Tell me about amber....

[MistletoeBUTNOwine]

I have a friend who's a big believer in amber necklaces, anklets etc.
She says I should try for DS who isn't sleeping too well and also has eczema.
Interested to hear any success/ fail stories... Dp thinks it's all 'woo' I'm open to ideas!
Tia

Utter bollocks. Seriously.

Complete woo.
There are some that believe it helps with teething as natural pain killer but it would have to be heated to a ridiculous temperature to work.

I've heard of it for teething but not general stuff. People do swear by it but my theory is that the kiddied gnaw on the beads and that soothes the gums (I have amber and jade bangles and these have been chewed by a few little ones).

Amber beads do look very cute on a toddler though.

There's no factual scientific evidence to say that it works.

There is a lot of anecdotal evidence to say it does.

Depends how desperate you are really, it seems to have worked for ds's teething though :)

definite woo. how on earth could a bit of resin have any effect on whether a child sleeps (except by placebo on parents)?

It's unlikely to release the chemical that people talk about as your child ID unlikely to reach over a hundred degrees centigrade.

People will talk if unknown drug quantities, but it's E363 a food additive with no known toxic dose ( food agency website I'm posting from a phone or I'd reference) and we make it in our bodies as part of metabolism. Don't worry about the 'oh you don't know what drug you're giving brigade' as now you do.

As long as you use it as a complimentary therapy ie in addition to calpol then you're not forcing your child onto weird and woo alternatives to real drugs. Which can be illegal for serious illnesses and plain stupid for a child in pain.

People don't like them around necks, but I'm sure if a child had been strangled he'd hear about it with a daily fail link on every thread of this kind. And we haven't. Consider your own risk factors.

Some people think they look tacky. Some people don't.

I'm as woo as they come. For D2 who screamed most of the day and night for 3 weeks I used calpol, broken, bonjella, teething powders and finally while on holiday in southwold bolted into the amber shop. She stopped screaming the next night. But of course that was the calpol kicking in after weeks and purely coincidence.

Amber is soothing in crystal healing BTW. Woo!

nicename I don't believe you are supposed to let toddlers chew on the amber, and amber tends to have natural flaws meaning it's likely to break. Knowing my toddler she'd have stuck broken bits up her nose.

This is the recommendation I got;

For the teething, you want polished cognac anklet. For the sleeping, polished green (any green its just a colour preference), for the exzema you could try polished butterscotch. For teething its 1 per 8lb, so them 3 should cover it. To measure, measure ankle, and add 1cm so it is snug.

Anyone tried it and had good/bad results?

We started with amber anklets for our DS teething and after putting them on him at around 16 weeks we've had no problems at all with teeth coming through. Whether it's a load of tosh or not I don't know, but I'm not going to stop using them to find out. I've heard people using them for sleep and other conditions but have no experience of that.

Now he's a bit bigger (14m) we have moved to a necklace which isn't long enough to chew. Figured it was more cost efficient that 3 anklets. Was a bit nervous about whether he'd mess with it but he's not in the slightest bit interested.

Controversial but our nursery actually recommends amber for teething as they can't give calpol and they say they've seen real results.