Homeopathy

[flyingcloud]

So, I was always a believer, always carried arnica pills around as well as Rescue Remedy. I can't say I had a firm conviction, but did it because so many people swore by it.

Incl MIL who is a nurse and her sister who is a pharmacist. Any sign of a illness, pain or minor complaint and they recommend a homeopathic treatment.

Until I read a thread on here a while ago debunking most of the myths of homeopathy. I did some googling and found that actually, there is very little proof that it works.

So, who is right? If two health care professionals are convinced of its effectiveness maybe Google was wrong?

I don't want to start a fight here, but am genuinely curious how something with so little scientific proof of effectiveness has come into widespread use.

That's not to say that I don't believe in the placebo effect and I know that DD thinks she feels much better if I give her an arnica pill or two if she has a bump (but that's just the sugar, right?)

miluna you seem to be accusing critics of homeopathy of being biased and disregarding the evidence regarding it. That's simply not the case. The simple fact is that standard testing methods for drugs (double blind trials being the most reliable of those) do not show any evidence of homeopathy doing better than a placebo.

There's also the fact that homeopathic remedies are so diluted that they do not contain even a single molecule of the supposed active ingredient.

I am familiar with the memory of water hypothesis - fortunately, there's no reason to believe in this. I say fortunately because if there were we'd all be ingesting copious amounts of Tony Blair's excrements on a daily basis. And yours and mine. Not to mention all the other stuff in the world. In fact, taking a specific remedy would be completely pointless, seeing as we'd all already be taking a higher dosage of it at any given time simply via our regular fluid intake.

I feel very passionately about this subject. My mother, like some posters here, was a fervent believer in homeopathy. Unfortunately for me, I had childhood asthma, making me the perfect subject to prove the superiority of gentle natural methods over those of mainstream medicine.

Do you have any idea at all, how terrifying it is to think you are suffocating? To be wheezing, gasping for breath and still to feel that not enough air is going in your body to keep it alive? It's the worst feeling in the world! Now, imagine going through this on a regular basis - and then discovering that there is a quick and easy method to relieve it but it's evil chemicals and you hence can't take it. (Dear mum, even water is a chemical, never mind.)

Luckily for me, I survived undamaged. However, when I last posted abiut this, another poster on the same thread had actually suffered lung damage. Either of us could easily have died! So don't go claiming there is no harm in it - there most definitely is!

Please excuse any typos! It's the iPad's fault.

Flyingcloud. If you use advanced search on here, you will find a discussion on Homepathy approximately every six months. A read of these should give you a good indication of the Mumsnet view of Homeopathy.

it's not true that water is harmless. Millions of people have been killed by it. It is especially dangerous when inhaled. All cancer victims are known to have swallowed it.

Thank you for airing this discussion and allowing me to say everything I need to say to real mother's with real children who might need to find an alternative to conventional medicine some day. I can no longer converse with people who say smarties and nescafe are medicines that heal or site people they have never met or conversed with as being ill informed. I'm horrified that real people and their outcomes to treatment are not important to you and that all you can do is cry out woo. I'm sorry that one of you had a hard time with asthma and a homeopathy remedy didn't help your symptoms but thank goodness there's still democracy here in the UK, and you were able to seek out some sort of an alternative, and that someone like you but on the other side hadn't taken it away. A very good day to you all.

Miluna - why are you not prepared to engage in discussion?

I developed terrible hayfever at the age of eight and for the first year or two my mum put me on a homeopathic remedy. It didn't work and the whole experience made me very angry. Especially as I got the impression that my mum thought I simply wasn't "trying" hard enough. Kept talking about "mind over matter" and not to get upset/in a panic. Grrrrrr.

I then tried a succession of NHS prescribed medication, none of which really worked, but some stopped me from cutting my own nose off or having blisters in my eyes. Symptoms would start with the first hint of summer in May, usually, and finish up sometime towards the end of August.

Fast forward many miserable summers later to the mid nineties, and I find myself in France for several months. I have no medication with me and with the first hint of summer I realise that things are going to get really bad, really fast.
I head straight to the pharmacy for something, anything, Triludan/Piriton/Zirtek. They shake their heads and give me two sets of little homeopathic pills to be taken together. I am very upset. I had already tried the homeopathic stuff and it had just been pointless. I think they are taking the absolute rip. I am in a proper state, big puffed-up face, nose, eyes, and now feeling a bit desperate.

With much muttering under my breath, I left the pharmacy and took the pills. Within about three days my symptoms had gone. I had the first carefree summer since I was eight years old.

End of the story is. By the following summer, I had returned home and finished and lost the tubs with the names on. Luckily Flixonase came out around that time. It is the only one that has worked for me since. But I always wonder what the pills were called.

Perhaps not all alternative remedies should be tarred with the same brush as those pointless and expensive tablets that made my life miserable back in the eighties.

The FDA will not approve anything that has not been rigorously tested. Drugs companies are not going to spend the huge amounts of cash needed to properly research the antiseptic properties of tea for example, when you can just go and grab some tetley off the shelf of the supermarket.

But without the tests and approval, claims regarding health benefits cannot be made. So perfectly good simple remedies sink back into the morass of expensively marketed vitamins and supplements which may have no more health-giving properties than a balanced diet and some even less than that.

They certainly can't cure cancer.

Maybe miluna doesn't want to engage in discussion because you are not having a discussion. That would suggest some kind of exchange of ideas.

And what is the "mumsnet" view of homeopathy. I hadn't realised I had to sign up to the mumsnet view of anything.

How unfair.

Lots of "real mother's with real children" have seen their families get better from all sorts of illnesses after drinking nescafe, and I've known babies stop crying after BF when the mother drinks it. So there's plenty of evidence that it works. How dare you suggest that it isn't a real and effective treatment when there are millions of people who've recovered from infections and even life-threatening accidents after drinking it? It's a perfectly good simple remedy.

In some cases youngsters have suffered from allergies and hayfever until well into their teens, then, as they start drinking nescafe, their symptoms improve and you can see it's cured them.

Piglet ... [http://www.dhmo.org/facts.html DHMO]]

..real people and their outcomes to treatment are not important to you ..
They are - if they weren't important I wouldn't bother posting. It's why I'll call homeopathy a placebo dressed up in pseudoscience until I hear a shred of evidence to the contrary, and hope that Bruffins list doesn't grow.

(I seem to remember an episode of Quantum Leap where the time travelling bloke did use coffee to cure a child. OTOH it contains huge amounts of DHMO so do be careful...)

Quite so... and homeopathic remedies are contaminated with large amounts of dyhydrogen monoxide, which is associated with many deaths worldwide.

ho ho ho dyhydrogen monoxide ha ha ha :o

seeker, I think Miluna has engaged in the discussion. It's just that her contribution is so very tiny it can't be seen. But nevertheless, she totally won.

WRT your MIL and her sis believing in it - it's not so unusual.

Even people who are otherwise very intelligent and educated believe all sorts of crap.

Also, what NotaDude said.

It's just that her contribution is so very tiny it can't be seen. But nevertheless, she totally won.

well, that's homeopathy for you...

What Calamity said.

My father is highly intelligent. He also has three degrees. Apart from that, he's the world's greatest woo meister. Dowsing, homeopathy, reiki, channeling, the law of attraction and babies choosing their own parents to learn a karmic lesson - you name it and I guarantee that he'll buy into it and defend it against all evidence to the contrary. High intelligence can most definitely co-exist with a breathtaking amount of gullibility and superstition.

miluna, I don't think anybody here is arguing that homeopathy should be forbidden. I personally think it's a waste of money to offer it on the NHS when it simply cannot be proven using any acceptable methodology. If someone insists on threating their own cancer with sugar pills, I'll find that tragic but would ultimately respect their choice - I would want everybody to be informed abiut its effectiveness before doing so, though.

To suggest that opposition to homeopathy is in any way anti-democratic is frankly ridiculous. Do you also believe that we should be making foreign policy decisions on the basis of tea leaf readings? Would you vote for a person who has expressed their support for this? There is about the same amount of evidence for the accuracy of this method as there is for homeopathy. Would it be illegitimately limiting to people's choices for me not to want the UK to declare war on Colombia just because that's what the remnants of my breakfast suggest we should do?

Norks, seeker, Piglet, Snorbs, Nome

Is that the sound of cackling coming from the 4th year girls loos? What are you going to do next: make miluna hit herself with her own hands? Or perhaps talk about her shoes.

The only person talking about winning anything is you Snorbs. miluna was trying to get engaged in a discussion about homeopathy. Something she has experience of. But she walked into the 4th year girls loos by mistake...

Presumably you are regulars. There to jump down the throat of anyone who considers the possibility that scientists haven't discovered everything there is to know about everything yet.

'There to jump down the throat of anyone who considers the possibility that scientists haven't discovered everything there is to know about everything yet.'

I see.
So we are to give equal weight to Miluna's opinions are we?

There's no connection between "Scientists haven't discovered everything there is to know about everything yet" and "therefore homeopathy works" either.

One should, of course, keep an open mind. But one has to be careful that in doing so we don't open our minds so much that our brains fall out.

I'm not sure I know what you mean: give equal weight? Do you mean: consider someone's opinions who differ from your own.

It's so obvious that you don't give equal weight to the lady's opinions. And many of you consider them worthy of public derision.

It's all a bit sad. It would be refreshing if proving a principle didn't simply mean getting all your mates to gang up on someone. i.e He who shouts loudest wins.

I hate the way homeopathy enthusiasts refuse to enter into a serious discussion about the healing benefits of nescafe. Nobody can deny that there are millions of people who have recovered from illness after drinking it. Only last week I myself had a cold, I sat around drinking nescafe, and after a few days it was completely gone. The same happened when I had a broken leg, though it didn't heal until after several months or drinking nescafe. That's outcome-based evidence resulting from personal experience, you can't argue with it.

I have no sympathy with people who are too snooty to even consider the benefits that nescafe brings.

What nonsense WP.
She is talking shite and this has been pointed out.
If she wants to go off with her knickers in a twist, so be it