To be looking so differently now at Drs, schools etc etc

[Loveafridaynightchippy]

Has anyone else had a change of opinion about things that they’ve not really questioned and always just accepted before, in the last few years?
It could be since a became a mum, but I’m wondering if it’s more.
My Dd has been very ill recently and I’ve gained much better help, advise from less traditional Drs-think medical Drs who focus on naturopathy too, homeopathy and so on, I never knew anything about homeopathy before my Dd got ill. The results I’ve seen are incredible and much more positive that traditional things like antibiotics, painkillers and so on.
I used to be a teacher and loved it, but I’ve found myself really questioning if this is the right system and the right way of doing things and am increasingly doubting traditional schooling. Even the way the majority of us work, the 9-5, the commutes, snatched weekends with loved ones, the yearly holiday.
Maybe I’m just becoming an old hippie! 😂
Does anyone else feel like this?

Yup my in-laws love their homeopath because he sits and listens to their ailments, they still take the drugs from the doctor but apparently the homeopath is whats making the difference 🙄.

Stop the faux naivety
You know fine well that it is a pseudo-treatment.
More to the point, it is fucking dangerous and anyone selling it should be removed to the Steppes

@GnomeDePlume

Alternative therapies recognise this. Good ones will fill in the gaps left by conventional medicine. You come away from your weekly massage, counselling session or whatever feeling better.

But why not just have a good therapy session or a massage?

Its so dishonest: both in terms of what the practitioner is “selling” and what the patient is telling themself.

Agree with this entirely

I also believe more firmly in rote learning and "old fashioned" education now than i did prechildren which surprised me.

France has not covered homeopathic treatment for a while because it doesn't actually do anything. It IS used in Europe but the use of it is changing, like a lot of things that are shown to not actually work.

Definitely not placebo for my Dd at the moment, I can see the effects, may depend on what it’s treating

It is most definitely a placebo.

The placebo effect is very powerful.

Homeopathy is not. And has been clinically proven to be a load of codswallop.

Read up on how it supposedly works. It's nonsense.

Doctors do actually sometimes deliberately use the placebo effect in some situations.

For example there is a drug used for two different uses. I forget what they are but they use yellow pills for one use because psychologically they thought it had an impact. However they used pale green pills for anxiety because it's associated with calming. Same drug - but the choice of colour for the pills made a difference to it's effectiveness for different uses.

The point here being, understand what's going on.

It may be beneficial to you, BUT it's not a replacement for traditional medicine and trusting unproven alternative medicine may be dangerous. Alternative medicine can only be as effective as the placebo effect.

As long as you understand this, and use alongside traditional medicine where appropriate, it may make a difference.

But using alternative medicine to say cure cancer, will not end well.

‘after clean water, vaccination is the most effective public health invention in the world for saving lives and promoting good health’
Gov.uk

Ditto St Johns Wort. Taken in winter when sun levels are lower no problems. Taken when sun levels are higher it can cause skin eruptions.

I used to be able to cure anything with a kiss when my kids were little. I should have made hay while the sun shone and set up stall. Sadly I didn't try it on anyone other than my kids.

Homeopathy is not even snake oil - it's just water. (And sugar balls).

You know what the herbalists also give you (not sure in the UK)... things like paracetamol etc - crushed and put into some 'herbal' mix. It really works.

That's exactly what happens.

People try different treatments and then they get better.

But if they take a placebo (including homeopathy) they claim that is what worked.

Alternative therapy is like beauty therapy, it isn't about treating or curing anything. It can make you feel better though.

When my mum had cancer she would go to a 'Women's day' at the hospice. It was all women with cancer, they did arts and crafts, often had a guest speaker (the man with the guide dog was my mum's favourite) they had a nice lunch with a glass of wine then had their nails done.

Did my mum and the other women feel better after it? Absolutely. Was it curing or treating the cancer? Absolutely not.

For us. it’s working when other things haven’t as of yet, no placebo effect. I expected and waited for the other things to work..they didn’t, not as well anyway. I tried this, almost scoffing whilst I did it, expecting nothing, but I’ve seen results so we’ll continue for now to do both as and when needed

First I've ever heard of this miracle cure. It breaks my heart to see my Dad and how his Parkinson's is worsening. Nothing has cured this disease yet and I'm guessing it won't for a long while yet, not even in my lifetime.

Sorry, OP, but I agree with other posters; homeopathy is a con.

With medicine, I think we can only go with what science has at the date we need it. Hundreds of years ago, it was all they could do, to go along with 'bleeding' patients to rid them of all ills. Science is updating and discovering all the time. In 100 years they'll laugh at some of our current ideas.

It's one of three things: placebo, traditional medicine kicking in, or the condition improving with time. Probably a combination.

It's not actually possible for it to be the homeopathy because there isn't actually anything in the homeopathy.

Because in the UK we are taught to practice in evidence-based way. There was a whole module when I studied called "Evidence-based practice". We also have NICE who evaluate available evidence before making recommendations for whether something should or shouldn't be used. Since there doesn't appear to be any evidence as to the efficacy of homeopathy, it is not taught or practiced in the UK.
In India, astrology is widely practiced but that doesn't mean that we all have to teach our doctors how to prescribe homeopathy to Sagittarius.

Yes but this is exactly what placebo effect is.

You have observed “results” but you have no way to objectively measure whether what you’re seeing has a causal relationship with the therapy: spoiler: it doesn’t. As numerous large scale clinical studies have shown.

So the “results” you have seen are one of two things:

• this is a self limiting illness which has cleared up on its own OR
• the placebo effect has supported your daughter’s recovery by stimulating her mental health etc

If the latter then great. Crack on with it, you are one of many people to have benefited from the positive impact of a placebo and if it helps your daughter’s recovery that’s a great thing.

But don’t confuse that with thinking there’s any efficacy in the homeopathy. That’s demonstrably untrue. And whatever you do don’t substitute this for conventional medicine.

While the former homeopathic hospital still exists, now known as the hospital for integrated medicine, you'll be happy to know it stopped providing NHS-funded homeopathic remedies in 2018. They now do stress management etc.

You know that the placebo effect works even when people KNOW its the placebo effect, right?

Its the placebo effect thats working in your case too.

You aren't special and you can't escape the placebo effect by dismissing it as not being the placebo effect.

I don't disagree.

Good practitioners see themselves as supporting conventional medicine.

People do feel better when they have the opportunity to feel listened to, feel human touch.
Conventional medicine often doesn't have time for this. There is also a tendency for conventional medicine practitioners to forget that the symptoms or side effects a patient is experiencing may be 'normal' but they arent normal for the individual and may be deeply distressing.

The charlatans see themselves as replacing conventional medicine. They are dangerous.

A GP where I worked was struck off for prescribing homeopathy. She had a book of herbs she would recommend at the expense of inhalers etc. Dangerous woman.

My FIL believed in homeopathy. He didn't take the anti hypertensive medication that his GP prescribed because it was "traditional medicine". He is now dying of stage 4 kidney failure, a direct result of untreated high blood pressure. Beware homeopathy OP. As some else has said, the placebo effect is a powerful thing, until it's not.

I think you are too gentle on conventional medicine. It's not just that it can seem cold and impersonal, it can be practiced this way, it can be damaging, doctors can ignore the actual outcomes and health goals of patients.

Two examples: my father was for many years in charge of the GPs in our region.One thing that he was constantly trying to get them to do was test patients that had been put of blood pressure drugs to see if they were effective. The reason for that is the first thing they did when a patient had high BP was prescribe, often without seriously looking at lifestyle changes. Then they just kept those patients on the drugs. But they actually only work for a small percentage of people - others should be taken off because of the potential for side effects, cost, and also just because it's not great to have people on unnecessary drugs.

There was huge apathy from GPs about this. That tells you something about their practice of medicine.

The other example is my uncle. On a lot of psychiatric drugs for many years, his psychiatrist was constantly tinkering. Was it necessary - no one ever really knew. 30 years later, kidney failure, his doctors at that time started going through all of these medications that he was still on to eliminate them. Many were a mystery, lots there to deal with side effects caused by other drugs. No effort ever made to reduce them as it became possible. Some they decided were almost certainly implicated in the fact they had struggled to control his diabetes, and his kidney failure likely a result of the year on these drugs too. The mental effects of stopping all but one - he felt a lot better, brain fog decreased.

His bi-polar diagnosis also came under some significant scrutiny in later years, he was diagnosed back in the 90s when everyone and his dog was being labeled bi-polar.

Now, age may well have mitigated his mental health problems which isn't uncommon, and at the time they were better than doing nothing. But the fact is there was zero effort from any of his doctors over 30 years - and he had several GPs over that period - to look carefully at medications that ultimately have destroyed his kidney function which is likely to kill him within the next few years.

People don't only become skeptical of conventional medicine because they are silly. Just look at what's going on with gender medicine or some of the COVID stuff - it's completely unscientific. (Or even a lot of things in maternity services, for that matter.)

Once people lose trust it's difficult to get it back because it's not an area where most people have enough expertise to know who is practicing well and who isn't.

Hahahahah. This thread (and you) are going to be in for a wild ride OP. 😂

But no, i dont believe in that homeopathy - it's just all fucking shit. An aunt took her sick child to see one of these quacks.... son didnt get better, until he saw a REAL dr many many months later. My poor cousin suffered for months because of her, he now doesn't speak to her because he had to miss SO much school and was put back a year. People who believe in this bull shit are so dangerous. Can you imagine telling someone with cancer to try this shit and it might/will cure them?

How could it possibly work though? When the 'active ingredient' is literally water?

I imagine if your DC ever got sepsis op, you'd be begging the conventional doctors for antibiotics

OP, if you’re open to hearing evidence about alternative medicine, I’d recommend reading “Trick or Treatment” by Edzard Ernst and Simon Singh. Ernst began his career working in a homeopathic hospital, and became the UK’s first professor of complementary medicine. He’s very well qualified to investigate homeopathy and other alternative treatments, and the book gives a great overview of the claims made many of these treatments.

I believe it’s really important that we are well-informed about health, because medical culture definitely has problems - especially in its treatment of women and marginalised groups. So I totally understand looking for some alternative. I used to use homeopathy and herbal remedies a lot. But after reading about how it’s actually scientifically impossible for homeopathy to have any active ingredients at all, I realised that I should instead be trying to educate myself about what the evidence says. My health is important. I don’t mind using treatments that have some basis in science - some herbal remedies, for example. But homeopathy is faith-healing dressed up in a lab coat.