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!?

Just to add.......I had a great homeopath who helped me enormously when I had PND I wouldn't even admit to myself. Her questions were interesting but I have to say I noted a massive improvement within a short time (changed doses twice, Sepia 1M).

I have also used a homeopathic thing when my children had chicken pox. On 2 of my children there was no change. On the other 1 the change was dramatic.

Just to throw it into the pot.......

You know, if you don't like it, don't use it.

On the particular point of the dilution of remedies, whilst I would accept that at high potencies the dilution takes us past Alvogardos number meaning that there should be no chemical trace of the remedy, there have been peer-reviewed and accepted scientific papers showing a bundling effect of molecules within water solutions which do cause traces to be left. There is also some very interesting work being done on whether succussion and dilution work on a quantum level rather than a chemical - there are many things that quantum physicists have been able to do that are provable as impossible by normal chemical scientific rational. So just because there isn't yet scientific proof for something, doesn't mean it doesn't happen.

And randomised double blind trials don't work for homeopathy. No homeopath would ever claim (as allopathic doctors do) that a particular remedy works for a particular named disease or individual symptom. Homeopathy aims to stimulate an individuals immune system to cure itself - not something that is easily tested by scientific methods concocted to fit the "this drug has this effect" scenario.

I am one of the most cynical people I know. I don't "believe" in anything. But I do know - because I've seen it - that homeopathy can have amazing results. I'm trying very hard to find out why, though it is leading to some ructions with my tutors who tend towards the "it just does, who cares why" school of thought.

And now I really am going back to my cough remedy comparison chart!

where are you studying prufrock? (if you don't mind me asking, just curious)

Why don't randomised double blind trials don'twork for homeopathy ?

because different people need different remedies for the (physically) same condition DC. There is no one remedy for "dr, hacking, cough" for example. Although there may be one remedy for "believes he is a being chased by a large black dog between 12am and 1am". I made that up- but I love homeopathis delusions as they're known. Can while away hours reading those.

Prufrock I have a book giving some theories on the way homeopathy works. CAT me if you want to know more- can give you the title etc can't be bothered with a punch up on here (also its upstairs and haven't got the energy to look now).......

randomised double-blind trials don't work because they require everyone in the test group to take the same remedy. Except in first aid cases you would rarely give two people the same remedy as it depends not only the condition but on the specific symptoms, what makes it better or worse, and what type of person they are.

For example, if you were to treat recurrent headaches homeopathically you would look at whether they were one-sided, whether they were worse in the morning or at night, better or worse from hot or cold, worse from stress or worse from relaxing after a period of stress etc, etc. If you were treating 10 different people you might use 10 different remedies.

LSCH -distance learning sm. You?

DC - do I really want to get into a discussion with you? Oh go on then - I've almost finished my chart.

A randomised double blind trial would not work because with homeopathy you cannot say that all patients with (for example) Chronic Allergic Rhinitis should be treated with (for example) pulsatilla. Whilst that might work for some people with snotty noses, it doesn't work for all. In fact the symptom of "Nose, discharge" has over 1000 indicated remedies, depending on the type of discharge and most importantly the totality of the other symptoms the patient has. You could do a better study if you took a selection of patients, went through an in depth consultation and prescribed them each an appropriate remedy, and then gave some the prescribed remedy and some a placebo. But there would be som many variables in that sort of a trial that I doubt it would stand up to the scrutiny of an already antagonistic mainstream scientific community.

Oops - ttok so long to post others had already answered.

There is also the fact that homeopathy is not an exact science. We base our treatment on what the patient tells us and what we observe about them, not on exact diagnostic tests. So the treatment we give can only be as accurate as the patients description of their illness. And sometimes patients lie,or withhold information, whether deliberately or not.

Jimjams - I'd like to know that -could you e-mail me on prufrock at hotmail.co.uk?

My favourite delusion is "mushrooms, fancies he is commanded to fll on his knees and confess his sins and rip up his bowels by a" (if anybody does feel ike this your remedy is agaric btw)

I think if you go for any kind of non-conventional treatment you have to be prepared for the practitioner to ask some unexpected questions - some of which may seem a bit
If you wanted the conventional route you would just go to your doctor.
I believe in each to their own. As far as I know homeopaths aren't allowed to make claims to the effect of 'this will cure this'. So you use your own judgement in visiting one.
If it works for you great, but if not there's no need to assume it's bollocks and run it down for other people.

I think it helps to think of homoeopathy as physics instead of chemistry. Sure there's no sign of the original chemical, but the water molecules are so affected as to take on a physical change. All water molecules are H2O but all snow flakes are different in physical structure

"Surely the trick with homeopathy is to see the homeopath for only a tiny amount of time, but shake a lot while you do it.

Maybe go by on a pogo stick, and wave through the window?"

I'm pro-homeopathy - but can that be the quote of the week .... please!

I accept different people need different remedies. I'm allergic to pennicillin, and the many factors such as weight, age, sex, genes, skin colour, and what you had for breakfast all affect drugs so that you can give the same treatment to 50,000 people and have no two the same.
But that's why we have randomised trials.

All it means is that when you give to to bunch of poeple A, more people got better than gang B who didn't get it.
We know that all treatmnents sometimes fail to work, occasionally for no reason anyone can figure. But if there is an effect beyond simple coincidence, it would be found this way.

If you were saying that you were tailoring treatments to every single person, that would make sense. But that isn't done, there simply aren't enough homepathic treatments compared to the variation in people and their current state.

I love you, NQC

Thanks, your hunkerness. (RD, Abby's always hunting for quote of the week, on a separate thread, in Site Stuff)

prufrock - I'm not a homeopath. (I just play one on TV ) Sorry. No, really, I work for a qualified homeopath. In addition to prescribing he does a lot of teaching and writing and I'm involved with everything from researching books for him to helping to put together all the training materials so I've just learned a lot along the way. Homeopathy is also very much a part of our day to day life at home - I never go anywhere without my trusty little bottle of Arnica pills - you should see what my children would look like without it!!!

Hope you finished your chart.

(BTW - I always promise myself I am NOT going to get drawn into this argument with people!)

Sugarmagnolia - out of curiosity, how does one do research for homepathy is it's so upfront about being outside the boundaries of any scientific research? Do you trawl the net for positive experiences and class those as research? I don't mean to be rude, I'm just curious. I mean, "Dr" Gillian was doing research too.

Homeopathy is not unscientific - it's just outside the boundaries of what modern allopathic medicine terms "science". When it first started it was the most scientific form of medicine (regardless of whether you believe in the principles) Hahhnemann and his followers based all their work on meticulous observations of what happened when you gave substances to healthy people, and meticulous recordings of atients symptoms to match them up - far more scientific than the then favoured methods of either making you vomit or bleeding you.

Prufrock - so if they were using what we now would term scientific methods to study their patients, where did it all go wrong and become the hocus-pocus of "tell me what you've dreamt of" of today?

Cristina - one persons 'hocus pocus' is another persons medicine
Fine if you don't believe it works, you've lost nothing. But for many it does so there's no need to imply that anything has 'gone wrong' or that something else is better for being more 'scientific'.

Christina - what I do on mumsnet has absolutely nothing to do with my work. When I said research I wasn't referring to clinical trials or anything that might be published in a journal either proving or disproving homeopathy. What I do is more along the lines of researching methods and historical figures for books, looking at different ways of sourcing and manufacturing remedies, that sort of thing. I should probably never have mentioned it really as what I say or do on here is completely seperate and entirely my own personal opinion.

Sugarmagnolia - I was curious as to what research implies in the case of homeopathy.

Hippmummy - my post was in response to a previous statement that homeopathy had started using conventionally scientific methods so that's why I asked what had gone wrong that it lost those initial attempts at objectivity.

Why is "tell me about your dreams" hocus pocus? It seems OK to do if you are charging really riiculous amounts of money and calling it pyschanalysis.

Homeopaths believe that any physical symptoms of illness are simply a sign of an imbalance in the persons vital force (although personally I prefer to think of teh VF as a combination of the mind and immune system rather than a "inner soul" sort of thing). Mental states, and yes, dreams are also symptoms of that imbalance and so can be used to pinpoint the correct remedy. I can see that people would not accept the principle that a substance that produces certain effects in a healthy person can cure those same effects in an ill person if gien in minute doses, but if you can accept that basic principle (an OK it's a big ask for some of you) then teh methods we use of meticulously recording those effects and matching them up are actually scientific and methodical.

Christina, be honest at least. "Do you trawl the net for positive experiences and class those as research?" is not a question asked just out of curiousity. I'm not interested into getting into a heated discussion about this but you have to admit it was a little bit rude. Also, please don't compare me to Gillian McKeith - I'm not pretending to be something I'm not.

Since you asked, the way you do research with homeopathy is by looking at effectiveness as oppossed to efficacy. Efficacy is proven by measuring how well something works - but in order to do that you need something to measure that will be the same for everyone - blood pressure for example. A blood pressure medication can be efficacious if it reduces blood pressure by x%. Effectiveness is more subjective - it is the ability of an intervention to improve a situation. But that improvement may be different from one person to the next. Person A might say that treatment helped because I'm need fewer paracetamol. Person B might say it's effective because I can lift my baby. Person C might simply say they feel better in themselves. Measuring effectiveness can not be done within the confines of traditional randomised clinical trials. But that does not mean it can not be done. Hope that helps to answer your question.