Alt meds & stuff. Do they work?

jon ryan

jon ryan

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This stems from Another Thread that was getting as bit out of hand, and the argument was in the wrong place. I was largely responsible, and apologise to anyone whom I upset.

However, this is the right place for just that debate.

So...

Alt meds: homoeopathy, faith healing, ear candles, phrenology, those majik magnetic bracelet things that are meant to make you run faster, the healing power of crystals. All of that stuff. Psychic powers, astrology, divination from the entrails of chickens.

I say it's a load of foetid dingo's kidneys. If it can't be tested, measured, replicated, it's just superstition and primitive belief.

Anyone have an opinion?
 
Yep, is nonsense. Despite this being FACT, my arthritic dog HAD to wear his magnetic collar, always. Go figure.

A
 
Hard a read or listen to Dr Steven Novella. He's very good at exposing the mythical benefits of homeopathy.
 
There are all sorts of alternative treatments, from some of the more 'bizarre' that you mention to those available on the NHS such as acupuncture and osteopathy. For some people alternative therapies work, not talking cancer here, but the likes of stress, pain etc.
Just because something cannot be scientifically explained does not mean that it cannot work.
 
Astrology, crystals, psychic powers etc. is a pile of rubbish in my opinion.

There's a chance some herbal remedies etc. have unidentified properties that may benefit people's health but broadly speaking those herbal remedies that work are what we call medicines.
 
gramps said:
There are all sorts of alternative treatments, from some of the more 'bizarre' that you mention to those available on the NHS such as acupuncture and osteopathy. For some people alternative therapies work, not talking cancer here, but the likes of stress, pain etc.
Just because something cannot be scientifically explained does not mean that it cannot work.
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well, in the case of homeopathy, I think there is pretty strong evidence to suggest it cannot work :lol:
I do however love and adore my osteopath
 
All depends in what you believe in i suppose if it works for you then fine whats the harm. personaly i think the reason its called alternative medicine is that someone went out tested all the plants the ones that worked were called medicine the ones that were left over just made a tasty soup:D
 
Headless Lois said:
well, in the case of homeopathy, I think there is pretty strong evidence to suggest it cannot work :lol:
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Never tried it myself but there are thousands who swear that it works for them, in the same way many have had a placebo and been 'cured' of their problem - raises the issue of how much can the mind do to restore certain health issues?
 
It's all tosh. The 'cures' are usually statistical regression (try my cold cure - bash your head against a brick wall three times a day for a week or so and your cold will be cured) or manifestations of the placebo effect. While the placebo effect is very real and even works with allopathic medicines (in fact some depend on it), it's not predictable and that in itself makes it highly risky.
 
Ive had lots of sessions of acupuncture and it does work, the tingling and tremours in my arms and hand does eventually creep back so anothe 1hrs treatment and Im OK again
 
hopi ear candles I've had these a long time in the past, they certainly clear the "crap" out of your ears ;)

Tiger Balm another "alternative" I had a serious accident many years ago
and was on very strong pain killers, they hardly worked, this kept the pain under control.

Echinacea works like lightening on tooth ache.

I am not adversed to trying stuff like this,
it either works in 24 hours or it doesn't work at all.

The Native Americans, of course are "masters" in this field
as are the Chinese.

My personal opinion is, some work some don't.
And that is exactly the same as "prescribed" drugs.
 
My other half is a senior biomedical scientist in a patholgy dept at a hospital well shes now an advanced practitioner and she was saying that more and more alternative treatments are being used on a daily basis now in many hospitals.
 
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Hopi ear candles are dangerous and don't work. They aren't even anything to do with the Hopi indians - in fact their tribal council has been trying to get the use of their name removed from the damned things for a while now.

It takes a week's worth of wax softener followed by a pulsed pressure water jet to remove wax from an ear - a hopi candle couldn't even lift a pile of dust from a hard surface. The 'crap' they remove from the ears is just the residue of the wax in the paper they're made from - if you burn one over a clean surface you'll get the same deposits. People have been injured by these things.
 
People have been injured by approved meds ... thalidomide jumps out but there are many more - aspirin can cause anaemia and ulcers, statins can cause muscle and tendon damage ... the list goes on.
 
The pharmaceutical industry is also not beyond falsifying and withholding data to make their treatments look more beneficial than they are. Some of those are little better than the alternative guff of homeopathy and placebo.
 
Islander said:
I put it to you sir, that you were duped ;)
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The proof of the pudding was in the hearing ;)
And as it was my ears, I guess that there was no slight of hand, or any other tricks involved ;)
 
srichards said:
The pharmaceutical industry is also not beyond falsifying and withholding data to make their treatments look more beneficial than they are. Some of those are little better than the alternative guff of homeopathy and placebo.
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No argument with that. Cherrypicking study data is, unfortunately, common practice.
 
srichards said:
The pharmaceutical industry is also not beyond falsifying and withholding data to make their treatments look more beneficial than they are. .
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Having worked in the medical research industry for about 10 years,
many moons ago, I cannot argue with that statement ;)
 
Cobra said:
The proof of the pudding was in the hearing ;)
And as it was my ears, I guess that there was no slight of hand, or any other tricks involved ;)
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Did you have an objective hearing test before and after? Placebo can also play a massive part in expectation. You expect something to sort out your hearing so you think it has...
 
There is a name for alternative medicine that's been proven to work...

"Medicine". :D

(From Tim Minchin's excellent poem, "Storm"):

*NSFW*

[YOUTUBE]HhGuXCuDb1U[/YOUTUBE]
 
Cobra said:
The proof of the pudding was in the hearing ;)
And as it was my ears, I guess that there was no slight of hand, or any other tricks involved ;)
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Laying on your side probably had quite a lot to do with it but whatever it was, if it sorted a problem out then result for you. They are dangerous though, and you can test their lack of efficacy quite easily by putting a pile of fluff or something similarly light on a flat surface and lighting one over it. If the fluff is sucked up into the candle then I'll buy you a bottle of the malt of your choice. :p

I don't generally care about alternative therapies - caveat emptor and all that (although when the likes of homeopaths start recommending their sugar pills as a prophylactic against malaria or as a treatment for a life threatening illness I draw the line) but I'd ban ear candles tomorrow - if it prevented one ear canal burn it's be worth it.

I suspect we may have to agree to disagree on this though ;)
 
srichards said:
Did you have an objective hearing test before and after? Placebo can also play a massive part in expectation. You expect something to sort out your hearing so you think it has...
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No but I know that they were "blocked" before hand, and not afterwards.
I'm not saying I was deaf and magically cured, but more like stuffed up sinus's,
and the "pressure" had released, and the "cotton wool" had been pulled out.
 
ZoneV said:
There is a name for alternative medicine that's been proven to work...

"Medicine". :D

(From Tim Minchin's excellent poem, "Storm"):

*NSFW*

[YOUTUBE]HhGuXCuDb1U[/YOUTUBE]
Click to expand...

The guy's a genius. I never get tired of his work :thumbs:
 
I wouldn't want to be without my magnetic bracelet!

Heather
 
Islander said:
I'll buy you a bottle of the malt of your choice. :p
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You are too kind but I'll pass on the Malt, thanks anyway 'Orrible stuff :D

Islander said:
if it prevented one ear canal burn it's be worth it.
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I do see where you are coming from and the scope for some serious damage to be done.
But I guess its like everything else, in life, anything we like or do is either
fattening, dangerous, immoral or illegal :D

Islander said:
I suspect we may have to agree to disagree on this though ;)
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Healthy debate never harmed anyone :thumbs:
 
To say a form of alternative medicine does not work then it has to be put through the same full scale trial as any mass market medicine. How many alternative therapy treatments have been given full clinical trials.

To develop and be able to sell a new medicine usually takes a pharmaceutical company 10 to 15 years (and can cost hundreds of millions of pounds). This is in part because of the time spent testing the many other possible compounds that are not as successful as first thought at helping the disease or pose too high a risk in regard to potential side effects.

The development process of a medicine usually involves a pharmaceutical company, which owns the license to the medicine and funds the research and development. This process takes place in hospitals and clinics, often in several countries. Professional medical journals review and report the results. Governments and regulatory bodies (taken from a web site)

So when you go to a health shop to buy something for arthritis how can you say it wont work if it hasnt had the same trial as the ones that make the medical world millions?
 
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I think that there may be benefits to some treatments that maybe haven't been 'discovered' by mainstream medicine (I'm thinking primarily of herbal remedies here). I understand that a few pharmaceutical products are based on analysis of folklore medications. As such, I wouldn't describe such herbal/folklore treatments as 'alternative' in the sense I understand it today - but older mainstream treatments that may have taken a back seat to more modern scientifically developed treatments.

Acupuncture seems to be used successfully - even in place of anaesthetics - in my uninformed opinion, I'm not sure if their effect can be wholly explained as a placebo effect - there may be some rational explanation not yet 'discovered by science' there.

I certainly don't hold with most of the so called treatments and therapies that seem to have gained popularity in the last few decades and some of them have been shown by scientific method to be bunkum or placebo.

So I consider homeopathy, crystals, faith-healing, phrenology, divination, aura reading and loads more all nonsense.

And as for health authorities providing alternative treatments - I am rather cynical as to the whys and wherefores - it could be a relatively cheap way of diverting some patients away from the queues for the 'proper' treatments.

Some people are always going to be swayed or seduced by alternative treatments - some have an anti 'mainstream-medicine' agenda, others are desperate for the Lord of the Rings to be real.

And yes, in my opinion iridology is total codswallop (I think religion is too - but I wouldn't let that stop me joining in a thread about church wedding photography ;))
 
Yes I believe in them, I have had crystal healing done and a form of reki (sp) done when I have had knee operations done in the past, passion kilometres not really done anything but both did help with the pain. I gaffe also had reflexology which has helped with ibs, I was very sceptical before this but the practitioner a able to tell me pretty much my hole medical history a she went along, which convinced me of it. Also had acupuncture to give up smoking which also worked.
 
pepi1967 said:
So when you go to a health shop to buy something for arthritis how can you say it wont work if it hasnt had the same trial as the ones that make the medical world millions?
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Its not quite clear from you post which side of the fence you are on.
However I believe now that penicillin would fail a modern day trial,
and the Holistic type stuff, has had its trial dating back thousands of years.

After all, the Native American Indians couldn't nip down to the local Pharmacy,
they had to use what was available to them.
I am sure that many died, "trialing" the medicines that they eventually discovered.
After all many are acute poisons ;)

(Belladonna is a classic example)
 
echinacea for the last 20yrs has been classed as a herbal remedy dismissed by the medical community as hog wash all in the mind medicine. UNTIL they did the full scale medical trial and now it has been confirmed and is recomended by many doctors to treat the symptoms of cold and flu. So to say alternative therapies are all rubbish is only true until it is proved to work or not to work using full scale medical trials.
 
Ancient remedies that have been later proven to work are great. As already mentioned, many real medicines are derived from natural plants that have been used for thousands of years.

The problem lies in the "treatments" that have no scientific basis whatsoever: often they're harmless but sometimes they can actually cause harm (either directly, or indirectly by distracting/dissuading the patient from seeking a proper course of treatment) and in principle the unproven nature of these treatments means they are open for unscrupulous practitioners (i.e. con-men) to take advantage of the desperate and vulnerable. For example, faith healers have been known to pray on entire African villages, giving "healing" stage shows, at a price of course. It's happened in the west too, with a private "doctor" claiming to be able to cure terminal cancer and prescribing their poor, desperate patient some nonsense "medicine" and advising them to discontinue their regular treatment which no doubt shortened their life. Terrible.

Does anyone believe in the remedies recommended by tribal Witch Doctors or Voodoo Medicine Men? Some of them are real belters. :D
 
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physio therapy is used all the time in all hospitals world wide but that was a holistic therapy. and Who invented it? hippocrates in 460bc (Hundreds of years before modern medicine) So like i have said you cant say holistic or alternative treaments are rubbish until it is proven.
 
Stiff joints? A Sparrow's feather and 2 lumps of coal - loosens my joints up nicely. :D

Seriously though, physio can be reliably proven to work by measuring a patient's range of motion before and after treatment.
 
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ZoneV said:
Seriously though, physio can be reliably proven to work by measuring a patient's range of motion before and after treatment.
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I had two years of that following an RTA
nerve damage / deltiod muscle totaled.
They "re-trained" other muscles to "take over".

I still have trouble moving my arm
in some "planes" but you would never know unless you watched closely ;)
I will be forever greatful to the girls that got my arm usable again :thumbs:

Curiously, and as pointed out by one of them
"physio-the-rapist" :D
 
agreed zone v BUT it was still classed as alternative therapy. as was the testing of someones vision. looking into the eye to see what shape your retina is was being done in 1352 but now we call it optometry. We class it as modern medicine but its started off as alternative therapy.
 
Having witnessed people die because of their reliance on these 'alternative' medicines then I would say I disagree with them as an 'alternative' but would say that as long as the therapy has been proved to 'do no harm' then I'm happy for people to use it as a complementary therapy, alongside tried and tested therapies.
 
Cobra said:
I had two years of that following an RTA
nerve damage / deltiod muscle totaled.
They "re-trained" other muscles to "take over".

I still have trouble moving my arm
in some "planes" but you would never know unless you watched closely ;)
I will be forever greatful to the girls that got my arm usable again :thumbs:

Curiously, and as pointed out by one of them
"physio-the-rapist" :D
Click to expand...

They are also often referred to as Physio-terrorists :coat:
 
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