Homeopathy

[apache_blanca]

Originally Posted by Clarke

Interestingly, taking massive overdoses of homoeopathic medicine has no noticeable effect.

no, it doesn't - it's not a question of a dose but rather a potency (or something) - or the choice of the remedy. I didn't have Bad experiences with homeopathy but I developed a respect to it when, during the translation, I saw that sometimes patient's health gets worse instead of improving, & I know somebody who had call an ambulance because of a wrong treatment (what went wrong - the remedy? dose? potency? go figure). That's why I say: "Careful!" Something is working, but if this "something" is handled wrongly (as in any treatment), it can do damage.

Of course if anybody doesn't want to try homeopathic treatments at all, then the worry is cancelled by default, & one will have to worry about a wrong allopathic (rather than homeopathic) treatment instead. In any case this is not a playground - especially that it's difficult to say what exactly is happening.

[Human No More]

Of course, if you believe in negative effects, it's perfectly possible to give yourself them. If they didn't know any better, you could convince someone that coffee makes them tired and they'd likely exhibit those symptoms.

[apache_blanca]

what I am saying is - try to find an expert. Whether it is homeopathy, allopathy, brain surgery or beating drums. Especially if you're curious about trying something that is not studied in all its depth (with lots of funds, test groups etc. etc. etc. a proper study needs) because it's not considered serious enough.

[applejuice]

But such investigations on Homeopathy have already been made and have, conclusively, found most (if not all) of their claims are not sustainable or real.

[Mika]

This whole debate I see as a gift, even if it's been heated. A long time quote from my faith roots has said that from the spark of confrentation, comes consultation, by which truth can be found.

Despite my long time conviction and use of Homeopathy, there is something I did not know till this morning, that that faith roots that I refer, uphold Homeopathy.

So I am humbly grateful to you all for helping me find this gift!

:')

Physical Treatments for Disease – A Baha'i Perspective | Susan Gammage: Bahai-inspired Life Coaching

[Советский меч]

It works as well as Faith healing. Hey maybe we should start blood letting aga... oh wait that's bull**** too.
You know what they call alternative medicine that's proven to work? MEDICINE.

Edit: Science>Pseudoscience

[Marvellous Chester]

Funny when people without faith wonder why faith healing doesn't work the clue is in the name

You know drugs (or any instrument of healing) don't work either if you don't have them.

[Mika]

I understand the confusion that predominates regarding homeopathy, and the following excerpt, illustrates some of the reasons why.

"We are still living in a world that is largely ignorant on the topic of homeopathy. People still seem to be unable to differentiate between herbal and homeopathic medicines. They still mistakenly use the word ‘homeopathic’ for any form of natural medicine. And they still don’t seem to get it that homeopathy and allopathy just don’t work in the same way, and that you can’t expect the same results from these very different processes.

However we are no longer suffering from too little information as we were a generation ago. No, now we are suffering from too much bad information. Too many websites and individuals that just plain have it wrong. And too many ‘practitioners’ and ‘educators,’ who in recent years came to homeopathy, and seem themselves to be as confused as to the nature of homeopathy and its practice. And computer software has made it all too easy for these guys to just type in the symptoms and let the machine do all the work. Pity that they haven’t realized that these software packages can’t do all the work, that they still have to know how to take cases, and they actually have to type in real, useful information in order to get real and useful results. Hahnemann, and the other fathers of homeopathy had a word for such practitioners. They called them ‘half-homeopaths’ because they practiced a supposed form of homeopathy that failed to follow the rules of homeopathic treatment. But anything that attempts to blend the philosophy of allopathy with the practice of homeopathy invariably falls into the chasm that lies between the two.

Homeopathy asks a great deal from those who practice it. This is because homeopathy is a very complex subject for study. It requires an understanding of the nature of illness and health and the journey that must be traveled between these two poles of the human condition. It also demands an understanding of the nature of medicine and its ability or lack thereof to move the patient from illness toward health. It also requires an understanding of the philosophy of homeopathy – a philosophy that was “some two thousand years in the shaping” before Samuel Hahnemann ever coined the work ‘homeopathy’ in order to codify what so many others had attempted beforehand. Finally, it requires an understanding of the remedies that comprise the homeopathic pharmacy (and there are THOUSANDS) and the ability to recognize the remedy need that ‘each individual patient’ is displaying on the hoof.

Because homeopathy is such a complex subject, it is one that ‘no one’, not even Hahnemann himself, can fully understand or master in a lifetime. To the end of his days, Hahnemann was rewriting, always including new ideas, new possibilities, not only of new additions to the homeopathy pharmacy, but also as to the nature of homeopathy itself. In the two hundred years since Hahnemann, hundreds of others have contributed their thoughts and ideas as to the nature of homeopathy and its practice. Some have, crystallized the truth of homeopathy, while others have moved us further away from the truth. Like politics, like religion, homeopathy is a subject that seems to encourage debate. Further it is a subject that we can only test over a lifetime of study and use, learning and grasping a bit more understanding as we go.

Therefore, no one ‘individual’, book, article, website on the subject of homeopathy can ever tell you the whole story, the whole truth. Indeed no bookshelf of books can do that. Each can only tell you ‘their’ story of homeopathy. The facts as they know them, as they were passed on to them, and as they have experienced them.

Their own truths, Their own experiences."

Quoted from the opening pages of: The Healing Enigma: Demystifying Homeopathy – by Vinton McCabe

[Clarke]

Originally Posted by The Silver Stag

Funny when people without faith wonder why faith healing doesn't work the clue is in the name

Except we haven't been wondering that for some time, since we did the science. Faith healing has been tested, and found to do nothing beyond let the body sort itself out.

[Советский меч]

Originally Posted by The Silver Stag

Funny when people without faith wonder why faith healing doesn't work the clue is in the name

You know drugs (or any instrument of healing) don't work either if you don't have them.

There simply is no evidence that faith healing heals. Not what science considers evidence. Faith healing has failed demonstrably in every scientific experiment done on it. And the true believers don’t value evidence or the scientific method: for them, belief is enough. You have my word, if I develop bone cancer I'll stick to scientifically proven treatments and you can keep the prayers to yourself. To quote Daniel Dennet.

"Do I worship modern medicine? Is science my religion? Not at all; there is no aspect of modern medicine or science that I would exempt from the most rigorous scrutiny, and I can readily identify a host of serious problems that still need to be fixed. That's easy to do, of course, because the worlds of medicine and science are already engaged in the most obsessive, intensive, and humble self-assessments yet known to human institutions, and they regularly make public the results of their self-examinations. Moreover, this open-ended rational criticism, imperfect as it is, is the secret of the astounding success of these human enterprises. There are measurable improvements every day. Had I had my blasted aorta a decade ago, there would have been no prayer of saving me. It's hardly routine today, but the odds of my survival were actually not so bad (these days, roughly 33 percent of aortic dissection patients die in the first twenty-four hours after onset without treatment, and the odds get worse by the hour thereafter). To whom, then, do I owe a debt of gratitude? To the cardiologist who has kept me alive and ticking for years, and who swiftly and confidently rejected the original diagnosis of nothing worse than pneumonia. To the surgeons, neurologists, anesthesiologists, and the perfusionist, who kept my systems going for many hours under daunting circumstances. To the dozen or so physician assistants, and to nurses and physical therapists and x-ray technicians and a small army of phlebotomists so deft that you hardly know they are drawing your blood, and the people who brought the meals, kept my room clean, did the mountains of laundry generated by such a messy case, wheel-chaired me to x-ray, and so forth. These people came from Uganda, Kenya, Liberia, Haiti, the Philippines, Croatia, Russia, China, Korea, India—and the United States, of course—and I have never seen more impressive mutual respect, as they helped each other out and checked each other's work. But for all their teamwork, this local gang could not have done their jobs without the huge background of contributions from others. I remember with gratitude my late friend and Tufts colleague, physicist Allan Cormack, who shared the Nobel Prize for his invention of the c-t scanner. Allan—you have posthumously saved yet another life, but who's counting? The world is better for the work you did. Thank goodness. Then there is the whole system of medicine, both the science and the technology, without which the best-intentioned efforts of individuals would be roughly useless. So I am grateful to the editorial boards and referees, past and present, of Science, Nature, Journal of the American Medical Association, Lancet, and all the other institutions of science and medicine that keep churning out improvements, detecting and correcting flaws."

No amount of faith or prayer would have saved his life.

[Human No More]

Originally Posted by The Silver Stag

Funny when people without faith wonder why faith healing doesn't work the clue is in the name

Funny how placebos don't work either when people know they are placebos - even leaving the numerous cases of suspect practice (to appear effective when in fact there was no real problem in the first place) aside.

Originally Posted by Mika

"We are still living in a world that is largely ignorant on the topic of homeopathy. People still seem to be unable to differentiate between herbal and homeopathic medicines. They still mistakenly use the word ‘homeopathic’ for any form of natural medicine. And they still don’t seem to get it that homeopathy and allopathy just don’t work in the same way, and that you can’t expect the same results from these very different processes.

Now that's very true, although I suspect not for the reason the author intended. There are plenty of plant and animal products that can have effects in therapeutic doses, and while some 'herbal remedies' are worthless, some do have both useful and adverse effects in useful quantities. However, if you don't take any, you won't have that effect.

[Mika]

Needing to be cheeky, is deliberately going to go find and support Homeopathic stores well in the UK!
Y
Couldn't resist HNM!

[Human No More]

...what? That didn't make any sense