Homeopathy

[PutTheBunnyBackInTheBox]

Hi. My vet suggested homeopathy for my nervous dog today but I can't find anything on the internet! I can't get it from boots or holland and barrett as it needs to be a higher dose or whatever you call it

Has anyone used any and knows a reliable website?

Anecdotes do not equal data ... there have been many clinical trials of homeopathy and none has shown it to work any better than a placebo. That's ok if you want to waste your money on yourself because if you really believe something's going to do you good, well then hey it just might ... however that's not going to work on animals because they don't understand that the homeopath is treating them 'holistically ' - all that's going on there is confirmation bias on the part of the owner and/or so-called vet.

I'm sure there are loads of posters who'll come on and say "it worked for me/my dog" but a) see my point about anecdotes vs data and b) these kinds of 'treatments ' are almost always used for relatively minor or self-limiting conditions i.e. They would have got better or improved by themselves without any treatment

Not confused at all thanks
Clear as daylight here

Then you don't have a reason for 2 conflicting statements. "this substance is bad, uses arsenic which is bad" and "this substance is plain water, it can't harm you at all" are oxymoronic.

Loving the idea of a 'higher dose' of a homeopathic remedy...

et majority of the time these people chuck antibiotics down their dogs throats then sit and wonder why the same illness comes back a few weeks/months later hmm

How many people have given their dog antibiotics for an ear infection? Yet found themselves back at the vets a few months later asking the vet why it keeps coming back..

The dog has an infection. The antibiotics clear it up. The dog is healthy for a while, then gets another infection. This is called Life. People who question it are probably not engaging their brain very hard.

This is very funny. Homeopathy is water. Someone has offered a million pounds to anyone who can prove it works and no-one has claimed it.

Casey
I don't actually think i need to explain but being kind i will
I was replying to a pp who seemed to think the remedies were kinder and more natural
The starting ingredient is often harsh or even a poison it is only because it is diluted out if existence that is becomes harmless
Argue with yourself from now

Yes, but the starting ingredient (if there is any, I think most just fill the bottle with water without pissing about with dilutions) makes no difference at all if there is none left at the end, thats the point!

What I find funny is how over excited people get about homeopathy, both pro and against.
Unfortunately most of the trials were done by someone who is himself very biased against homeopathy so it seems likely that there is considerable confirmation bias in his results.
By the logic of your argument Thehouse, the remedies are both kinder and more natural as you state is that there is nothing in them. It is human nature that we want to help our animals and modern humans are programmed to believe that that help should be in the form of pills when most of the time the problem will resolve itself d/t natural history and the animal will get better by itself with no treatment, so you could argue that the placebo is for the human not the animal. Most homeopathic remedies are far cheeper than prescribed drugs that would otherwise be dished out be the vet for the very same illness because the owner wants a treatment. I'm really not sure what the problem is.
I'm not suggesting that homeopathy should be used for life threatening conditions just that it is a harmless and cheep alternative to using drugs when drugs are not required.

Unfortunately most of the trials were done by someone who is himself very biased against homeopathy so it seems likely that there is considerable confirmation bias in his results

Eh? There's just one lone biased scientist who has been given the job of testing homeopathy?

That's EXACTLY how science works yes... Those poor homeopaths could prove that the magic water works in an instant, if only the world would listen!

But you don't need to do any trials to know it doesn't work. It obviously doesn't work because there is no active ingredient in it and it is just someone's bizarre counter-intuitive idea. If I came to you with a phial of dirty dishwater and said it would detox you because opposites cure you wouldn't believe me. This is the equivalent of that except there isn't even any dishwater left in the phial.

There is lots of good evidence that homeopathy does not work from random control trials. And of course there is, because there is nothing in a homeopathic treatment.
Homeopathy works on the principle of sequential dilution which, combined with succussion (shaking) is meant to release a substances 'vital energy'. The potency is measured on a C scale which represents the number of times the remedy has been diluted by a factor of 100. A 1C remedy would be 1 part in 100. A 2C, 1 part in 10,100. Most remedies have a potency of 30C - 1 part in 10^60 (i.e. a 1 followed by 60 zeros - a trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion). Then a drop of that water is put in a vial of sugar pills. For there to be a reasonable chance of consuming ONE molecule of the original substance, you would have to consume about 20 trillion times the amount of remedy as there is water on the planet.

Unfortunately most of the trials were done by someone who is himself very biased against homeopathy so it seems likely that there is considerable confirmation bias in his results

You can't actually believe this bullshit? This is exactly why people get "over excited" in the against camp, we have trouble accepting that people are quite that stupid.

And presumably there is no way to measure the vital energy.

It also seems very cheap to produce.
One drop on something in gallons of water.

Sceptic here, I'm afraid.

And presumably there is no way to measure the vital energy.

No, because it doesn't exist.

Homeopathic remedies are not, in themselves, dangerous (because they don't contain anything other than sugar pills and water). The danger is that people rely on them and end up not seeking effective treatment. This is a problem for people and and even bigger problem for animals where there is much less evidence for any placebo effects.

I suspect a lot of people go with homeopathy because they don't actually understand what they're buying. Someone tells them it'll work, they want to believe it but don't realise they're actually buying something so dilute it cannot possibly make any difference.

Someone upthread wrote that homeopathic remedies are natural and don't contain loads of chemical. Yes, they certainly are natural, they're water, but no chemicals? Everything is made up of chemicals, even the water of homeopathic 'remedies'.

Yes I think people conflate natural remedies (things like arnica, St John's wort, tea tree) for which there's evidence of efficacy with homeopathy which is just bollocks.

I've been caught out and bought homeopathic teething stuff thinking it was an actual medicine. It doesn't help that places like Boots sell it and that the word 'homeopathic' is in teeny tiny letters. My DH nearly divorced pointed it out to me and I was

Good point Conserve, I think people often use the term homeopathic when they mean herbal, which is a whole different thing, many of our common medicines were originally administered in their plant form.

My vet sells a herbal product for stressed animals. She's a fantastic vet but if she started spouting rubbish about homeopathic remedies I'd be finding someone else to treat my dog.