Is it a con or can it help my sick child?

[Nightswimminginoldpants]

Homeopathy?

Feeling a bit vulnerable at the moment, so not sure if it’s clouding my view.

Dd is ill and I’m getting desperate. Have been talking to a homeopathist online, she is very intent that homeopathy will help my Dd get better.

Does it work?

There are some really interesting points made in this post. I'm still not sure where I stand on homeopathy. My lovely mum was a homeopath and treated everyone at every opportunity, whether they wanted it or not.

BUT - I have seen some amazing results with some remedies, both people and animals (horses and dogs), and too many to all be coincidence? I have a few "go to" remedies that I use when needed - I think they work - who knows?!

Yes, placebo is very interesting and potentially powerful even with animal treatment. The clinician and owner are both susceptible as the patient does not directly report the results. When Scruffy is given the homeopathic treatment is he really scratching less or does the owner just perceive it? Or is he actually scratching less because the pollens he is allergic to are dropping off now? Almost certainly not because of any homeopathic remedy he may have been given!

@LytesCareyif homeopathy is low cost and so effective why hasn’t the pharma industry jumped on it? Why would the pharma industry decide to ignore homeopathy when presumably it would be relatively easy to bring to market and be low cost enough to be readily accepted by healthcare systems such as NICE?

The NHS is constantly trying to use fewer and cheaper medicines - for cost saving and because patients should, in general, be on a few medicines as possible that still controls their conditions. It is absolutely not in cahoots with Big Pharma (or indeed small pharma).

Why on earth would they not use homeopathy if it worked?

So what in your opinion is wrong with all of these kids then??

In my case, I’ve treated quite a few wild animals with mange with homeopathy. All successfully. The animals would likely have died without it. Only a couple of the animals actually knew they were being fed by me. I really don’t see how placebo was a big factor here. For a wild animal that is 2/3 bald with scabs, and very run down to regrow fur and be back to health within a very few weeks is highly unusual.

I’m not poo-poohing the placebo effect in general. It’s well documented to be very effective - in some cases up to 75% - and it works even when people know they’re taking a placebo. It is as much of a factor in the success rates of conventional medicine, of course, which can raise some interesting questions.

Looking at SSRIs, for example, some of their efficacy rates are only very slightly higher than placebo. Yet they’re prescribed and described as effective.

I get b12 jags. They give me a mega dose at once. My body uses up the amount it needs and any excess gets peed out. The body takes what it needs and doesnt use the rest.

So I imagine it’s the same for homeopathy. The body takes what it needs and pees the rest.

That doesnt prove it’s bollocks at all. It proves that it doesn’t store any excess.

clearly homeopathy works already when it's still in the mail - if more diluted is better then so is having more distance between you and the substance, right? :D

Because there would be no massive profits in it such as they enjoy now.

Of course there would be. It would free to them (tap water) and they could charge for it.

That seems logical. 😀

That makes no sense.

Homeopathy is a license to print money - no research costs, no preclinical development, no clinical trials, no regulatory costs and of course no active ingredients, so all you pay for is the sugar/water and I think you need to have some kind of horsehair filled striking board, as slapping the water vials against it apparently makes it more potent. Teeny tiny fraction of a cost compared to bringing actual medicine to market.

And they 'remedies' are not even cheap - just checked random online pharmacy, homeopathic cold remedy is 2-3 times the price of a regular one.

How did giving them water stop them dying? (Apart from the obvious...)

Well water is pretty good stuff.

All you did was give them water...

Yes but the concept that a 2 litre bottle if water has 1 molecule if the substance it, seems a insane that the "active" ingredient is doing anything?

PLEASE EXPLAIN how that single molecule will fix what ails me. ... Please!

I'm ready to be converted.

@LytesCarey why wouldn’t there be massive profits for the pharma industry from homeopathy if it is effective and cheap to produce? A lack of profit can’t be the reason GSK et al haven’t swooped in can it?

Sent you a DM, @Nightswimminginoldpants

If you look up how severe mange infection can be and how serious it is for the animal, you will get more of an understanding of the transformation.

I don’t know how it works. It shouldn’t based on current knowledge. In my experience, it does though. You don’t have to be open to it if you don’t want to.

What could be cheaper than putting water in bottles and selling it as medicine?

They could just literally get a 1000 gallon vat of water, tip a thimble full of some substance in it. Mix it up and bottle it into 50ml vials and sell them at £62.50 a bottle.

No need for research, clinical trials, getting approval YEARS of financial investment.... They'd make an absolute fortune..

I am open tomorrow...but nobody seems to know why it works, how it works. Just that "it does".

You don't even know... All your observations are merely anecdotal.

But it doesn't. Trials have been done several times and found that it doesn't work any better than a placebo. Or is it like teddy bears that only move when no-one is looking and it stops working as soon as scientists are studying it?

OK, so PANDAS is the idea that strep throat causes tics and/or OCD-like symptoms in kids and PANS is the idea that these can be caused by any other illness. There are lots of other things a sudden occurrence of tics or OCD could be:

• Literally just Tourette's or OCD (this is screened for when you go for a diagnosis, but not if you self-diagnose)
• A functional disorder like FND
• Food restriction can be autism or anorexia instead of OCD
• Tics can be sociogenic from social media or peers

And, the big one:

• Gut dysbiosis is a possible cause for both OCD symptoms and tics. Intensive courses of antibiotics can cause dysbiosis, and children with strep throat and other illnesses are given antibiotics, and antibiotics is a common PANS/PANDAS treatment.

Like I say, I’m not trying to convince you.

It does in my experience. It’s worked very well for me over a period of 30+ years. It works well for my daughter. It’s worked well for the animals I’ve used it on.

I understand the results of the trials to date. I get your position. I’m not trying to convince you. I will keep using it, though, as it works for me. It works very well for a long-term condition I have for which there is no effective conventional medical treatment. It doesn’t have the side effects of pharmaceuticals. If I didn’t use it and relied on conventional medicine I would be limited in what I could do. If you find conventional medicine always works well for you then that’s great.

When I used to dispense NHS prescriptions for homeopathy they were far from cheap and this was 20 years ago when it was allowed. An average 25ml bottle of alcohol (it’s not water) was £35 and then you got paid an extra £20 on top as it was classed as a special item so covers delivery etc as it had to come from weleda, not the normal drug supply routes.
In comparison, a tube of cream which actually treats the same condition was about £2.