Anyone used homeopathy? Does it work?

[extraconfusedhelp]

I have PCOS and just went to see a homeopath today. She has given me something to take.

I just wanted to find out if anyone has been treated by a homeopath before? And how quickly the treatment worked?

I'm sorry, yogagirl - I cant find the peer reviewed research you're talking about. Could you possibly link to the BMJ article, please? I'd really like to read it.

Published in Pediatric Infectious Disease Journal, a randomised, double blind clinical trial of childhood diarrhea in 242 children. Duration of illness in the homeopathic group was significantly less than in the control group.

This is just one example. There are plenty more. All I'm trying to say is that most people who dismiss it outright or called it nonsense or magic or call people who buy it idiots don't actually know all the facts. I don't think it's the answer to everything. I don't think it should replace ibuprofen and antibiotics in my medicine cabinet. But I do believe it is more than just placebo and quackery and get really cross when people are so quick to dismiss something they simply don't understand.

(BTW, KvetaBarry, pls see my previous post as well, I AM talking about peer reviewed journals)

Seeker -

Taylor MA, Reilly D, Llewellyn-Jones RH, et al. Randomised controlled trials of homoeopathy versus placebo in perennial allergic rhinitis with overview of four trial series. British Medical Journal 2000;
321: 471?476

Results: ?...mean symptom reduction on visual analogue scores of 28% (10.9 mm) for homoeopathy compared with 3% (1.1 mm) for placebo (95% confidence interval 4.2 to 15.4, P=0.0007).
Conclusion: The objective results reinforce earlier evidence that homoeopathic dilutions differ from placebo. ?

BMJArticle

Oh, also meant to add the following:

?The homoeopathy group had a significant objective improvement in nasal airflow compared with the placebo group (mean difference 19.8 l/min, 95% confidence interval 10.4 to 29.1, P=0.0001).?

Yogagirl - no, I didn't make assumptions about the "research" you linked to - I've read it before. You're the one making assumptions about me; I'm a statistician and initially started my phd research on homeopathy. (I was very idealistic and had my eye on the aforementioned $1,000,000 and nobel prize!) Unfortunately, there was nothing really to add to the vast amounts of research that has been done already and found no statistically significant improvement beyond placebo. So I switched to a more interesting field of statistical study.

Checkmate - if you've actually looked at all the research then I don't understand how you can make a blanket statement claiming that none of it is peer reviewed and it's all flawed - that's simply not true. Just because it hasn't convinced some quack to part with $1M doesn't mean very much. Don't you think such money would be better spent helping to fund more research?

I thought all those studies in the 1990s and early 2000s had been called into question by later studies?

Am I wrong about that? Do you have anything more up to date?

Yogagirl

• There is plenty of research on homeopathy that is large-scale, peer reviewed, independent, and not flawed. Unfortunately for all the researchers, none of those studies have found a statistically significant improvement in the group taking homeopathic pills when compared to those taking placebo.

• Yes, there are some small scale studies which show small improvements in time limited conditions when compared with placebo. But there are other small scale studies that find no improvements when compared with placebo. However, when the control groups are so small, it is no surprise that different small studies on different dates with different groups of people all result in slightly different conclusions. The way scientists have developed to deal with this (across all statistical research, not just homeopathy) is by other researchers taking groups of small scale studies and sweeping them together for large-scale meta analysis. Many of these have been done on this subject now, and again, no statistical significance in favour of homeopathy over placebo has been found.

• I know I won't change your opinion. But can you see that homeopathic associations have a vested interest in continuing to make money from the product/service they represent? So they cherry pick the few small scale studies that support their views, and just publish those on their websites. They ignore all those carried out on similar conditions and at similar times which arrive at a different conclusion. Let alone printing the results of the large-scale independent studies or the meta-analysis results.

I know that you are not claiming (as many have done before) that people should ignore conventional medicine for treating their ailments. I respect you for that, and wish more supporters of homepathy would be that honest - if they all were then it would not be dangerous, just a waste of money, and much less of a harmful way to waste money than much of what we waste money on!
But many practitioners do make stupid recommendations like needing to stop conventional medicines (even for life threatening conditions) in order for the homeopathic pills to work, which is where the danger comes from, and why science has spent a lot of time and money on seeing whether their claims stand up to scrutiny.

Hope this makes sense - I'm in early stages of start-stop labour and this debate is perfect for keeping my mind off it, but I can't go and find my old research notes!

Checkmate - you need Caulophyllum200. Or possibly Pulsitilla.

I know the BMA no longer thinks that homeopathy should be available on the NHS - I'll look for the reference later.

Yes exactlyrockin andYogagirl Thanks .

Lol seeker!

BTW, I think it was you who I had my first ever "conversation" on mnet with. (Several years and many namechanges ago) I started a thread with the name I was thinking of for my unborn DD2. You tried to persuade me that I should name her something similar sounding but slightly different - can't remember what it was apart from that it began with C and was a name of a character in the Chalet School books. I was hooked on mnet from that point forward - Chalet school chat in the middle of a serious baby name discussion, what could be more perfect?!

5 bet it was Clemency. I've ALWAYS wanted to persuade someone to call a baby Clemency. Havn't succeeded yet. Are you having a girl?

Haha, no, DC5 is a boy, apparently.

Clemency, that's right. As in Barrass. DD2 is something similar, I couldn't persuade DH on Clemency... he kept saying she'd be nicknamed Phlegmy Clemmie.

ppeatfruit- can you read? And if so, can you also comprehend?
it doesn't look like it.

Not prepared to take my challenge, rockinhippy -

Er - its the GENERAL HEALTH FORUM - perhaps I'm just too much of an "idiot" to understand why on earth that would be appropriate

1 don't understand why producing proper evidence that homeopathy works as you clam is not hugely appropriate on the general health forum!

I completely agree that anyone who suggests a patient stop taking any medicine prescribed by their physician is dangerous and irresponsible. As i said in an earlier post, I prefer to use homeopathy as a complementary treatment, not alternative. So when I was in labour I was all for the epidural, but also took arnica to reduce speed up my recovery afterwards. When my mother had cancer she had radiation to treat the cancer but also used homeopathy to reduce the side effects of the radiation. And when my kids have a cough - where there are no effective allopathic medicines available (BMA have as much as admitted that all cough bottles are basically useless) - I use homeopathy but when they have strep throat they get amoxycillen (and ice cream).

Anyway, enough arguing.

Checkmate, I hope all goes well with DC5.

Interesting that the people on here who believe in homeopathy have ignored Checkmate's thoughtful post of 17.02 and my request for more up to date reputable studies.

If anyone is interested, a quick search will show that the studies from the 1990's and early 2000's mentioned on here have been revisited and shown to be flawed. ALL reputable studies since have shown little or no difference between hopepathic treatments and placebos. There is an intersting and well referecnced article on Wikipedia here which explains all this.

So OP, in answer to the question in your thread title, No, homeopathy does not work.

Is the problem here the inability to distinguish between

XX works

and

I took XX and then I felt better

?

Strawberry I'm not reducing this discussion to personal insults (showing a lack of intelligence) you are. End of.

You never do get any really intelligent people defending either homeopathy or belief in gods. Because if you're really smart, you know that if you believe in such things it's totally illogical and probably untrue, but you like the comfort blanket of the belief so you keep it to yourself - or if you believe and are determined to argue about it in the face of all logic and evidence, then, well, 'dumb as a rock' sort of springs to mind.

I believe there is a lot more that can be said about the existing evidence and about why there isn't more current research (a lot to do with money and politics) but as ppeatfruit has pointed out, too many people on this thread are more interested in personal insults than intelligent discussion so I'm not going to carry on.

Yeah, right. "Waaah, it DOES work , it DOES and you;re all being HOWWIBBLE asking for proper proof and pointing out that anecdote is not data."

" I prefer to use homeopathy as a complementary treatment, not alternative"

Why not? If it is effective, surely you don't need any other medicine for the same purpose.

But you've ignored any posts that have challenged you politely!