How do you talk to people who are into alternative medicine??!

[Pruni]

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NQC you beat me to it, relapsing/remiting conditions do get better on their own whether treated by conventional or complimentary treatments.

erm - because pollen (of which flower btw) isn't a remedy indicated for hayfever?

What would be a treatment for say hayfever or eczema then? Someone said sulphur? there would have been miniscule amounts of sulphur present in water in reservors from the drainage of the water through soil layers. Would that not have an effect?

all fair enough nqc, I just don't agree

in my experience, homeopathy can have a marked effect on even the most cynical: my dh for eg! however, in that it works holistically and the medicine needs to be a right fit for the individual concerned, sometimes it takes time to get there: it's not like antibiotics that work by zapping absolutely everything (to the detriment of for eg the digestive system), it is a case of getting the remedy right both for the symptoms shown and the individual showing them. the people that i've spoken to that have rejected homeopathy have often not seen it through (for example gone to see a homeopathy once, or tried one remedy).

anyway, it's all interesting stuff, and fantastic when it is working for you and your child (how do you explain it away by dismissing it as placebo effect if sometimes symptoms remain, or even worsen if the remedy isn't the right one, but if you get the remedy right, there is an almost instantaneous effect?). it's funny, because here i am coming across as hard core advocate, but i frequently have crises of faith with my homeopath thinking 'here's something she isn't going to have any joy with, i'll have to see the gp about this one' only to be proved (yet again) wrong....i'm a doubting thomas!

Thomasema??

Jimjams how do you get homeopathy on the nhs? Is it only for certain conditions?
Btw I think acupuncture is briliant , you don't have to go for all alternative remedies just have an open mind and see what works for you.

Pruni, read 'Snake Oil' by the late John Diamond. It'll give you all the rhetoric you need!

hmb, there aren't really catch all remedies though. there are somethings that you can give to treat certain sets of symptoms, for example, i always have a little clickpak of aconite in my bag, as it is excellent for treating shock (when ds falls of see-saw for eg) and arnica is known for bruising. sulphur is indeed an excellent skin remedy, but it won't cure everyone all the time: for eg, it works excellently on ds when his eczema flares due to teething, but doesn't work at all on the underlying eczema that is due to intolerance to cows milk products (we don't give him cows milk, but he is also being treated homeopathically so that cows milk won't have this effect)...

i don't know the answer to your point about sulphur in tap water for eg. i suspect that we are impacted in a 'homeopathic' way but v low doses of compounds all the time, but that remedies are more powerful due to purity and extreme dilution. i know it's counterintuitive, and i know science hasn't got there yet, but the nhs has based on results!

Sophable, if you can keep trying remedies until one works, then you've got an extra-long time for the problem to spontaneously fix itself!

HMB - you're missing the most important question. If things get more powerful, the more they're diluted, isn't it dangerous to rinse out containers used to make homeopathic medicine and then just pour that resulting (super-powerful) medicine down the drain? What will that do to the fish?

I had homeopathic treatment for eczema when I was 13... I was a cynical girl with no eyebrows (they had fallen out due to the eczema).

Within weeks, my eyebrows grew back, and my eczema was gone. Since then I have only had it mildly during times of stress.

You could say it was puberty that suddenly made it stop, or it was the homeopathy...it certainly wasn't me believing in it - I thought my mum was nuts!

I like the hormonal response Luna... mine was something along the lines of how does one manage to keep friends when it is so impossible to concieve that the other might think something different to you!

Oh, and sophable, to quote the official line, I think the remedies are mixed in a special way, shaken or something?

But yeah, I don't know how you get "pure" water to make remedies, if water "remembers" what's been in it.

One thing I think (some of) the alternative folks do really well is the whole caring thing. I remember talking to someone who was about to go into labour, and her homeopath had given her this cute little box full of remedies for her labour. Different things to use at different times.

And given how scary and unpredictable labour is, and how conventional medicine all has side effects or negative sides, having this little magic box full of things that would only help must have been very reassuring.

Also, lots of alternative practitioners seem to have a good holistic approach. A friend of mine went to see a homeopath/herbalist about some sleep problems, and the practitioner spent time working out why my friend was waking in the night and coming up with practical solutions, rather than rushing to give her some herbal or homeopathic solution.

These are things that conventional medicine doesn't do very well, or in some cases, at all. I can certainly see why alternative medicine has so many fans.

The NHS DOES provide some money for complementary care, but it is very controversial, particularly with homeopathy where the body of evidence is inconclusive. Lots of professionals thinks it is a waste of NHS money.

fully agree with the benefits of a holistic approach that tends to be used more often in complimentary med.

Just having someone listen and be sympathetic can have a massive effect all on its own.

but nqc i'm talking a couple of days eg. try pulsatilla for a really bad cold, not right remedy, no joy, later same day try belladonna and bingo, within half an hour symptoms recede and by next day fine. i'd write it off as just the cold leaving on it's own if it didn't happen again and again. actually i've found that homeopathy works best as a kind of preventative: dh has v v bad cold and ds started to get it (was beginning to be croaky, and starting to cough) i gave him a dose of pulsatilla (educated guess) and a few hours later, no sign of said cold, no cough, no more croak. homeopathy ideally is about boosting the immune system so that it can cope with the minor illnesses and avoid the major ones.

now cranial osteopathy, for new borns and young babies, that ROCKS. Ds hadn't done a poo for coming on for 10 days (fully breastfed), i knew it wasn't life threatening but was worried and he didn't seem too comfy. went to see cranial woman (on homeopath's recommendation) and she did a thing (little ds lying on her table, staring at me in a 'mummy, i'm not scared, but this woman is really doing something weird to me' way) and promptly did a massive poo before we got home in the car. hasn't had a smidge of digestive trouble since.

Right, but sophable, given a cold normally lasts a week, a few days of trying remedies really should sort it.

I am glad it works for you. But I do believe in science, and science has come up (at best) uncertain about homeopathy. That, added to the vet who tried to treat a really bad infection in my cat homeopathically (and the infection just got worse, and he needed to be hospitalised, and to have a drain put in!) makes me not very positive about homeopathy at all.

I really don't have this argument with people who are in favour of it, generally. Almost everyone I've met who was into alternative medicine listened when I said "no homeopathy, thanks".

I also agree that having someone to listen and be theref or you can have a huge effect on someone.

I have trained in a couple of alternative therapies, although I don't really use them at the moment. One of the things that really draws me to them rather than conventional medicine is the idea of treating the cause, not just the symptoms. The more I have read about it, the more I can see a link personally between conditions and their causes. I remember reading a list of medical complaints and next to them were the likely causes/mental blocks which could contribute to the development of the complains and thinking how completely true that was for me.

I went to see a dermatologist a few years back and she told me that eczema just appears for no reason at all and there is no cure. I decided not to bother saying anything, but I didn't go back.

The fish don't get ill because homeopathic remedies - in themselves, don't treat or cure anything. They give the bodies own immune system the push that it needs to cure itself.

And is anybody elses LOLong that this discussion (from some quarters) simply proves Pruni's point about how impossible it is to talk to ardent believers in alternative therapies

I beleive that one of the more positive aspects of holistic treatment is that individuals are encouraged to take responsibility for their health rather than just handing a batch of symptoms to a doctor and saying "cure me".

HOW? How is it impossible to talk to... are you not meaning "impossible to make agree with you"?

I respect the choice not to believe in homeopathy etc. I also feel that those who do believe have the same rights to be heard out as those who go for conventional medicine.

I respect that some people don't vaccinate - I can listen to their opinions on it, and still make my own choices.

flamesparrow, some people just assume you'll want to do whatever they do, and don't listen when you say "I don't do that".

Personally, I don't feel compelled to convert people to my world view, but I'd also rather not listen to a long rant from them about how well it works for them, and I really must take myself or my kids to their wonderful practitioner.

I have tried a bunch of complimentary things and have thought there was success with some of them. I like to think I'm open-minded. My GP sugested acupuncture for me and a different GP homoepathy for my son.

Apparently the reason that Homeopathy is available on the NHS is because after the 1st World War a homeopathic hospital offered to take patients (soldiers) as the conventional hospitals were overflowing. Apparently the soldiers from the Homoepathic hosp recovered much faster than the conventional hosp.

I do on the otherhand find it difficult talking to a friend as she only believes in alternative not complimentary medicine. To me she is not very open minded to conventional medicine. I think there is a place for complementary therapies and when conventional medicine offers little then it can offer hope.

Prufrock - what's not to believe? if it helps some people and not others, that's fine. Allopathic medicines don'e work for everyone either (was it Smithklein Beecham who admitted recently that only 50% of their products have a noticable effect on the illnesses they are supposed to cure?!!) lol (am tempted to say "touche" but that could be misconstrued as inflammatory) lol)

Sure, conventional meds don't always do the job, and they have side-effects too. But the % of the time they do the job, and the side-effects, are studied, and available if you know where to look.