Homeopathy for children?

[fraktious]

I know this might be a bit woo but does anyone else use homeopathic treatments for common childhood ailments? We have (magic) teething powders and I've laid in arnica in anticipation but I'm not sure what else people typically use homeopathy for.

Our GP is very pro homeopathy and I swear by it for many things, I know that it can be used for a whole range if things but I'm looking for anecdotes/advice on where it does work and where it doesn't. I'm not planning to treat him myself but any advice about when to ask for a homeopathic remedy would be welcome :)

oooh quintuple rant x-post

fraktious if you are still reading, you will probably realise that Mumsnet is not the place to ask for advise about alternative therapies.

I would recommend reading and referring to Miranda Castro as a reference text and buying one of the Ainsworths Family remedy kits.

Homeopathy takes the place of calpol, cough medicines, routine antibiotics, paracetamol etc in our house but we do refer to conventional medicine when required. For us, it takes the drama out of acute illnesses as we can treat calmly at home or by contacting our Homeopath. It has saved us a few trips to the GP / out of hours when we have been able to deal with symptoms quickly and safely at home.

What mousey said. No, I do not have lung damage, lucky me. But do you have any idea how fucking terrifying it is to think you are suffocating? As in within the next few minutes or so? gasping for air, wheezing, trying to sob but not managing for the lack of breath?

This stuff is doing real damage. It's dangerous. Wake up and smell the coffee!

Yeah,go on fractious. Waste another £9.31 on a book about stuff that doesn't work, as opposed to just buying the stuff that doesn't work.

Double blind randomised controlled trials with a placebo, like the countless ones that have been conducted on homeopathic remedies, absolutely do prove that homeopathy does not work (or more accurately, is no more effective than placebo). They have provided proper, hard, scientific evidence.

If you are saying that this is not enough evidence for you, then do you actually believe in the scientific method of proving and disproving things at all?

I have an open mind regarding homeopathy...i have used it for a condition where every other conventional treatment from my gp failed and the homeopathy worked, and i have used homeopathy and it has failed and the conventional medicine has worked. homeopathy should be treated as an additional therapy and should never replace conventional medicine especially for serious illnesses. also for those who do not realise, the NHS actually have a homeopathic hospital up in london and you can ask your gp at any time for a referral as an additional therapy.

It didn't work though.

Another to add to the list of people in fury at Homopathic Quackery.

I was recommended teething powders for my crying baby. I bought some - they seemed to work a bit. Super. Then I found out that they were homeopathic powders!!! - so basically I'd been sold some icing sugar wrapped up in some quackery paper for 2000x the going rate for icing sugar. Next time the baby cried with teething troubles I put icing sugar on his tongue. you know what? it worked just as well!! Sugar numbs pain! I give my DD sweets before her injections and they seem to hurt less! Quack quack.

Scientists have done double blind trials on homeopathic shit concoctions and there is no evidence that they work any better than a placebo. Therefore with current understanding - their effect is that of a placebo.

And anyway - thinking of it rationally - why would the "water memory" that these fantastic potions claim to use only "rememer" the things you want them to? Why not everything else it came into contact with??

To quote a child's science page " At one time or another, all of the water molecules on earth have been in an ocean, a river, a plant, an animal, a cloud, a raindrop, a snowflake, or a glacier!" ... or wee or poo or vomit or part of a nuclear power plant, or part of a deadly nightshade plant, or tears of a mother who has paid £3 for 10g of icing sugar!

I think it is absolutely criminal that the NHS still funds a homeopathic hospital.

Homeopathy - a pill made from water that has had a bit of onion juice serially diluted (with succussion) until there are no molecules of onion juice remaining - does not work any better than a pill made from water that has not had this special treatment.

That is what "works no better than placebo" means. The choice of pill-with-no-belladonna vs pill-with-no-arnica vs pill-with-no-lavender vs pill-that-doesn't-even-pretend-to-be-magic is entirely arbitrary.

I'd be reporting any GP who prescribes homeopathic medicine to the General Medical Council for mal-practice. If I don't need tablets don't give them to me! And I love that site Oblivious

it's not homoepathic hospital anymore, it's now called Royal London Hospital for Integrated Medicines.
if that makes it any better?

Does that mean it now offers homeopathy as well as crystal therapy?

The Bristol Homeopathic Hospital is still going full steam ahead. I recently worked in the paediatric oncology department in a major hospital and they (when asked) were happy to refer patients there. That is, children with cancer.

Letters from the homeopathic doctors were in their notes, alongside details of chemotherapy, etc. Sometimes medicines had to be cleared with the homoepathic doctors.

Buggars belief.

I mean cleared for possible drug interactions!

Herbal or Alternative medicines: Usually have an active ingredient. Sometimes these ingredients can be effective in treating various ailments. Lots of medicines originally come from plants eg opiate painkillers from poppies and digitalis used for heart conditions from fox gloves. Sometimes the ingredient has no proven benefit. Sometimes they can interact with prescribed drugs, and can cause harm like St John's Wort with clotting. That's one of the reasons the EU have brought in tighter regulation. Some in eg traditional chinese medicine result in bears being 'farmed' for their bile (DO NOT GOOGLE) and tigers being killed for their body parts.

Homeopathic Medicine : these are liquids that are made of sugar and water. The principle of homeopathy is that water has a 'memory' and that the more dilute the active ingredient is, the more powerful it is. This means that if you get a bottle of homeopathic medicine, the 'active' ingredient is too low to register - imagine adding a drop of active ingredient to an ocean; that would create a more concentrated solution than that in a homeopathic medicine. It has never show better results than placebos in testing. There is a standing cash award for anyone who can show that their homeopathic treatments can be proven (to an accepted scientific standard) to be more effective than the placebo effect. No-one has taken the challenge.

If you're in a country where doctors routinely prescribe medicines for colds I can see the attraction for doctors in using 'homeopathy' to take advantage of the placebo effect. Many medicines that are sold to treat colds are no more effective than having a hot drink of lemon and honey. If you want to avoid unnecessary drugs, you could just buy some lemon and honey and save the cost of the 'medicine', homeopathic or otherwise.

Loopy - Homeopathy has been around since 1796. Every other treatment from that era that has been proved to work has been incorporated into conventional medicine. For example - we no longer chew a bit of willow bark for pain relief because scientists identified the active ingredient and made a more convenient and reliable version - aspirin. Homeopathy has been given plenty of time to prove itself and it's failed so it's time for it to follow all of the other archaic and ineffective treatments into history.

and there is one in glasgow too. these hospitals are listed on the nhs website with many positive reviews from patients.

Well, FWIW the stuff my parents used to give me always came with proper instructions that warned against taking it alongside othe medicines. Wonder what this is supposed to cause. Nocebo?

Other, even

Homeopathy works brilliantly- if you are suffering from a vague feeing unease, loneliness and slight low self esteem. Of course, so would having a chat with the person next to you in the queuenin Sainsbury's.

People going to the homeopathic hospital probably feel better because they are getting one-on-one time with a '''professional''' (and I use that term in double, triple quotes only), feel their problems are being taken seriously by the 'establishment'. That's all to the good, but it's still not right that the NHS funds this treatment when it can't afford to fund some cancer and other drugs that are proven to work. Yes, yes: I know - big pharma is guilty there too, but still...

Well, as Ben Goldacre says: just because Big Pharma actually is big and in many ways pretty awful doesn't mean that the quacks who claim to offer an alternative actually have any working treatments.

Yes narmada, I'm sure that's why it was offered to those children. I don't think the consultants really believed in it per se.

Shame the same level of one-on-one attention can't be given in a different context without the misleading element.