Homeopathy

[OuiOui]

My MIL is French and works in a pharmacy and she's given me drops of camomile and also a special formula for teething. We occasionally use the camomile and the teething ones but am worried that we are using them "irresponsibly" - What's the general rule with homeopathy?

And i spelt eczema wrong at least once.... eczema is how you spell it... right?

One of our NHS GP's at home uses homeopathy if he thnks it appropriate. My dd was given homeopathic treatment for nosebleeds - you can definitely tell if a nose bleed is there or not! - and it certainly made a big difference. Or perhaps I should say 'dd's condition improved amazingly' - who can tell if it was the remedy or coincidence? The nose bleeds returned about six months after stopping the treatment but have never been as frequent or as severe as prevously.

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Arnica is herbal. The thing to remeber is that things like eczema do go of their own accord I have it, and so does Dh, Dd and Ds). Sometimes this coincides with treatment, 'medical' or 'complimentary'. What is needed to get rid of this 'error' is very large scale double blind clinical trials. And these don't exist for homeopathic treatments. And the people that make all the money from them don't seem to be interested in testing them. Drug companies have to do it by law. NICE will not allow drugs to be prescibeld now, unless there is significant proof that they work. The alternative area of medicine makes big bucks, and has hardly any regulation. And herbal remedies can be just as risky, if not more so that convertional. So why the difference?

• of the tomp ten prescribed drugs come from a plant origin. When in conventional form they are well regulated, tested eyc. When sold in a herbalists they have nothing like the protection. Stikes me as odd.

Should have read 8 of the top ten! Any remedies for poor typing??

Did anyone see the article about 'debunking medical myths' in the G2 section of the guardian yesterday? Dunno how to do a link, but it was a bit scathing about homeopathy!

As John Diamond said, the only difference between conventional and alternative medicine is alternative medicine has never been proven to work

hmb, are you a doc too, the reference to NICE made me wonder

hmb I think you've missed the point a bit about alternative medicine. To take homeopathy- every new remedy goes through a "proving" when it's effects are examined in humans. You CAN'T do a double blind trial in the normal way (i.e. say does x cure condition y) because each remedy is individual to the person. Like acupuncture it is an energy medicine.

I'm not your "usual" type of alternative medicine user. I have a totally orthodox scientific background (to PhD level). I then had an autistic son. The absolute arrogance of orthodox medicine has totally astounded me. He is on a gluten free diet which helps enormously - there is plenty of conventional scientific evidence to back this up- not double blind trials because A) you can't really set them up for diet changes and b) if you did it would be hideouosly expensive and who;s going to pay for it when no one is set to make financial gain. Because of this I get told by a paediatrician it's "anecdotal", and told by the clinical psychologist "they're trying to blind you with science". Excuse me I'm a scientist and the work has been published in peer reviewed journals. Don't even get me going on the arrogance of dr's and immunisations.

Anyway my point (lost in the rant). Is that just becuase you can't explain something in conventional molecular terms it doesn't mean it doesn't work. To understand homeopathy we probably need to go down a quantum physics route but we're not ready to do that yet.

BTW there have been some double blind trials- a few were done in the 80's by a sceptic (dr) in Glasgow- he became a convert. Recently there has been one in Glasgow on eczema (it worked as well as conventional drugs). A good one I remember was on cows in the 80's. 200 cows were divided into 2 groups. One half were given a remedy in their water to prevent mastitis, one half were't. Of the cows not given the remedy 3/4 got mastitis (this was the usual number one would expect), of the cows given the remedy only 1 got mastitis. Having had msatitis I'd go with the remedy!

No I'm not a doc, but I did work in the pharmaceutical industry (which makes me damned I'm sure ). I have many years experience in science, and have worked in reaserch for a number of years.

You make soem interesting points Jimjams, but it would be possible to do a double blind with homeopathy (acupuncture would be more difficult ) You could take a cohort of 100 patients, with say, hayfever and send them to the homeopath. He them goes thru the diagnosis procedure and prescribes whatever remedy he thinks best for that individual. There is a 50% chance that the individual is dispenced with pure water, and 50 that there is the homeopathic remedy. Then look to see if there is any statistical difference between the 2 groups. Granted this is not ideal, because they will be given different preps, but it would give a good start. I think that there should be more trials of this type. The more the better. I hope that I am a good enough scientist to have an open mind, but at the moment a lot of money is being spent with almost no evidence. No-one would be prepared to give the same leeway to conventional medicines( and they shouldn't do so either)

Incidentaly if these submicroscopic dilutions are so potent, how come our normal tap water doesn't have the same propeties. If a single drop diluted in the worlds oceans is the effective particle in a homeopathic preperation, why isn't all our water useful? I am not being snide, I just find homeopathy beyond my belief.

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hmb you've got to stop thinking in molecular terms that's the point. Yes it is beyond current explanation- but plain old water hasn't been potentised. Actually being an old classically trained scientist myself i had problems accepting homeopathy initially, but I've seen it work too many times. Incidentally trials of the type you mentioned are underway for various conditions (I just meant not traditional double blind trials). Baby in one arm so typing isn't very fluent :-)

why would you choose to believe anything that is beyond "current " or any other explanation?
The plural of anecdote is not data.

Robinw I am interested as always in your comments.
Re Xylitol, if it works ,(I'm impressed with what I know so far) why would that preclude drug companies working on refining and marketing it at an ideal dose?
I absolutely agree that once a therapy has been shown to work it ceases to become alternative.

These discussions make me feel a bit uncomfortable. Somehow it seems slightly impolite to argue your corner because it is the kind of topic one is likely to have a stance on and be unlikely to be shaken from.
It's a bit like trying to convince someone God exists. Or trying to explain your stance on vegetarianism/meat eating.
If several well respected double blind trials showed homoeopeathy to be useless, the believers among us would still not accept this.( "you can't subject it to those methods" )
If double blind studies showed homoeopathy to be effective you would still have a hard time convincing the skeptics. ("The methodology was all wrong" )
What interests me is not whether homoeopathy (or acupuncture, or crystal healing, or astrology or Uri Gellar, or telepathy, or the belief that drug companies are evil b*stards who want to poison our children for maximum financial gain) is "true" , but what make some of us believe and others think it is a pile of nonsense.
Interesting stuff

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If I saw enough good data on homeopathy, as a good scientist I would except it.
Wnat I cant except is that you are saying, this cannot be tested but we know it works, and so it comes down to failt. I have no failth in homeopathy. Amnd I cannot 'trust' that mixing water, with more water potentiates anything. Sorry

Herbalism is quite different thing, The 'bit' that makes a herbal remidy work is a chemical which works on a receptor n a body. Lots and lots of conventional medicines started this way. I would just rather get the active ingredient, in a pure, and measured form, in a well tested and regulated preperation. Taking herbal preperations means that the dose will vary widly depending on the storage conditions, weather when the plant was growing. and you have the potential for contamination. Some Chinese herbs to treat ezcezma have been shown to be contaminated with strong steriods.

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Jasper I wouldn't choose to believe anything that is beyond current explanation. I choose to believe homeopathy because I've seen it work on my family. If I hadn't seen it work I wouldn't believe it.

I actually had to search out an alternative as DS1 gets very high temperatures and paracetamol doesn't work for him (I'd give him the maximum dose and watch his temperature increase above 41). I know why it doesn't work - his sulphation system doesn't work properly. There is plenty of research on this carried out by Rosemary Waring at Birmingham University- this isn't some quack stuff. However his GP and Paediatrician know nothing about it and so don't believe it. So faced with temperatures I've had several options. I tried the obvious one (sponging) and he hated it, so I tried homeopathy and it works. I'm actually not bothered that I don't understand how it works. if it helps him fine.

Jimjams (great name by the way) Why do you conclude that the homoepathic remedy is responsible for the improvement in your child and that either a)he would just get better anyway or b) there is a placebo at work?
I am not criticising you for using it or beleievingin it incidentally , it;s just that like hmb I can't believe that the dilution thingy works.
Would you trust a homoeopathic contraceptive?

Hmmm we're coming at this form different angles. Homeopathy doesn't aim to act as a contraceptive- it aims to cure a state of illness and return someone to health- therefore it's not really going to act as a contraceptive.

Anyways that aside- good point about the getting better anyway- I'm sure a lot of times that does just happen- I just used the example of temperature as it's fairly concrete. There are other ways in which homeopathy has worked far more powerfully for my children but the background is too complicated for here and I'm not sure anyone would believe me anyway. As for the dilution thingy well there was somehting in the New Scientist last year- apparently as you dilute a substance the substrate actually forms clusters and so concentrates. This would only explain the lower dilutions. I was quite interested in that because at the time I didn't use homeopathy, several people had suggested I did, but I was quite resistant to the idea- that gave me an explanation that made me happier to try it. I did - found that for my children it works wonders and then wasn't worried so much about the fact that it couldn't be explained.

I had some smileys in there but they didn't come out......

Robinw, over 100 million, when I worked for the biz, which was a few years ago. I know the argument is that the herbalists cannot afford it, but it makes them big bucks. I can't see how we can allow two different levels of care, one for conventional and one for herbal.

And you have to remember that the pharmaceuticals spend a lot of money looking into the efficacy of herbal treatments in search for new therapeutic compounds. I'd just want to get my drug in a known amount and be sure that it is pure.

I can understand how herbalism works (when it does) ie just like conventional drugs. I can also see an explanation for acupuncture, but homeopathy escapes me I'm afraid. Give me some good studies, and I'd have to re-think, but at the moment, it is not for me.

The next thing is NOT about homeopathy but about conventional medicine and the fact that it isn't always tested with chidren in mind or pregnant mums or breastfeeding mums for that matter... I chose to post this only because some of you seem to feel conventional pharmacology is safer....

WHAT DOCTORS DON‚T TELL YOU - E-NEWS
BROADCAST No.13 - 28 Nov 02
SUFFER THE CHILDREN: Drugs that kill and harm
the very young

Prescription and over-the-counter drugs have killed 769 children
aged under two years between 1997 and 2000 in the USA. In
addition, another 6,000 have suffered from serious side effects.

Some of these children were affected indirectly, because the
mother had taken the drug when she was pregnant or while
breastfeeding.

Nonetheless, it hardly needs stating that these figures are
extraordinarily conservative, as statistics always seem to be
when it comes to reporting drug side effects and reactions.

Although 2,000 drugs, including vaccinations, were implicated,
just 17 were responsible for more than half the serious side
effects, and four were suspected in up to one-third of the deaths.

Some of the main culprits included antibiotics, over-the-counter
medications such as ibuprofen, and treatments for respiratory
syncytial virus (RSV), a common childhood infection that can
lead to pneumonia.

These figures are at the heart of one of the fundamental problems
about drug testing and licensing. Although the licensing process
can cost a pharmaceutical company around £150m, the drug is never,
if rarely, tested on the people who may eventually take it, such
as pregnant women, the very young and the elderly. Instead,
it‚s a useful way for young medical students to supplement their
income, and, because they are strapping, healthy young things,
they don‚t suffer too many side effects.

Give the same drug to an elderly person, already on a cocktail
of other drugs, and the result may well be very different. But
then, of course, if the drug company recruited the pensioner to
the initial trials, the drug would probably never get a licence
in the first place.

hmb- that's fine- but you're saying it doesn't work without trying it (if I've read your posts correctly). No problem though if conventional medicine works for you. My problem is that DS1's metabolism is so screwed up that conventional medicine often doesn't work on him in the way that it should- or the side effects are far more of a problem than they would be for a normal (for want of a better word) child. I supose without his problems I would never have used homeopathy becuase I wouldn't have needed too.

Good point sweetypie- I love WDDTY.