Efficacy of homeopathic treatment.

[Barr]

Hello everybody,

So ... It?s been awhile since I?ve posted on this forum. I like to come here every couple of months to see if the awaited mayor scientific breakthrough has finally arrived. Unfortunately, no such luck (up till now at least...). In the end I just settle for any advice that seems worth trying. Today I want to give you some advice. I want to share with you my experiences from the last five months. Maybe some of you are intrigued enough to give it a try as well. I?d like to read about your experiences on the forum.
 
Somewhere in the beginning of June I went to visit a homeopath. I had some experience with homeopathic treatment before and I wanted to see if homeopathy could relieve some of my symptoms. For the people with no experience with homeopathy:  the treatment consist of spending up to an hour answering questions about your symptoms, your history and your life in general, taking some small blue pills and waiting a month or two to see if the symptoms change. Change is a good thing in homeopathy. According to homeopaths it means that your defense-mechanism is activated by the medicine and that the body is starting to heal itself. The homeopath will then analyze the changes (if any) and prescribe new medicine when needed.
   In the first couple of weeks after taking the medicine I experienced an definite improvement in energy after masturbating (no girlfriend at the moment). All symptoms (brainfog etc.) became less pronounced, but did not disappear completely. I did experience a resurgence of an old infection in my eyes and a skin rash that went away after a couple of weeks. According to homeopathic theory this sometimes happens when the body is getting rid of all kinds of old diseases that are clogging up the system. After the second visit I was prescribed the same medicine. In the next 24 hours after taking the drug there was another resurgence of old symptoms, including a light panic attack (I have suffered from hyperventilation in the past). After that there were no problems of any kind. In the weeks after taking the medicines the last symptoms associated with POIS disappeared almost completely. At the moment I only get somewhat thirsty after masturbating. I consider myself cured.
 
I can't show you some double-blind randomized trails as proof that homeopathy cures POIS. If you Google, or just go to the Wikipedia-page for homeopathy, you will find mostly negative views on homeopathy.  It?s described as quackery, delusion, or worse. These views are mostly combined by utter bewilderment from the skeptical educated people, who write these pages,  to why it's so popular all over the world (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulation_and_prevalence_of_homeopathy). The scientific data as a whole show mixed results, some studies are positive: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19091085 (-for more studies, click the links on the right side of the page), many are negative or show little efficacy (just as in conventional medicine). I can give you more links: (http://www.ccrhindia.org/Dossier/content/page39.html - about studies done in India), but I am sure that other, more skeptical, people on this forum can point to studies that show that homeopathy doesn't work. You can spend time reading up on homeopathy, but in the end the conclusions are obvious: sometimes it works (miraculously) and sometimes it fails (spectacularly). For me the question became simply: why not give it a try? The worst that can happen is that it doesn't work an you will lose some money. In my case it turned out well. The total costs were somewhere around the 120 euro. Sometimes insurance-companies reimburse your money.

If some of you want to try homeopathy as well: good luck! And please, write down you're experiences - I am interested in your results.

[Prancer]

http://youtu.be/Vrs-Azp0i3k?t=44m58s

my opinion of homeopathy is what this physicist says at 44:58-45:10

[Barr]

 Well, I agree with you that homeopathy should not be able to have any effect at all from a scientific viewpoint. But, apparently there is evidence that very highly dilutions have some real effects (http://www.homeopathyeurope.org/Research/basic-research/physical-models - a page with links to peer-reviewed articles). There is some interesting research been done by Luc Montagnier (Nobel-prize laureate in Medicine): "I can?t say that homeopathy is right in everything. What I can say now is that the high dilutions are right. High dilutions of something are not nothing. They are water structures which mimic the original molecules." (http://www.scribd.com/doc/47426344/Luc-Montagnier-French-Nobelist-on-homeopathy).

It is easy to make fun of homeopathy. A lot of the easily accessible information on the internet consist of just doing that. But if you read a little bit more, especially books, you'll find that things are more complicated. Maybe my cure was all a placebo-effect. I can't tell you with 100% accuracy that is wasn't. That's the reason I want to read about the experiences of others. But I want to dispel the belief that there is nothing to homeopathy. Anti-homeopathy groups dominate the pages that come-up on top when you Google homeopathy.  Other people on this forum could very easily come to the, in my view mistaken, conclusion that there is no evidence in support of homeopathy. If that makes a person reject homeopathy before trying it, I would consider it a loss. I went and told my homeopath that I was skeptical, but was willing to suspend disbelief for a while. She had no problems with it. What do you have to lose?

[Barr]

Hello everybody!

Just a small update: I'm still doing great. Most of the symptoms are still gone. Apparently nobody tried homeopathic treatment since I posted here six months ago (or did but didn't write about it). The only thing I can advice is to try it, what do you have to lose? There is still a effort made by anti-homeopathy groups to portray homeopathy and other "controversial subjects" in the most negative light possible. Homeopaths don't fight the PR-war on the internet, they have better things to do. They work mostly through word of mouth (at least in my country). The only site I can recommend for the interested beginner is www.interhomeopathy.org It's a website by and for homeopaths, so it's not made with the purpose of convincing people to try homeopathy. But it has an large amount of cases. So you can browse and get a feeling on how homeopathy works and what it can do. If you decide to try it, please come back and write about your experiences.

Good luck!

[Prancer]

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2011/02/05/homeopathy-theres-nothing-to-it/

Homeopathy doesn't work because it can't work. There is no active ingredient, not a single molecule, and no scientific debate. It's 100% identical to drinking distilled water (literally) and expecting that to cure you.

[Barr]

Ah ... James Randi. He is a good example of somebody who doesn?t understand homeopathy. A homeopathic medicine should match your specific symptoms and your personality. That's why you go to a homeopath. Downing a generic homeopathic drug and concluding it doesn't work, doesn't disprove homeopathy as a system of medicine. Furthermore, homeopathic drugs are made by a process called potentiation, which is somewhat different than simply diluting the drug out of existence like Randi claims. I quoted a French Nobelist who says that homeopathic remedies are not water (see above). But to the main point: his challenge to homeopaths. This challenge has been accepted by a word famous Greek homeopathic called Vithoulkas. What, according to the homeopaths at least, happened is that Randi backed out at the last moment because he knew he was going to lose http://www.vithoulkas.com/en/research/clinical-trial-randi.html Randi also denounced work on telepathy done by an English researcher called Rupert Sheldrake. According to Sheldrake Randi could not back-up his claims https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YB3SAD-gHTc I think that skeptics (with a 'k') do good work most of the time, but I get the feeling that they sometimes dismiss things just because it doesn't fit their worldview. Sheldrake writes about his dealings with skeptics on his website: http://www.sheldrake.org/reactions/controversies My point was, and still is, that things are not as simple as they seem. Why don't just give it a try?
 

[Prancer]

Ah ... James Randi. He is a good example of somebody who doesn?t understand homeopathy. A homeopathic medicine should match your specific symptoms and your personality. That's why you go to a homeopath. Downing a generic homeopathic drug and concluding it doesn't work, doesn't disprove homeopathy as a system of medicine. Furthermore, homeopathic drugs are made by a process called potentiation, which is somewhat different than simply diluting the drug out of existence like Randi claims. I quoted a French Nobelist who says that homeopathic remedies are not water (see above). But to the main point: his challenge to homeopaths. This challenge has been accepted by a word famous Greek homeopathic called Vithoulkas. What, according to the homeopaths at least, happened is that Randi backed out at the last moment because he knew he was going to lose http://www.vithoulkas.com/en/research/clinical-trial-randi.html Randi also denounced work on telepathy done by an English researcher called Rupert Sheldrake. According to Sheldrake Randi could not back-up his claims https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YB3SAD-gHTc I think that skeptics (with a 'k') do good work most of the time, but I get the feeling that they sometimes dismiss things just because it doesn't fit their worldview. Sheldrake writes about his dealings with skeptics on his website: http://www.sheldrake.org/reactions/controversies My point was, and still is, that things are not as simple as they seem. Why don't just give it a try?
 

Generally, to find out if something is valid or not, people don't look to French nobelists or Greek homeopaths (no offense), they look at data and genuine scientific studies among other things. The scientific consensus is that homeopathy does not, has not, and never will work, period. Saying 'disliking' homeopathy because it doesn't fit one's world view is akin to saying not believing in human levitation doesn't fit one's world view. Reality supersedes world views.

Also, I won't be discussing homeopathy anymore because we've done that, and it's a time waster. You can try and do whatever you like, maybe it makes a nice (and costly) placebo for you.

[demografx]

Excellent, Prancer!

[ozmoses]

Just out of curiosity Barr, can you give some examples of homeopathic treatments?    Are you talking about flower essences, various cell salts, etc?  Please indicate in more detail.. thanks.

[Raj]

I'm going to try homeopathy. I will report back after 3 months.

[demografx]

Good luck, Raj!

[Rish]

Raj, bro do u found results from Homeopathy

[swell]

So I got my genetic report yesterday and I have been busy combing it.  It turns out I have both alleles on the Placebo effect gene which makes totally sense since I think POIS is psycho-somatic disorder.

maybe it makes a nice (and costly) placebo for you.