure,

I have to pay £20 to the Welsh school of Homeopathy based in Carmarthen Central,
as currently I am seeing a trainee student who is training in Homeopathy

Hi Op

By looks of it ,

You must be abouts from London or posher parts of UK 🇬🇧 for sure

to treatments for this kind of expenses for this kind of Holistic treatment

Worked fantastically for me and my DC on numerous occasions. My DC got molluscum contagiousm. GP said no cure, might take 18 months to clear up. Gone in 3 days after taking homeopathic medicine. Not placebo effect as DC was in nursery and didn’t even understand. Treated DC for coughs, cold, conjunctivitis, chicken pox.

It got rid of the huge pilar cyst on my forehead, numerous eye infections, shingles and so many other things.

It has worked for me.

Every single condition you mentioned is known for clearing up without treatment. I recommend reading Ben Holdacre's book 'Bad Science' for an explanation of how the placebo effect operates if you are confused as to how a baby or animal could benefit from it.

So there is no need to go to the doctor for anything because everything clears up itself because of the placebo effect?

Goldacre says the placebo effect demonstrates the “the amazing power of the mind over the body” and that we really can make our pain better through our beliefs and expectations.

I am not confused wit the placebo effect regarding children. You seem confused however. Let me help you a little

After all, children look for signals from adults and if an adult has high expectations because a pill has been given to their child then this positivity is likely to transmit to the child.

Yes when my DC was a baby they looked at me for signals because I had high expectations because a pill had been given and this positivity was transmitted to the child 🙄

Funny how the antibiotics had to be repeated several times - clearly the high expectations, signals and positivity did not work then. But according to you everything clears up by itself anyway so no need for the medical profession or NHS.

So many people have pilar cysts removed by surgery - why did theirs not clear up? Perhaps they did not look to the medical profession with expectations and transmitted positivity?

@Coffeeplease6
No everything doesn't clear up due to the placebo effect. The conditions you mentioned do, as do the mild rashes etc mentioned by other gullible types. Homeopathy didn't work for you because it is impossible for water to cure those illnesses. It may have been the placebo effect, more likely it may have been regression to the mean - and it's very likely the conventional (actual) medicine you'd already tried was a significant contributor. It wasn't magic.

I had not tried conventional medicine for the pilar cyst so it wasn't that.

Remember we just need to look at baby DC with positivity for their illnesses and they will look to us with expectations and they will be cured, that is all it takes 🙄

If positivity is all that is required why are you claiming that these alternative therapies are effective?

OP - save your money, it's all snake oil and quackery.

Maybe re-read my posts. I did not claim that it is just positivity is all that is required. I only mentioned one alternative therapy worked for me. I cannot comment on the others.

OP - make the best decision for you. Conventional medicine is not free of snake oil and quackery.

Hobbi is absolutely correct, all the conditions you have mentioned a self-limiting. You have no evidence that your alternative medicines worked at all.

You stated that a doctor told your husband that a minor, self-limiting infection "has no cure" and you expect your opinion on medicine to be taken seriously?

Sadly you are correct, there are still plenty of doctors who will prescribe alternative therapies with no evidence base working in the NHS. It is not as bad as it was in the late 90's and early 2000's and I hope that EBM approaches in medical schools will get rid of it eventually.