Homeopathy... Anyone had any experience... saw one today and she said something rather strange....

[poppiesinaline]

she noticed that my children had long curly eyelashes and asked if someone in the family in past generations has ever had TB?

Apparently, if someone in the family has had TB, someone in the 2/3 generation later will have long curly eyelashes

Just rather odd I thought..... What on earth has curly eyelashes got to do with a lung disease!?

But if it had been observed that this did happen, would that make the person who pointed it out bonkers? I mean, it is generally accepted these days that the world is round.

There can be more than one cause for anything.

We keep homeopathy pills in the house. DD swears by them. Every time she is ill or grumpy she asks her daddy for those placebo pills. It works, every tiem

What would be the alternative to my sons problem then tooticky??

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OK, show me a thoroughly researched, peer-reviewed paper in which the observation was made in a large population and a statistically significant result was achieved and I will take it all back. In the meantime, I will stick to my view that it's about as plausible as the moon being made of cheese.

Good point poppies

two or three generations ago TB was widespread in this country so almost certainly a relative would have had it.

As for natural products many of todays treatments are derived from plants as the plant can make some fantastic chemicals that would be almost impossible to make in a lab ie vincristine used in leukaemia, and digoxin for heart disease. Parts of the plant are heated in a huge vat with solvent then filtered, purified and the solvent evaporated to give pure crystals of required chemical.

Strychnine and cyanide are also natural products obtained from plants

no-one's arguing about plants being effective, astronomer

some of us are being sceptical that an infinitely dilute solution of the water that once had said plant dipped in it might not be effective.

princessmel - okay. I am not a homoeopath but do believe in it strongly. So, to the best of my limited knowledge....
A Classical Homoeopath would find out why your son is producing so much green stuff. They would take his case fully - all symptoms, regular or occasional, personality/behaviour traits, allergies, a little family background - it all helps. Physical symptoms can have physical and/or psychological causes. Sorry, I'm making a bad job of this. There are books out there about self-prescribing which are very informative but I wouldn't advise anybody to self-prescribe. Really the best advice I can give is to see a homoeopath. There are excellent ones in Bristol, Bath, Basingstoke and London if you want a recommendation.
What a homoeopathic remedy does is it gives a tiny dose of something that causes the symptoms the patient wants to get rid of - this enables the body to fight them off. If a remedy is given repeatedly it will seem to be helping for a while, but then the remedy will "prove itself" which means it will then start to cause the symptoms.
A combination of remedies just confuses the picture. Each symptom will have several possible remedies but only one will treat the exact combination of symptoms a person have.
Repressing symptoms causes the problem to go deeper within the body and makes the problem harder to treat.
Is this any help? I hope so.

MrsBadger... your chocolate pudding was scrummy yummy yum

"What a homoeopathic remedy does is it gives a tiny dose of something that causes the symptoms the patient wants to get rid of "

Tooticky, sorry if I am being patronising here, but do you actually know how dilute the solution is?
There are unlikely to be ANY molecules of the original ingredient in the homeopathic pills you are given - Mrs Badger's description is spot on.

tamum

do let me know if you get to see those trials... in the meantime, let's ponder that pure water would be the most effective homeopathic remedy ever.. as it would be the most dilute

As for homeopathy then in theory as it is so diluted then just a glass of ordinary tap water could have enough of the remedy in to treat the condition

A lot of it is the homeopathic "practitioner" doing a concerned consultation in a relaxing and caring (and expensive) enviroment.

Tis probably wonderful for mild anxiety, insomnia and stress

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There was an article in the new scientist a while back (13 things that do not make sense - see number 4) which mentioned a study done by a homeopathic sceptic found that homeopathic histamine (too dilute to have any active ingredient left) worked just like real histamine.

So, homeopathy working is not completely undocumented...

We have seen a homeopath about this. We were referred to her from the gp.

She gave me a few different remedies but they didn't seem to make a difference. Then at the same time we got an appointment at an allergy clinic at the hospital. He gave us the nose spray and thats supposed to open his nasel passages. Like his inhaler does for his chest. His problem was that the things he breaths in were irritating his nose.

He is so much happier now his nose isn't being wiped constantly. he hated that. It really was bad. Also I'd always feel that people were thinking 'why have you brought your sick child here', swimming or soft play etc.

"Tooticky, sorry if I am being patronising here, but do you actually know how dilute the solution is?"

Yes. It is very dilute but at each dilution solution is succussed (shaken) which increases its potency.

I don't doubt the placebo effect AT ALL to be clear.
I just thought the TB = curly eyelashes thing was bonkers.
I stand by that, tbh.

But you still can't describe it as actually giving a dose of the ingredient, can you?

course it's bonkers, whole thing is, frankly IMO!

how do you clean out the containers after making the dilutions if each dilution makes it more potent

princessmel, I understand how much easier it must be for you both to be without the symptoms. What a shame you saw a homoeopath who gave several different remedies. A decent homoeopath would only have given one, and it would have been the right one! A lot of people have similar experiences which puts them off homoeopathy

She gave different remedies at different times. 3 months apart I think.

I think she's helped him with other things.
And she's going to try and help dd too.

She wasn't keen on the spray and wants us to stop it but I don't want it to go back to how it was before.

I have a remedy I bought online for molluscum. DS1 had something that looked like it on his face. It's worked really quick. If anyone wants a few tablets to try they're welcome as there's tons in the bottle. I can send them in a small selfseal bag. I can't remember the name but I'll check and put a link.

Homeopathy is about the cheapest of the alternative medicines as you don't have to go very often.

I'm friends with a health pscyhologist and share his view really that it may work, whether that's through the ritual of the consultation or the actual remedy who knows/cares. I have had some very good results using homeopahty, especially with ds1 (severely autistic unable to tolerate conventional medicines very well although will use them when I have to). Incidentally my health psychologist friend never uses homeopathy to study the psychology of alternative therapies as they couldn't be certain that there wasn't a physical effect.

They have had some interesting "more than placebo" effects with some groups using other alternative remedies though.

RE eyelashes- never heard that, but have heard from numerous sources (some medicalish, none alternative) that long eyelashes are related to allergies.........